What's New....

We have completed our transition to CSA shares for meat orders. (What does this mean?)

CSA is short for "Community Supported Agriculture" and is a way for the food buying public to create a relationship with a farm or ranch and to receive an assortment of products. By making a financial commitment to a ranch, people become "members" (or "shareholders," or "subscribers") of the CSA.

Essentially we will sell "shares" in a live steer, pig or lamb. Each share represents a fractional ownership in that animal. When the animal is butchered, the processed meat is shipped to the owners.

Why have we gone to this format?

We have had a lot of difficulty in getting the quality and consistency of cuts and the aging time we require from our local USDA inspected processor. While using a USDA inspected processor allows us to sell individual cuts to the public, the difficulties we have had with our former USDA processor would have forced us to go to a different USDA processor located 100 miles away (this would have required us to transport the animals for 3 hours and would have included them being held in pens overnight before processing). By useing a State Inspected butcher, the animals are killed on the ranch with no transportation stress. In addition to being lower stress for the animals, our local butcher has an excellent reputation and is willing to work with us to provide the highest quality cuts and the extended aging time we require.

What does "State Exempt" mean ?

Although they are called "State Exempt" processors, they are actually inspected by the USDA. The difference being that inspectors are not continually present on site, but rather do unannounced inspections. Processors are rated from 1 to 4 with 1 being the highest rating possible. Our butcher, Terry Good/Good's Processing, has a number 1 rating.

One requirement of the State Exempt process is that the meat from the animal being processed can only be consumed by the "owner".

How do CSA shares work?

We will be offering Beef Shares, Pig Shares and Lamb Shares, with 1 Beef Share = 1/8 beef, 1 Pig Share = 1/4 pig and 1 Lamb Share = 1/2 lamb.

Cost of the shares will be based on the whole carcass prices listed on our web site at the time of the share purchase. An advanced deposit for each share must be made prior to the processing of the animal, with the balance due on delivery.

An individual may purchase as many shares as they want. Once all the shares in an animal have been sold, it will be scheduled for processing and the finished meat will be shipped to the owners.

New Book by Michael Pollan Coming out in early 08.
(excerpts from Alan Nation's SGF Blog)

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma has a new book out next month called In Defense of Food. If you are a grassfed enthusiast you'll really like it. In this book Pollan reveals that much of what we are eating today is really "edible foodlike substances" and not real food. Insidiously, he said many of these fake foods come with health claims that make them appear to be more nutritious than real food. He calls this unholy combination of industrial food and semi-scientific health claims "nutritionism." The end result has been a dramatic rise in obesity and its related health problems such as adult onset diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Pollan says the best way to fight this obesity epidemic is to return to the traditional pre-World War II diet scientists rejected as "unhealthy." Pollan exposes that the post war diets change recommendations were never scientifically tested but were based upon extrapolations of data. For example, the overall health of the American public rose dramatically during World War II and the scientists concluded this was due to the rationing of meat and dairy products. This observation birthed the "low-fat" diet movement and faux foods like margarine and white bread. What they overlooked was that sugar and refined flour were also tightly rationed. The resulting shift of swapping fast digesting carbohydrates for animal fats and low fiber flour actually made people much fatter because they became hungry again much faster than on the traditional diet. The resulting obesity epidemic was worsened by the shift from real sugar to corn syrup as the primary sweetener. Another deadly diet shift has been the heavy use of hydrogenated soybean oil in almost all bakery products to add shelf life and moistness. The addition of corn and soybean based ingredients to almost all manufactured food ingredients and the shift to grain-based confinement beef finishing, pork production and dairying dramatically shifted America to a very high omega-6 fatty acid diet. Pollan said the first step on the road back to healthy eating is to reject all manufactured food products with a health claim. He said a traditional diet based mostly on green plants, and animals that eat green plants (wild fish, grassfed meats and dairy), is the most healthy diet. "If your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize what you are eating as food, don't eat it," he said.

Hay Prices Increasing...

On a national basis, hay prices are record high. For the current U.S. hay crop-marketing year (2007-08), the national average all hay price is forecast to be about $150.00 per ton, surging past the prior record set last year of about $110.00 per ton.

This crop year, the national alfalfa hay and other hay price are both forecast to be record high at over $155.00 per ton and over $125.00 per ton, respectively.

Record high hay prices are the result of very tight supplies and strong demand, as all feedstuff prices are closely related based on nutritional components. That is, current hay prices largely reflect high energy and protein values as indicated by corn and soybean meal prices.

Hay prices differ on a regional basis due to the high cost of transporting hay. Still, national data provide important market indications. Since 2004, U.S. hay production has steadily declined with U.S. hay production in 2006 being the smallest since 1988.

In 2007, U.S. hay production increased but at about 140 million tons it was still the second smallest since 1993. At the beginning of the 2007-08 hay crop-year (May 1), U.S. hay stocks were just 15 million tons, the smallest in relevant history (since 1960).

With normal winter weather, U.S. hay stocks as of May 1, 2008 may not increase much. Current forecasts put May 1, 2008 national hay stocks at 15.4 million tons, just 3 percent above 2007’s.