What Goes Around…

You see, Gene is an icon in Iowa agriculture.  He has accomplished things in his lifetime that most of us can only dream about.  Driving to his Carroll County farm for the first time, I was amazed to find a 1200 acre oasis of grass, hay, and trees in the heart of Iowa’s corn and bean country.  He along with his son and daughter, David and Helen,  have set the standard for environmentally sustainable agriculture practices while building one of the most successful Hereford breeding stock businesses in the country.

I once commented to Gene “I’ll bet you have seen a lot of changes in this industry over the years”.  Indeed he had, and he told me some details of his journey.

In the 50′s he had a request to send several bulls to South Africa.  He loaded them on a train where they were railed to New Orleans, put on a ship and sailed to South Africa.

In the 70′s the Soviet Union wanted several hundred of his heifers.  He put them on pot belly cattle trucks, trucked to Chicago where they were put on 747′s and flown to Russia.

Since the 90′s he has been shipping several thousand units of semen annually around the world from his Iowa farm via UPS.

And, in the 2000′s he hauled three heifers to an aging bachelor farmer, Olin Hamman,  just south of Corning, Iowa.  Because that is what an icon does!

Olin was the person who called me looking to rent a Wiese bull.  That year I delivered my bull to Olin in late October.

Olin lives alone on the same farm and in the same house where he grew up.  It is a rough farm.  Like Olin, small patches of row crop live between rolling hills of hay and pasture.  His house is modest but neat with a small barn behind.  This is where he asked me to unload the bull.  As I backed my trailer up to the gate, I could see in my side-view mirror the white faces of three curious heifers poking their heads around the side of Olin’s barn.

” I don’t know what I would have done without these girls around here this year” Olin told me as if we had been friends from childhood.  ” You see my dog, Murphy, died last New Year’s Eve and it has been pretty lonely around here since then.  These girls have given me reason to get out in the morning… how much do I owe you?” Olin said, quickly changing the subject.

Since Olin fed the bull all winter and his neighbors (Fred and Beth Berggren) returned the bull the next spring, no money changed hands.  When Olin called last fall to again make arrangements for the bull, I learned of the crippling health issues that he had been struggling with the past year.  “The new calves did just fine, but, I’m not gettin’ around so well”.

…Comes Around

Several months had passed when Kenny Hamman, Olin’s nephew, called to say that Olin was taken to a nursing home in Red Oak and could Fred and Beth bring the bull back?  Upon learning that the three heifers also needed to go, we settled upon a price and the “girls” were put on Fred and Beth’s trailer with the bull.

Lottie, Grace, and Cinderella at Timber Ridge

Last week, Beth backed the trailer up to my barn gate.  When Fred stepped around to the rear to let the girls out, he said, “We’ve gotten kinda attached to these girls since chore’in for Olin.  Now that first one is Grace, the little one is Cinderella, and Lottie is the big one.”

In the perfect world, Olin will recover, buy back the “girls”, and Fred and Beth will pick up all four next fall.  But until then, these girls will give me “reason to get out in the morning”… and for that, Olin, I’ll owe you.  Besides, I think that is what Gene would call sustainable agriculture.

The Journey

I’ve heard that gamblers can request to be put on a list that would bar them from entering a casino.  If there was such a list for Farm Show Magazine, I would put myself on it.  This candy store of on-farm inventions has often led me down the path of “wishful thinking” when I should have been sticking to my daily ”task at hand”.

But when I read an article  in the magazine about a pig farmer in NE Iowa by the name of Carl Blake, I began my journey to an event (which I’ll describe in a bit) that awakened me to the power of creative marketing.

Carl raises a rare breed of pig called Swabian Hall.  The meat from his pigs recently won a prestigious culinary award and is rapidly gaining national attention. When I read the article on Carl’s pigs, I began to ponder linking up with Carl to help with an idea.

My idea builds on the knowledge that pigs are much more efficient at retaining omega-3s in their tissue than cattle. If I could include flax-fed pork in our products, they would contain higher omega-3s, and our flax-fed beef would provide high levels ruminic and vaccenic acids (CLA’s).  If I could put these two ingredients together, we’d have a flax-fed beef/pork “miracle” snack stick product.

With my mission of creating a new product in mind, I  contacted Carl and thought “this could be a marriage made only in Iowa!” (or is this heaven?).

Carl and I agreed to meet at a Des Moines event a couple of Saturdays ago where Carl was to roast one of his amazing hogs.  When a 9″ snow storm halted Carl in his tracks, he asked if I would sub my beef for his pork at the event.  I agreed and was treated to one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

The Event

When local tomato growing phenom, Jennie Smith , decided to go to grad school in New Zealand, she asked a few of her foodie friends (around 150) to help her get there.

Undoubtedly the most charismatic person I have ever met, Jennie managed to skillfully pull-off this unique fundraiser that included an auction of donated gifts, three local restaurants serving gourmet dishes, two wineries handing out samples, music by Dustin Smith, and one star-struck cattle farmer (me) serving smoked rib-eye.  The event was held in a really cool facility owned by Kirk Blunk Architecture in East Village.

