It's not Just Joel Salatin anymore

[Billy]

Besides having a yoke that looks like an apricot, instead of a lemon, real eggs have a viscosity to them that factory produced eggs don't.

[Dan L]

Not just dog food! They were executed for putting the same stuff in human baby food formulas which killed several babies in China. The baby formulas was not sold in the US.

Have you purchased cod, catfish in stores? Product of China. Some have statements like "Carbon Monoxide added for flavor enhancement" on the bags????

[Billy]

In article , Dan L wrote:

China's economy is growing at a rate of 10%/year. This would probably come under the heading of deadly growing pain. I saw an interview with some of the workers of the factory where the wheat flour was laced with melamine and cyanuric acid (they are about 5 times more deadly in combination than alone), and the workers smiled and said, "Yeah, it looks like it has more protein." They obviously didn't have a clue about its effects on a living organism. People thought that they were buying wheat gluten (not laced wheat flour). There isn't one wheat gluten for animals and one for humans. This was one of the points that Amy Goodman was trying to make about the integrated global economy. No one knows what's in the food anymore, because it has be made from a mish-mash of ingredients from around the planet. In 2006, China ranked third behind India and Mexico in the number of food shipments refused by the FDA. These dame neo-nutcake-liberals don't want any government regulations because it impedes business. But as we can see with the egg recall, people are getting sick because business is on the honor system. The least we can do is give the FDA the authority to declare a recall when they see a health concern. The FDA also needs to be funded for what it has been mandated to do. The funding for health concerns should be taken away from the USDA, which markets farm products (conflict of interest), and be given to the FDA.

That is damn decent of them. Here in the good ol' U.S. of A., we do it without any kind notification.

The carbon monoxide binds with the hemoglobin to keep the meat looking fresh (red), no matter how old and funky it may be. This is done to some meat that is wrapped in plastic. It is also the reason that I won't buy meat that is wrapped in plastic, like Saturday's, barbecue, pork ribs.

How's "Eaarth" coming along?

[Dan L.]

I have sometimes wondered about wheat gluten. When I make my own homemade breads I do not have stomach upsets. However I almost always get heartburn and upset stomach from "added gluten" in store bought products. I have been tested negative for celiac or wheat allergies. I make my own foods and tend to stay away from packaged foods. Why I have my own chickens and a Jersey milk cow.

A very interesting site. You correct "Damn decent of them"! Other companies have been doing it for years!!!! We are living on a new world. I think I am going to get a boat a start fishing here in the great lakes. I do miss the taste of good sea food, not just lake food. Only thing in sea food markets are the bug foods, lobster, shrimp and oysters.

A very good book, currently on page thirty. He seemed to give up on changing the world. Shifted to self protection. Seems like I have been doing just that myself in the last few years. Just like the economy and global warming, what can one do except, do our part and protect ourselves.

We are living on a new world called "Eaarth". Learn to live with it.

[David Hare-Scott]

My food books say the yellow of the yolk is due to xanthophylls which come from plants, typically lucerne and corn. Not having chook books I do this backwards. Apparently corn feed is also responsible for the yellow skin and fat found in some "organic" meat birds.

Is the height and viscosity of the egg contents a result of diet and health of the chook or a sign of freshness, or both? The same ref (McGee 'On Food and Cooking') says freshness has much to do with it.

Come on chook people - give me the scoop before I build the chook house.

David

[Billy]

Xanthophylls come from plants to be sure, but typically lucerne and corn? That seems like more of a production setting. They should get the same thing just scratching on a meadow.

How much land do you have? Does the mobile chicken coop offer you any advantages? It seems that if you can build top soil à la Salatin, it would be worth your while, since it would be better at holding water.

All I know from eggs is that we get our eggs from a friend who turns her chickens out to pasture during the day. They get a supplement to replace calcium, and to my understanding that is all they get. The eggs are fresh, and as I said, the yolks are the color of apricots. My biggest surprise was when I had my blood work done (at least once a year) while I was eating the eggs, my cholesterol had dropped. The eggs were the only variable that came to mind.

Anyway, if you look at p.265 in Omnivore's Dilemma, you'll see a description of "real" eggs, and it is what I'm used to. If we can't get out friend's eggs, I stop eating eggs.

I don't know what it is with Garden Banter, either. I'm used to Brits in other groups, and they aren't nearly as, . . uh, rustic as the ones that we attract.

Later,

[FarmI]

Mmmmmm.. A Jersey. How much does she produce a day?

