VANBUREN’S ALL BEEF
e-NEWSLETTER
www.organicgrassfedbeef.com
May 1, 2007 - Vol. 1 - Issue 1

This is my first of hopefully many newsletters. I have two primary goals for starting this newsletter.
The first is to provide you with knowledge to help you become more informed about what kind of beef will improve your health and make you live longer (you’ll likely find out more than you may even want to know). The second is to keep you abreast of our cattle operation and our organic 100% grass-fed beef retail products.

I am excited to be a part of the unconventional farming and food revolution that is currently happening in the United States. We are living in an informational society and many young families (and older folks, too) are asking lots of questions about the wholesomeness of our food and the number of potential toxins in our environment. Recent studies have proven that most newborn babies already have many potential carcinogens in their bodies. They are asking why nearly one-third of the residents of the U.S. get some sort of cancer in their lifetime. Why are heart disease and diabetes so prevalent in our culture?

A good many folks like yourselves have taken a common sense approach to our FDA and EPA’s policies. They have listened to their “inner voice” which has said something must be wrong. Let us be forever thankful that the FDA and EPA exist, but our government’s policies have been and likely always will be primarily driven by the goal to achieve low food prices.

Conventional grain farmers, and conventional dairy and beef farmers have 1) learned to farm to maximize government subsidies (it’s called “farming the government”) and 2) continue to expand their operations to try to become more efficient because of low per unit return on their investments—grain sales, milk sales, and beef sales. These farmers have used every tool available to increase the volume of product and to cut the cost of production. There are a zillion different ways to save time and money in a dairy, grain, or beef operation by utilizing lots of chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, and inorganic fertilizers.

My family has participated in these activities and for many years just considered it as the “normal” way of making a living. Conventional farmers are salt of the earth people and are living their dream. I truly respect and admire every one of them. There is a great comradery among conventional farmers. As a group they tend to be very conservative and draw much comfort, satisfaction, and pride in living and working on their farm just like their family has for many generations before them. It is very difficult from a farmer’s personal perspective to step out of the mainstream conventional farming practices when the government’s agencies endorse the products that they use—herbicides, pesticides, growth stimulants, antibiotics, and inorganic fertilizers. After all, the government says they are safe and the use of these agents lowers their cost of production. It’s a no brainer and it is the only way that they can accept to survive in business when they are still selling many products for nearly the same prices that they received thirty years ago.

As a practicing veterinarian for thirty years I like to think of myself as a scientist first, but age and experience tend to simplify my ability to see the forest and not miss as many of the trees. Therefore, my conclusions about how to stay healthy have become very simplified. In its most raw form, quite simply, we are what we eat. Whether we eat meat or plants, it is the soil that mostly determines their wholesomeness and purity. We humans can muck up the soil in many ways and change its ability to grow nutrient rich and chemical free plants. My educational background includes lots of agronomy, advanced animal nutrition, and meat science classes in an agriculture curriculum to obtain my Animal Science bachelor’s degree. I’ve also had lots of practical experience formulating my own dairy and beef cattle rations and studying soil tests to determine how to keep optimum soil nutrient levels. In my veterinary curriculum I’ve studied both ruminant (cattle, sheep, and goats) and monogastric (pigs-believe it or not, nearly identical to humans) gastrointestinal systems.

In farm animal veterinary practice and on my own farms I have witnessed all of the good, the bad, and the ugly results that the quality of nutrition will determine. I’ve worked on the kill floor of a slaughter house and back in my early 20’s could bone out a beef front or rear end with the best of them. I spent two years in the Army Veterinary Corps with lots of training and experience in meat inspection and food quality control and all types of subsistence inspection.

