Friday Update

Perhaps you've noticed a few changes around here. It's been so nice to finally update my blog with my new computer! I'm sure I will continue to tweek and change things in upcoming weeks. If you have any suggestions, advice, or even things you don't like, I would love to hear from you!
I've also noticed a few new followers in recent weeks, and want to say welcome! Thank you for following my blog, and I'm excited you're here.
From time to time I like to provide a little background information about myself and where I live. Here is a link to the post where I give a tour of my hometown.
I actually live 25 miles north of the bustling metropolis of Lance Creek, and our closest neighbors live five miles away if you take a road. It's closer to 2.5 miles cross country. Cattle outnumber people around here by a huge margin.
We are two and a half hours (one way) from a Walmart, Starbucks (that's the most painful one for me), Red Lobster, mall, airport, college, and any number of other "common" modern shopping, eating and transportation amenities.
To purchase a gallon of milk or any other groceries, check out a library book, find a k-12 school or a coffee shop of any kind (yay!), it's a one hour drive, one way. So, every trip to get groceries is a minimum of 112 miles, round trip.
We are isolated. We like it that way.
Our ranch is located in the "banana belt" of Wyoming. It's a semi-arid climate that has exceptionally mild winters. We originally purchased this ranch as a winter place, and our cattle lived here during the winter months on grass a cake every year. We never fed hay. Today it has changed in that we run cattle on this ranch year-round, so we feed a little more during the winter months. But, it's still a very nice to be located here in the winter compared to just about everywhere else in the state. Ironically enough, just one hour south of us, the area around Lusk is famous for it's terrible winter weather.
Being semi-arid also means we get a minimal amount of moisture; under 12 inches annually. We grow hard grasses that cattle do very well on. Hard refers to the grass not containing a lot of moisture, so each bite packs in a lot of nutrients as opposed to water. But, there isn't always a lot of it.
Hope you love where you live too, and enjoy the unique features of the area!

P.S., we're linking up with the Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop too this week-

National Ag Day

Today is National Ag Day. If you aren't involved in agriculture, take a moment to celebrate and thank the farmers and ranchers that provide you with the food you eat, clothes you wear, and countless other necessary items in your daily life. While this is just one day a year, those of us who make a living in agriculture are fortunate enough to celebrate agriculture every day, while we make these products for our country and world.

If you want to know more about National Ag Day, you can go here.
If you want to know more Wyoming agriculture, and what we do, go here.

Most Popular

I am very surprised, and happily so, that my blog received 458 views in December. I really appreciate everyone who reads my stories and looks at my pictures on here. I have met and emailed a few of you that I didn't know previously, and have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know you!

In case you were wondering, the most viewed blog post to date is:
Preg Checking

Number two is:
Going to the Forest

The vast majority of the people reading this are from the United States. But I've had people from Croatia, Brazil, all over Europe, Canada, and a few other places. Hello to you all : )

As we enter 2011 I want to let everyone know I'm open to suggestions, ideas, questions and comments. If there's something I've covered you want to know more about, or didn't understand fully, let me know and I'll be happy to go more in depth.

If you have a general question about agriculture, food, cattle, or anything else you think I might know about ( if I don't, I'll look into it, or find someone who does for you to visit with), email or comment me and we'll figure it out.

Whether you do, or don't, know about agriculture and have a topic you think should be covered on here, let me know about those too, and I'll add them into the mix.

The purpose of this blog remains the same - to show the true story of agriculture, and provide accurate information on ranching and agriculture from the perspective of someone who lives it.

Of course there will be a little personal information mixed in from time to time to keep things interesting and help explain why I'm going here or doing this, and to show you there are a few things that hold my interest outside the world of raising cattle.

It's a wonderful life and I am very blessed! I look forward to sharing more of it with you in 2011!

My email is doublehphoto@live.com

Home grown

I was reading a blog this morning about how a girl that was raised on a farm purchased all her food in town with the exception of beef and pork. She explained this to someone from a city and they were surprised that her family didn't produce most of what they ate... and so was I.
Growing up my family had two milk cows, several hundred chickens and a couple gardens. My grandma and great grandma also picked chokecherries to make jelly with. I remember helping my grandma pick wild greens and other edible plants too.
We will start with the milk cows. The one I remember with the most clarity was a half Holstein, half Angus cow named Lady. She was quite sweet and I don't ever remember her kicking. She would decide not to come in to be milked once in a while, then would stand in the yard bawling all night because her bag was tight.
My dad has some hilarious stories about gathering the milk cows as a kid, but I can't do them justice.
My grandfather passed away 15 years ago, and my best memory of him is in his barn, milking his cow. It's what he did first thing in the morning when he was planning his day. If you would peak around the barn door he would hit you with a stream of milk. All the barn cats would sit expectantly on in the doorway and for their patience would receive a stream of milk at some point.
The milk cows were also used to feed bum calves. My grandpa would tie a sheet around the cow, covering part of her bag. The idea is that a calf sucking a cow makes her harder to milk, so half the cows bag was for the calves and the other half wasn't.
We rarely, if ever, bought a gallon of milk until after my grandpa died. At that time the milk cows were sold because no one else was as fond of them (by that I mean they were sick of them ) as my grandpa.
My grandma would buy 100 baby chicks every year and butcher the equivalent in old hens. Butchering chickens is not fun and we won't get into that. She had the biggest chicken house ever and I can remember my great grandma (Nana) cleaning all the eggs every day. Nana took care of the chickens until she was about 97. The eggs were eaten and sold and the butchered hens were also eaten.
There were also roosters...big, mean, white roosters that would chase us kids. Not that they were ever provoked...
My mom had gardens when I was little and my grandma also grew things like tomatoes most years. While we weren't huge gardeners we did produce some stuff almost every year.
As for the chokecherry jelly, my grandma is famous in several counties and parts of other states for her jelly. It is the best you'll ever have and some rather serious arguments have erupted over whose jar is whose. My grandma and Nana also canned enough fruits and vegetables to completely fill a 10x10 foot cellar every year. A "snack" at grandmas might be canned peaches with real cream on top.
When I was really little I would walk up and down the creak bottoms with my grandma and "help" her pick greens. I think this was a wild form of spinach. All I really know is there is a weed that looks a lot like a green, and I could never tell the two apart. Grandma had to re-sort my bucket all the time.
In addition to all this food production we also eat our own beef almost exclusively. If we run out of hamburger we might go buy some, but otherwise we eat what we raise. I guess I take for granted the opportunities my lifestyle presents me in the food I am able to eat.