[FarmI]

Yep, corn does give yellow fat. dunno what gives the yoldk it's yellow colour in pellets though. do you want me to dig out my A'Asian Poultry mag with that article in it about yolk colour and give you a precis?

I'd say it's more freshness than anything. Duck eggs are even more so of both.

The same ref (McGee 'On Food

Before you even start that, pay strict attention to rats and how to control and exclude them. But really chooks are easy. Keep the foxes away and wild birds out of the night yard/feed area. Keep the pullets confined when you get them till they get used to their night house and yard and then let them out to range (Ours range in an orchard which is prolly about a quarter of an acre). I wouldn't fully free range if you want to have veg though or toehrwise you wont' have veg. They will do a good job of spreading horse plops.

[Dan L]

Nothing yet, impregnated the cow last week. She should produce more than I can drink. Will learn to make my own cheese products with the extra. The cheese making equipment is not cheap. I read, not done it yet, it takes 17 pounds of milk and one year to make one pound of parmesan cheese. Bessy plays like a dog, wants to be petted and runs and romps around. Sometimes I get a little nervous around her with her playfulness and hope I do not get hurt.

[FarmI]

I'm sure she will :-))

Will learn to make my own cheese products with the extra.

You can make soft cheese very easily and wouldn't need anything more than you'd have in your kitchen. Either make yoghurt or make junket using Hansen's junket tablets (although I seem to recall that USian for Junket is something else - curd perhaps???). Line a colander with an old soft tea towel, pour in the yoghurt or junket and tie up the towle and hang it up and leave it to drip overnight. if I ever have to let soemthign drip overnight then I upturn and old stool that I keep just for this purpose and hang whatever has to drip off a long handled wooden spoon place horizontally across the bottom of the stool.

I read, not done it yet, it

Yeah I think that'd be about right. I've read up on it to as it's something that's always interested me, but we don't have a dairy cow, I've only ever made soft cheese but they are delicious and easy to do.

Bessy plays like a dog, wants to be petted and runs and romps

Yeah. I'd be a bit nervous too. If she ever does start throwing her weight around and pushing you, get rid of her instantly and replacce her.

[David Hare-Scott]

How was it for you? At least she wouldn't want to share your cigarette afterwards.

She should produce more

I have the same worry when Mootilda bangs her face into the feed bucket I am holding. Cows seem very rough compared to horses. I am pretty sure she won't deliberately hurt me but the horns come close.

David

[songbird]

sterilized buckets, cheese-cloth and a culture of some kind. none of these are majorly expensive. some heat source during the cooler months if your place of production is not insulated well... the most expensive part is the time it takes to finish or age and that means storage space. the people who use caves have it right. mmm!

uhoh,

you gotta show her who's boss. physics, otherwise, will not be your friend, in this equation.

songbird

[songbird]

right, anyone talking about grassland production in the eastern seaboard of the USA being equivalent to what happens on the prairies is full of it. the time scale difference isn't minor and probably heavily depends upon the average annual rainfall.

the soil of the prairies was probably produced over the period of time after the last ice-age. it isn't that thick. if it could accumulate at a rate of an inch a year it would be much deeper...

ok, so let's return to the eastern seaboard and wonder why the topsoil in unmolested places isn't deeper? if it can be so productive why isn't it? because it is woodland and not grassland and unmanaged woodlands cycle carbon but do not sequester once it's reached maturity. very little is sequestered and that would be because of fires that char and thus turn the carbon into a form not easily consumed...

if trees and forests were so good for carbon gathering and keeping the soils of the Amazon would be deep and fertile, but they are not unless you find the places that were altered by the natives in prehistorical times.

so this says that reforestation is barking up the wrong tree when it comes to CO2 sequestration and rebuilding topsoil. (but i won't argue that it's bad for species preservation and diversity because that's needed too in many places -- so there has to be the tradeoff there).

songbird

[Billy]

Having another bi-polar day? I just loves the way you flog that strawman.

If you take the time to read the quote, you will notice that it says, "similar enough". That takes us from "equals" to "approximates" which, a sane person would agree, don't mean the same thing.

Time scale for what?

Best guess is 500 years/inch to produce prairie topsoil which was approximately 10" thick when Europeans showed up..

Actually, it takes a pine forest, roughly, 50 years to develop 1/16" of topsoil.

The sequestered CO2 in eastern forests is charcoal?

