Author Archives: grasspunk

One tool that gets used a lot on the farm is the flail mower, or broyeur à axe horizontal. If I’m being honest it gets used too much. When a pasture is messy I can bunch the cows up and move them more often to achieve the same ends in a less dieselpunk way. Still,ContinueContinue reading “Coupling problems of the orange kind”

We cut up some more beef, a heifer with a carcass weight of 282.4kg. It was 25-26 months old at slaughter, which means it had plenty of time to store the flavor of our pastures. The long number in the label below is the cow’s ID, the same as is on its ear tag. NoteContinueContinue reading “Beef, glorious beef”

It is time for the second cut of hay. The lucerne planting here is old, but it comes out nice and pure in the second cutting. Now if I can just get two more days of sunshine to finish off the drying! The Renault is doing well and I haven’t yet driven it dry ofContinueContinue reading “Hay ya!”

The latest calf born on the farm is called Huggy Bear. There aren’t many photos of him because he’s hard to find. It isn’t just that he’s small and dozes a lot, it is because he naps away from the herd in an adjacent paddock and we just can’t find him. Neither can Old Girl,ContinueContinue reading “Huggy Bear likes to nap in peace”

The grass out in Sleepy Hollow paddock is better than other places on the farm. It grows early in Spring, it recovers faster than any other paddock and it has a good variety of species. Like this ryegrass. And this, uh, grass. This Timothy-like grass that could be Timothy but could be Foxtail. I needContinueContinue reading “The grass-soil transition”

One of my favorite farm books is Fertility Pastures by F. Newman Turner. Written in the 1950s, it follows on from Fertility Farming to dive much deeper into the grass side of the farm. He focused on animal health through healthy pastures. At one point in Fertility Pastures, Newman Turner grew thirty-five different plots ofContinueContinue reading “Newman Turner’s experiments with Chicory”

Here is another video from Super Butcher. This one is on an organic beef farm, part of a series they call, ‘From farm gate to your plate’. These videos are totally enjoyable for me with the big accents, the laid-back farmers and the host with all the energy. The video maker does a great jobContinueContinue reading “An Aussie beef farm”

Minty helped me bring in some oat hay bales. She earned a sunflower for her work. The herd is in Soccer Pitch eating lucerne.  Disco, our neighbors prize Blond bull showing off his neck muscles. He’s out in their fields during the day and they bring him in at night to supplement his feed toContinueContinue reading “Minty, Soccer Pitch, Disco”

There’s a chain of Australian butchers that have some interesting videos online. I’ve never been to one on my trips to Australia, but from the videos they seem like large stores, bigger than any butcher shop that I have ever seen. Here’s a video of their dry-aged rib on the bone steaks. There’s a lotContinueContinue reading “Dry Aged Rib on the Bone”

Part of my work is to learn what I can from other folks. There are a lot of good farmers to visit and a lot of interesting stuff written up online. In the last couple of weeks a few videos have showed up that are worth posting here and digging in to a little more.ContinueContinue reading “What is veal?”