To really market, you need the right processor

By Tom and Susan Wrchota, Omro, Wisconsin — If you want to sell a few head of grain-fed beef in sides and quarters, you shouldn’t have much trouble finding a processor who can do the job for you. But if you want to target a high-end niche market for grass-finished beef in an effort to produce the margins required to make a living from a small-scale enterprise, you need a processor who is up to the task.

In the nearly 15 years that we’ve been marketing grass-finished meat, our business has evolved to meet both customers’ needs, and ours. Staying small and simple wasn’t going to cut it if we wanted to make a full-time living selling grass-finished beef and other farm products, so we had to grow and become more complex. Continue reading “To really market, you need the right processor”

February 1, 2008April 18, 2020

It’s tough to beat $4.65 per hundredweight

Tim Pauli’s model offers small-farm hope for an uncertain future

Belleville, Wisconsin — For a while now I’ve had a theory that if we could turn the calendar back about six decades, and proceed from that point in agriculture on a path very different from the reality of what mainstream Americans chose, the world would be a better place.

And when I think these thoughts, Tim Pauli is usually part of the process. Continue reading “It’s tough to beat $4.65 per hundredweight”

January 1, 2008April 18, 2020

Our hope lies with the ‘one degree deflection’

By Jim Van Der Pol, Kerkhoven, Minnesota — Joel has challenged me to begin to think and write about a better and more satisfying life on our farms and in our rural communities. So this and several columns to follow will assume that we all pretty much know the problems, that we as farmers, graziers and Americans live every day in the midst of the damage and could benefit from encouragement to talk together about another direction in our lives and businesses.

This encouragement I will attempt to provide, but there is an important caveat. We live and farm in a powerful national and nationalizing economy that will not take kindly to any kind of real change, and has immense power to block change. Much of this power inheres in the wants, desires, and thoughts of our own minds, so that we tend to enable this powerful economic structure while it sucks the wealth out of our communities and the satisfaction from our lives. Continue reading “Our hope lies with the ‘one degree deflection’”

January 1, 2008April 18, 2020

Measuring, monitoring and managing

Charles Fletcher uses pasture probe to improve bottom line

Purdy, Missouri — Especially when you’re feeding the stuff, most of you closely monitor the bunker, silo, bin, mow, bag, baleage line or whatever else holds the stored feed. Probably you aren’t quite as intense in keeping track of your inventory of growing pasture. With any experience you just know what’s out there, and do fine without making things more complicated.

Charles Fletcher isn’t out to convince you that you’re wrong, but he’s sure that what he’s doing these days is right for him. Thousands of dollars in extra annual profit right. Continue reading “Measuring, monitoring and managing”

December 1, 2007April 18, 2020

Stop farming your ranch!

By Janet McNally, Hinckley, Minnesota — Seventeen years ago, Kelley O’Neil handed me a tattered magazine clipping from the April 1990 issue of Beef Today. Headlined “Stop Farming Your Ranch,” the article was festooned with handwritten comments, circled paragraphs, and underlined sentences. Kelley, a beef and sheep producer near Rushford, Minnesota, had long been a source of valuable ideas and philosophies.

I was definitely receptive to change in 1990. The lamb market was riding a roller coaster, ranging from $1.00/lb. to below 50 cents over a 10-year period. I had been pushing production continually higher, using all the latest practices promoted at the time. These usually entailed ever greater purchased inputs, such as more feed, higher-performing rations, antibiotics, and more labor. This was the era of “clip, dip and strip,” where we did everything possible to save every lamb and make it grow as fast as possible. Continue reading “Stop farming your ranch!”

November 1, 2007April 18, 2020

Advice from 10 years of no-grain dairy

Moores: it’s all about energy and keeping flesh on cows

Nichols, New York— Rob Moore, who has not fed grain to his milking cows for the past 10 years, has mixed feelings toward the subject.

Rob is happy with his choice, saying “this is the way I want to farm.” Over the years he learned how to keep his cows in good body condition while getting enough organic milk out of them to provide family living and make payments on two farm mortgages. Today that organic check is usually above $28/cwt., but a decade ago it was closer to $11. Rob and his wife, Pam, believe no-grain offers opportunities for others, and Rob has said so at grazing conferences and other venues. Continue reading “Advice from 10 years of no-grain dairy”