And don't forget the warm weather, and heavy rains that wash the quickly decomposing organics out of the laterite soils, unless you find the places that were altered by the indigenous prior to 1492.

Ah . . . hmmmm? Who said anything about reforestation? Not that it's a bad idea, and we do need to stop cutting them down. You silly goose, the proposition was returning the farm soil to permanent ground cover, like you might use to graze cattle on, and then run out some hypothetical mobile chicken coops (hypothetical chickens included) to do clean up duty on the cow flops from the hypothetical cattle.

So we got our farmers switching from grain crops to meat production. This in turn leads to:

1) cessation of the use of chemical fertilizers, which encourage some bacteria to devour the organic material in the soil (topsoil) 2) stops the release of NO2 from the fertilizer, which is a greenhouse gas. 3) stops the pollution of ground and run off water, thus improving the quality of drinking water, and cutting off the cause of ocean dead zones. 4) At the very least, what remaining topsoil would be protected by the permanent ground cover, and the is the expectation that we may add to it. 5) Additional topsoil (because there is more of it, and it is made from organic material) would effectively sequester CO2 to some extent. Again the question is where to put the decimal point, not "if one is needed". Peter Bane (google the name) puts the sequestration potential at being equivalent to the US production of CO2. 6) Increased topsoil leads to increased absorption of rain fall, recharging aquifers, and reducing chances of flooding. 7) Increased meat production on grassland instead of in CAFOs, means that 70% of antibiotics in this country won't go into meat animals, thereby creating antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. 8) Less grain will be needed to divert into CAFOs 9) Fewer CAFOs means fewer stinking lagoons of animal excrement, that won't be dumped into public water ways, or find its way into ground water. 10) Gives us a good source of complete proteins (beef and chickens), for healthy, growing kids.

So to summarize; permanent ground cover on existing farms, which is used to raise beef, more or less along the lines of Joel Salatin's paradigm, results in clean food, clean air, clean water, and just might save the world.

Other than the above points, I think you made a very cogent response, where you had your facts straight ;O)

[Dan L]

Soft cheeses are low cost and can be made in short time, from what i read. Hard cheeses are not, price a cheese press? Might modify a fridge for storage.

Physics is my friend along with his sidekick calculus.

[Dan L]

No smoker here, however the vet was up to his armpit and cost me $80 :)

HORNS!!!!!! Bessy was dehorned from day one! The holes filled in within a week. The feed buckets are next to the summer shelter. She does not see me put feed in the bucket. If she sees me she runs at full speed to me. She has a two acre pasture to play in. I will create another two acre pasture by next spring next to it. Same feeling here, if I get hurt it was not intentional. I do not want her to be afraid when it comes time for milking. She has a good friend, a chocolate labrador that comes over and plays and romp together.

Currently she is milking me for money like there is tomorrow. Which worries me a little. I call this the infrastructure cost that should last a long time. One major cost is concerning me. I would love to get a mini hay bailer, but they are extremely expensive. Right now my neighbor bails hay for me.

[Doug Freyburger]

There are two separate time spans here. One is the 13,000 years of prarie since the last ice age. One is 5000 years to build 10 inches of top soil.

Either the process eventually maxed out at 10 inches of top soil or something very dramatic happened 5000 years ago to scour the top soil to very thin. Let's check back in meteorology - Nope, nothing that impressive that long ago. Conclusion, once the top soil reached 10 inches it maxed out and no longer grew.

So the article is about a guy who can grow an inch a year. Excellent. Let's see how deep it is when it maxes out. Even better let's purchase the stuff by the truckload and move it elsewhere so it never does max out.

[Billy]

Wow, talk about service. You both got . . .ummm . . ah . oh, never mind.

[Billy]

I fear that you are using a linear rate of growth instead of a geometric rate of growth. My reading of the situation is that it maxed out at an inch every 500 years, but started at a much slower pace.

Your inability to to find a causation doesn't exclude a causation.

GUY!!? Google Polyface Farms and/or Joel Salatin.

You want topsoil? Say no more.

Topsoil depth varies from place to place. In the Nile River valley, built by eons of flooding and deposits of sediment, it is tens of feet thick.

[David Hare-Scott]

Did you ever read the books or see the TV series "All creatures great and small"? It's about country vets in the UK and quite delighful. In it the chief vet declares (truthfully) "there is much good information to be had up a cow's arse". This was on prime-time TV about 30 years ago, I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

Many people find it cost effective to pay a contractor to cut and bail hay instead of owning the machinery.

David