These educational and real life experiences have given me a unique perspective on what it takes for a mammal to stay as nutritionally healthy as possible. This perspective is what drives me and gets my juices going to create as pure and as wholesome a product as I can. The other thing that’s pretty neat about being around this earth for a long time (I’m 57 years old and self sufficient and self employed) is that I don’t need to have this beef business from a financial standpoint. I have a very busy veterinary practice and enjoy my clinical work. I happen to derive a great deal of personal satisfaction from my cattle/farming activities. I am fortunate that I have identified my farm life and cattle business as being soul fulfilling and something that gives me that special inner peace that helps me keep my life in balance. Our cows all have names and personalities and it is tough for me to see my steers get loaded up on the day that they go to the slaughter house. I have rationalized it as part of the cycle of life and that their meat will help someone fight off the chances of getting cancer and help someone maintain better cardiovascular health than had we farmed non-organically and fed grain like most traditional farmers.

OLD FASHIONED BUSINESS PRACTICES

Other than utilizing the internet as our primary tool for the marketing of our beef, we are proud to be about as old fashioned a business as you are ever going to find. When I was young, I thought old fashioned was boring and non-progressive. Now, I think many of the old fashioned values and ways of doing things should never have been abandoned. VanBuren’s All beef is unique for many reasons. We aren’t interested in following the mainstream of American agriculture and never will be. We place soil conservation, humane animal husbandry, and the production of healthy, tasty 100% grass-fed certified organic meat above all else.

We aren’t interested in getting bigger, we’re only interested in getting better. We have twenty five mother cows who have twenty five calves and we have twenty five yearlings. Each year we find a few new things to improve the quality of our product which we will enumerate in future newsletters.

Grocery store beef (whether from conventional or one of the “healthy food” type store chains) could have had its origin outside of the United States or—if was born in the US—may have been moved around the country many times while still on the hoof. It could have been produced by a conglomerate group of unidentified farmers with the same label on the finished product. It might have been born in Maine and moved around the US to many different types of growing and finishing operations and ended up in California. It could have been butchered in one place and divided up in large primal cuts to wet age in plastic vacuum wraps for up to a

month and shipped to anywhere else in the US for final division into retail cuts. So, this same animal which had a nice tour of the US while still alive, could end up with these primal cuts being divided up in different grocery stores all around the country. Some of this beef could have had many different owners before you bought it from the display case at the grocery store. Also, big business has invaded the organic food world and has stretched the limits of the definition of “organic” livestock to suit its needs-we’ll talk about this in another newsletter.

HOME GROWN, HOME PRODUCED, HOME MARKETED

All of our beef comes from cows that calve here on our farm where we live. We have a closed herd for health reasons—meaning that we don’t bring in any outside animals who might be carrying diseases. We ear tag and tattoo all of our calves and give them names as well. We maintain meticulous production records and are continually evaluating our animals in an attempt to improve the genetics for grass production and meat quality. No grain is ever fed. Our cattle eat only grasses and legumes for their entire lives. Mary and I personally sample a ribeye from every carcass before we offer that carcasses’ beef for sale.

We have a local organically certified butcher who has been a long time farm family neighbor and are so reliable that we would trust them with all of the gold at Ft. Knox. We pick the beef up at this butcher shop ourselves and then it is stored in our freezers here at our farm. When you order our beef, the order is overseen by the same person who was

responsible for the well-being of the animal that produced this beef and the well-being of the soil which produced the forage which made this beef taste the way it does. If you have any problem with your shipment with quality control of the frozen state, vacuum wrapping, or the taste of the beef, this same person will make it right with you.
We like to think of it (thanks to the internet) like we are your source of safe and pure locally produced beef whether you live on Long Island, Minneapolis, or Atlanta.

SEASONAL BUTCHERING

Our tastiest beef comes from harvesting the animals at the peak of our best cool season grass production. In our locality this is June/July. It is important for the cattle to receive their finish (the last three months before slaughter) when the grass is most nutritious. Our next butcher date is June 27. Our carcasses will dry age for two weeks, after which all of the meat will be divided up into the respective cuts and frozen. We run out of beef every year, so your best success at obtaining the cuts you desire is to pre-order prior to butchering. We will be glad to hold what ever items that you request.