We are excited to announce that we have two interns working with us this summer, Hannah Dubit and David Tilson.  Mind you, interns are not a new phenomenon on the farm, in fact, my grandfather and his friend Roger Mudd were some of the first interns back when Broadview was a dude ranch run by my Great-Grandad Tex Tilson.  Even Josh and I spent a summer working on the farm together a few years back.

Hannah Dubit

Hannah hails from right down the road and has been a frequent guest at our pond parties.  She is a rising senior at Mary Baldwin College and is interested in learning the business of farming and managing large livestock.  Hannah once had an egg business of her own and is experienced in animal husbandry.

David Tilson

David lives on the farm and is the son of Alan Tilson.  He has been working his whole life around the farm but this is the first time we are paying him.  David has been working mainly with the chickens before and after school.  Now that he can work full time over the summer we are looking to get him more involved with the cattle and pigs.

I was cruising eatwild.com this evening and came upon this cookbook. Haven’t read it yet but it certainly looks interesting. For most folks the most challenging aspect of switching to naturally raised products is learning how to cook meats with less fat. This cookbook seems to offer some direction on doing just that and so I’ve ordered a copy for the farm, stay tuned for the results.

One of our wedding gifts was The America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook. It is a fantastic cookbook because before each recipe they detail all the different preparation methods that were tested in order to come up with the final recipe. This past Christmas I cooked a fresh Broadview ham for my family and while it was delicious, there was definitely room for improvement in the preparation method. Last night I was reading through the America’s Test Kitchen section on fresh hams and they brilliantly detailed the exact brining, baking and carving techniques to achieve the perfect roasted fresh ham. Every detail of the cooking process and been tested and the findings outlined in a few pages followed by a recipe for the perfect roasted fresh ham. I couldn’t find a free version of the recipe on their website so I decided not to post it for fear of copyright infringement but if you would like to join me in serving a perfectly prepared ham a your next family gathering you can find the recipe either in the book – which I highly recommend – or here on their website with subscription.

For any of you that haven’t seen this fascinating series about chef Jamie Oliver and his effort to change the broken eating habits of America, I highly recommend it. It is truly sad to see the detrimental effects that a broken food culture can have on health, education and communities. Its a six episode series available to watch on Hulu. http://www.hulu.com/jamie-olivers-food-revolution

The most emailed article on the Wall Street Journal’s website today was How to get the best steak. This is a great article outlining the development of industrial beef and the associated loss of flavor. The solution as presented by the article is of course well raised grass fed beef. Fascinating and informative read.

I ran across two bad ideas in my travels on the internet this week.  The first is genetically modifying pigs to produce less sulfur in their excrement.  There are plenty of red flags around GMO’s but the real question  is why are we raising these animals in such a way that their waste is problem instead of a boon.  We are excited enough about our pig excrement that the location of the next pig paddock and subsequent fertilizer drop is carefully planned to spread the wealth. This effort shows backwards thinking on so many levels.

The second article is about McDonalds Opposing Cage-free Eggs.  The request was for 5% of McDonald’s eggs to come from cage free hens.  These birds are still raised in confinement and never see the light of day but they have slightly more space.  I think the Onion put it best when they quipped “Five percent would have been perfect, as I tend to get a guilty conscience with every 20th Egg McMuffin.”

President Fernandez tells Argentines they’ll have a better sex life if they eat more pork

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Argentine-president-Eat-pork-apf-13832280.html?x=0&.v=1

This article gives another great reason to eat Broadview Ranch woodland pork.

http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,62898783001_1955966,00.html

As if its being delicious and healthy wasn’t reason enough to eat grass fed beef, Time Magazine published this excellent article detailing the environmental benefits of pastured meat. The perversion of nature that is confined animal feed operations has made meat taboo among those with an environmental conscience. Thankfully, through diverse ecological pasture-based grazing systems like the one at Broadview Ranch, meat can be produced in a way that actually gives back to the land and creates a truly healthy product in the process.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1953692,00.html

I just read a really good article in the September edition of Prevention by science writer Susan Allport, titled The Vanishing Youth Nutrient. In that article she calls omega-3 fats “spring” fats because they come mostly from the leaves of plants and are the fats that animals (including humans) use to get ready of times of high activity usually associated with spring, like mating season and rearing young.   On the other hand she dubs the omega-6 fats which come primarily from the seeds of plant as “fall” fats.  These are the fats that animals use to store energy in preparation for winter, times of food shortage and hibernation.

Ms. Allport explains how the American diet has shifted from a proper balance of these two types of essential fats to a diet skewed in favor of omega-6s due our increasing dependance on corn and soybeans to feed both ourselves and the animals that produce our food.  She writes that we are eating a diet that is supposed to fatten us up for winter when weather is harsh and calories are scarce. But today food is never scarce for the average American.

She discovered in her resarch for her book The Queen of Fats, that leaves are the most metabolically active tissues in plants, and brains and eyes are the most metabolially active tissues in animals.  They are both full of omega-3 fats.  Animals preparing to go  into hibernation shift their diet in the fall to foods high in omega-6 seeds, while animals that migrate long distances and need lots of energy fill up with omega-3s for their long journey.  Her recomendations to boost omega-3s and decrease omega-6s include choosing grass fed pork, chiken and beef whenever you can.  Ms. Allport also recomends real free range eggs an excellent source of omega-3s.  It is worth the time to read the whole article.  I hope to add her book for our library soon.