Pastures learn. If you change the way you use them, they modify their plant mixture to compensate. What was planted there at the beginning matters less over time. If your tall grazing system favors red clover and birdsfoot trefoil it doesn’t matter whether you started with lucerne or white clover, you’ll end up in theContinue reading "How pastures learn"

Where there are hay bales, you will find kids. Minty is a little shorter and younger and has more of a challenge climbing up. Now if only we could get a dry spell I could cut some more.

Paddock Colorado has annual ryegrass and crimson clover seeded together. The crimson clover adds in nitrogen which boosts the growth of the ryegrass. The mixture is healthier and tastier for the cows than the ryegrass alone. And so on. But the truth is I seeded crimson clover to get these lovely deep red flowers. Don’tContinue reading "Deep logic in seed selection"

It’s an ‘I’ year for cows in France. All cows get a name when you register them and it must begin with an ‘I’. First calf of the year is Infinity and Beyoncé. Also out there somewhere are: Icky Martin Izzle Inglewood Indigo Girl IUnknown Internaute Itsy Bitsy Ipanema IHOP Iceburger Ixnay Isengard You tellContinue reading "Infinity and Beyoncé"

Here is a list of  the cuts that our butcher does for us. To buy a box of our beefy beef, see our How to buy beef page. If this post doesn’t answer your questions feel free to email me at [email protected] and I’ll see if I can help. The cuts are labelled in French.Continue reading "What are the English equivalents of French beef cuts?"

The last cow we sold gave us 222 kilos of beef. She was a 3yo heifer and having tasted the basses-côtes we’re very happy. When we pack and pick up our meat the butcher gives us a page with a lot of printed stickers showing how much of each cut the cow gave. Translations here.Continue reading "What cuts do you get from a French cow?"

Cows enjoying the sun’s warmth. They’re heavily pregnant. Horns are useful if you want to scratch your shoulder in moulting season. The view of the ‘compound’ from the vineyard at the back of the farm. We rarely see this view and it makes the set of farm buildings look huge. There are some branches toContinue reading "Warm for cats"

Twistie, looking pregnant. Anneli Faiers, local chef/blogger at Délicieux.com, tried some of our veal. Thanks Anneli, those recipes and photos look wonderful. Anything with Calvados in it must be good. UK farm companies moving in to Romania? “In the Telegraph story James Townshend compares the value of Romanian farmland (£2,365 a hectare) with that ofContinue reading "Links from around the web and a photo of Twistie"

Every now and then we get visited by some wild boar (sanglier in French). They like to dig up the parts of the farm that have extra fertility, which means more worms and grubs.  This spot is where we gave a bale of hay out in Colorado and the herd didn’t eat much. A lotContinue reading "We are visited by Asterix food"

Jean took a video of our Salers cattle munching on the Colorado paddock ryegrass on January 9th 2013. The ryegrass was seeded last fall. In the glossy handouts that the Salers group send out they have a chart that shows Salers cows eat more bites per minute than other French breeds. I’ve never done dailyContinue reading "Cows, grass, Action!"