Oh, Organic?

I'm cruising through the blog world the other day when I stumble upon a girls post about food.

Oh dear.

She was explaining why organic meat was more expensive and that non-organic animals were usually infected with disease due to the industries poor housing of livestock, and so on...

10 deep breathes later I wrote her a nice comment explaining my background and what sentences in her post I felt were a little misrepresenting of the livestock industry.

So, how about organic? What's up with it? I decided this would be easy and googled the term "organic meat" to grab the stats that I heard so often in college...except they didn't come up...but I found out where that girl might have found her information, sadly.

The USDA defines organic meat (it's the first link) as that meat which comes from an animal that has never received antibiotics or growth hormones. Before a product can be labeled, "organic" the place it was produced must be inspected to ensure they are meeting organic requirements.

OK, but why the price difference?

It's a matter of supply and demand. Some consumers want the choice of organic and are willing to pay more for it. Organic meat has to be worth more for a rancher to produce it, because through choosing to raise organic cattle he will have slower gaining cattle with a higher death rate.

Choosing to produce organic beef means a rancher or feeder doesn't give them any antibiotics or growth hormones, everyone's got that part. But, in not giving animals these products animals aren't as efficient, and more of them get sick and die. So, in reality, the healthier animals are the non-organic variety.

If they get sick, feeders are encouraged to wait a couple days to see if health improves on its own in some cases. If health doesn't improve the animal is doctored and no longer an organic candidate.

It drives my family's cattle feeder absolutely nuts to not doctor a sick calf. He feels having to wait a couple days results in a much longer recovery period for the animal and can lead to more sickness in the animal's peers.

We don't raise organic beef. We sat down and penciled out the additional income we would receive from marketing our cattle that way and compared it to the additional loss we would expect and economically it came out almost identical, so we stuck with our traditional program.

On the other side of the organic beef choice is the fact that non-organic cattle can and usually are treated with growth hormones.

Consider this about hormones-The average daily hormone dose in oral contraceptives is 2,500 TIMES higher than what is found in a serving of beef from an animal that received growth hormones. A man naturally produces 15,000 TIMES more estrogen than he would consume if he ate 500 grams of meat.

Consider this also, ranchers eat their product. I don't know of a single rancher who doesn't eat what he produces. If the beef he raised wasn't healthy he wouldn't feed it to himself, his family and his friends, let alone to the entire world.

There's almost always reason and logic behind why food is produced the way it is, and this is a great example of that. Most people believe they are encouraging the production of happier, healthier plants and animals through choosing organic, when the opposite is closer to the truth.

Organic is a choice, and I am in no way saying it's a bad one, but it's also important to remember that non-organic is a good choice too. Having the option between the two is another example of the effort American Agriculturalists put forth to provide the consumer what they want.

The consumers perspective

I had to buy hamburger at the grocery store!? This was a new one for me.

Meat at my house comes straight from the butcher, wrapped in crisp, white paper and is stamped with either "TRH RANCH" or "HAMILTON" and "NOT FOR SALE" in bright red or blue ink.

I looked and looked and Albertsons had nothing wrapped like that.

There I was, standing in front of the beef display, eying my choices and noting differences. The first thing I noticed was a lot of price difference in hamburger depending on brand and fat content. Color variation was also notable, as was texture.

People are walking by, grabbing packages of meat as I continue to just stare at this new phenomenon in my life. I finally choose a cheaper variety (it is hamburger after all) of lean, I think 90% fat free, hamburger. I couldn't believe that if you wanted 93% or 95% lean hamburger the price more than doubled. I like the flavor fat adds anyway, and it's easy to drain any excess fat off during the cooking process.

I took my newly purchased meat home and made a casserole. While cooking I noticed that it smelled different than the hamburger I'm use to and cooked different too.

But it was good, and I was happy with my choice.

Throughout the entire process I had one nagging thought in my head, "where did this come from?"I can tell you the entire life story of the beef I typically eat. It was a little disconcerting to put my trust in someone I didn't know to provide me with my food.

I learned that as a consumer I am interested in knowing where my food is produced. I read everything I could on several different hamburger options before making a decision. I wanted to know about that product, as most consumers do.

My advice? Get to know the guy behind the meat counter. If I had been purchasing anything but hamburger (steak, roast...) I would have asked the meat person what their recommendations were. These people know what they're doing and can give you solid advice.

My first meat buying experience was positive, if a little overwhelming. It certainly gave me a new perspective.