January Newsletter

Youngblood Grassfed Farm Newsletter
January 2011

Farm News
One reason I love living in southwest Arkansas is the weather.  I love the fact we can get 4 inches of snow to play and romp in then just as you begin to tire of it, it goes away.  Today we only have traces of the snowfall received Sunday.  Along with bitterly cold nights made for a rather long week.  Today is sunny and warming, so our corner of the world is well.  We hope yours is as well.
 
We will make a trip to the processor on Tuesday.  We had to reschedule from last week because of the cold.  Andy was worried the pigs would get frostbite or worse.  It was 11 degrees the morning scheduled for delivery.  We will be stocking back up on sausage, bacon, ham and especially the Italian sausage.  We have had some requests for more lunch meats as well.  We are looking into this and hope to be able to offer another quality product soon.  Time will tell as it always does.
 
We are excited to be taking our products into a new online market in Russellville.  It is one of the Locally Grown online market sites.  We are truly appreciative of Jeff and Sarah Croswell who are working hard to make it a success.  Equally thankful for all the volunteers and market managers at Little Rock Locally Grown, Spa City and Village Community Market.  We are working on more store front locations and restaurants for our products, too.  We need to increase our herd sizes more than anything.  We want to be very diligent to have the right genetics to provide superior meat products and think we are now on the right track.  We are beginning the process to incorporate the Devon breed into our beef cattle herd.  We have "on loan" a Berkshire gilt we are breeding to our Large Black boar in hopes of bringing some berkshire pork to the farm.  We bought 3 grass jersey milk cows, too.
 
In addition to making deliveries toLittle Rock, Hot Springs, Hot Springs Village and Russellville weekly, I also make deliveries closer to home until the market season opens:
 
 Texarkana:  January 17th, February 21st.
 Mena:  Wednesday, February, 16th
 
If you do not see your town listed, give me a call or send me an email about it!

News
Food and Energy
Recipe and Foodie Quiz
Food and Energy
 
Spending it Wisely
We receive publications of all kinds.  Many of them are geared towards industrial farming from our days before we knew better!  One such magazine we get is The Furrow.  I generally file these under the coffee grounds in the trash can, but stopped to read one article that did prove interesting.  Well, at least in the fact of the information it provided that does nothing but to support sustainable farming practices.  The article focused on our food system and how much energy it costs to grow, process, transport and prepare our food.  Agriculture is a big user.  One staggering fact is that nearly 80% of the energy needed to put food on the table is consumed by other parts of the food sector AFTER a product has left the farm.  Another upsetting fact is that studies show it takes seven to 10 times more energy to produce, process, package, transport, refrigerate, and prepare a food item than the energy that the food itself contains! These studies show that processing a kiogram (2.2 lbs) of chocolate or coffee requires the energy equal to a little more than half a U.S. gallon of gasoline.  Coffee and chocolate definately have a place in this house.  We can consume less by just getting rid of one of these.  Poor Andy, looks like he'll have to do without coffee! 

A breakdown of the total energy spent: 31.7% on household storage and preparation, 6.6% on commercial food service, 3.7% on food retail, 6.6% on packaging material, 16.4% on the processing industry, 13.6% on transportation, 21.4 % on agricultural production.

Notice the largest energy spenders are the consumers and farmers.  Typical consumers and typical farmers.  Let's aspire to more.  We have an opportunity here.  Farmers first.  We have incorporated the use of mob grazing.  It has increased our forage yield, cattle numbers and soil organic matter.  Not at an alarming rate, but we are going in the right direction.  We do not use chemical fertilizers (which use a lot of energy for production, not to mention what it does to the living organisms in the soil that help clean our air and fuel our animals.) We have areas we can improve too.  We need to educate and create a more local consumer group than we have now.  That will come when other farmers adopt these practices, produce clean foods and sell them locally to their friends.  Consumers can work at preparing more whole foods instead of processed, packaged, prepared foods.  Start with just one night a week in which you cook something that still resembles what it originally looked like.  Keep it as close to the dirt or hoof as possible!  Remember, if your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it!  It all starts with one.  One person doing one more right thing.  Let's break out of typical.  Your health, your community's economic health, and presumably our earth's health will improve!

Southern Style Pulled Pork
Ingredients:
1 pork shoulder or butt roast 3-4 pounds, preferably from a pastured hog
1 Tbsp coconut oil
2 onions, finely chopped
l6 cloves garlic
1 T. chili powder
1 tsp. black peppercorns
1 cup tomato-based chili sauce
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp liquid smoke
1 package buns
Procedure:
Trim all excess fat from roast.
Heat oil over medium heat in skillet and saute onions. Add all other ingredients in the list (except the buns!). Stir to combine and bring to a boil.
Place pork in crock pot and pour sauce over pork. Cover and cook until pork is falling apart when pulled with a fork. This should be about 10 to 12 hours on low or about half that on high.
Place pork onto a cutting board and shred the meat with hands or forks. If fully done, it should come apart easily.
Re-combine the shredded meat with sauce and keep warm. Serve by spooning shredded pork and sauce over warm buns.
 
Thank you Grassfed Recipes!
Foodie Quiz

So many of you have enjoyed our foodie quiz, let's do another one!  This is a food we ate last night, eeewwww!  First correct answer, either on facebook or email (I'll go by the time stamp) will get a Beef tip/stew and Ground Beef.

Ingredients:
corn (specially ground corn treated with lime), water, calcium propionate and carbosymethyl cellulose, monocalcium phosphate, potassium sorbate, fumaric acid.

Sounds yummy, huh??

Enjoy the sunshine,

Tracy Youngblood
Youngblood Grassfed Farm, LLC