Jennie’s Seed the Farm event was not only inspiring but marketing genius.  The lesson of the evening for me was that in a successful event, there is always more than one beneficiary.   From networking to socializing to the joy of helping out a friend, Jennie made sure that we were all rewarded by the experience.   Just watching Jennie “hold court” during the live auction was worth the price of admission!  I left the event wondering if I had done enough for the “cause”.

The Rub

The take-away is that I  will never again look at marketing a product,  an event, or myself quite the same.  Hopefully some of the “Jennie Effect” will rub off on Timber Ridge as we launch our new beef/pork miracle stick.  As Carl would say, “stay tuned, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

Our locally raised no hormone beef product with it’s  low fat, low calorie count,  high omega-3, and  high CLA’s   can only be enjoyed, it seems,  by the elite few who can afford our $1.50/stick prices.  Often times this leaves out those who need nutritious locally grown products the most.   Regrettably, the financially strapped and under nourished populations must too often survive on poor quality cheap calories.

One advantage that the our local farmer’s market provides  is the face-to-face contact we enjoy with our customers.  Occasionally, those face-to-face encounters can even help us solve far-reaching problems like feeding the hungry.   Seriously, here’s how it happened with us.

Two years ago we met a good-natured group of young ladies at the Valley Junction Farmer’s Market.  The group of 5 were recent graduates of Central College in Pella, IA.  After graduation, fate brought them together once again as they all landed jobs in Des Moines.  The Thursday evening  farmers market was “girls night out”.  They were high energy, hilarious, and loved beef sticks!

This past summer,  one of the group, Heather Gragg, visited our booth at the Downtown Des Moines Farmer’s Market.  Catching up on the time that had passed since our last meeting, we learned that Heather had put her limitless energy to good purpose by joining the Vista level of AmeriCorps.  Her current assignment is with the  Central Iowa Homeless Shelter where she works in a Veterans Outreach program.  The very people who need but probably can’t afford our products.

Together, we crafted a plan!  Earlier that summer we had changed the packaging of our beef sticks.  We still had some old packaging product left and it was difficult for us to sell the old product along side of the new.

We weren’t sure what we were going to do with the remaining earlier packaged product until Heather mentioned what a great food item beef sticks would be for her homeless clients.  “Beef sticks are nutritious, high protein, don’t need refrigeration, and ready to eat.”   That’s all it took.  Heather checked with the Shelter staff and later that week emailed us instructions for making a donation.

Local markets provide local food producers with a remarkable  opportunity to connect with their customers face-to-face.  As we learned this summer, that connection can make a difference not only in our  world in the world.  Without our local farmer’s markets affording us with a face-to face opportunity, our beef sticks would have never found their way to the people who need them the most.  The big guys don’t know what they are missin’!

Field of Flax in Bloom

An article in YourCattle.com discusses the K-State study and the exciting implications of flax feeding for the cattle business.  Not only does feeding flax improve the level of Omega-3′s in the beef it also improves herd health.

“”That’s what sparked our interest,”( K-State’s) Drouillard said. “And, we found that the inflammation that normally occurs with BRD (bovine respiratory disease) was partially suppressed when we fed flaxseed.”

As a certified All-Natural, Never-Ever-Three (no hormones, no antibiotics, no feed additives) farm,  this is especially significant to us  because it reduces the need for antibiotic use.

More recently, studies conducted by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientists have added another layer of benefits to feeding flax.  As reported by Debbie Furber in AGCanada.com the naturally occurring digestive process of bovine convert flax into rumenic and vaccenic acid, the most common forms of CLA (conjugated linoleic acid).

The level of rumenic acid was three to four times higher and the level of vaccenic acid was seven to nine times higher in the beef from the flax-fed heifers compared to beef from the control group that received a conventional feedlot ration.

Rumenic acid is known for its anticancer properties while early indications are that vaccenic acid “may reduce  triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, and total cholesterol in the bloodstream.”

Our business  model of providing a healthy beef product from healthy cattle is reinforced by these studies.  We believe flax-fed beef  has a special place in today’s health conscious  diets.   Could flax fed beef play a role in your diet?

Recently,  I learned that China for the first time in recent history imported more corn than it exported… by over 1 million metric tons.  The projection is that China will require 15 to 20 times that amount of corn within the next 5 years due to the expanded diets of their population.  Currently, the Chinese population per capita consumes 1/10 of the beef and 1/10 of the chicken that we consume here in the US.  As the Chinese per capita consumption of beef and chicken get closer to that of Western countries, the exploding demand for agricultural products will put a severe strain on our food supplies, our food costs, and our political foreign relations.

As passionate as I am about my small farm, pasture raised cattle, locally grown foods, and farmer’s markets, I can’t help but think that we will ultimately require that sub-inch global positioning advantage used by my “factory farming” friends to meet growing world demand for food.  It appears that “feeding the world” has taken on new dimensions.  What used to be considered a humanitarian concern now also appears to have serious political, economic, and social implications.