Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 18 April 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good morning and happy Tuesday from Air2Ground Farms! I’ll start today by welcoming a few new members to the blog family. We’re glad you can join us! I’ve written over a hundred posts over the past few months and I encourage you to check some of them out. Of note, I discussed why we are doing this, why we chose the name of our farm, and even a few rants regarding the BIG food industry. The weather is Spring perfection today. Cool morning almost 80 this afternoon with mostly sunny skies. The animals are all doing really well. This is the first morning in over a year and a half that we didn’t have pigs to feed. Our next batch of amazingly high quality genetics pure Berkshires are coming from a local producer, mentor, and friend. The group of 10 piglets are 7 weeks old and will be ready to join our farm in about a week. Things don’t feel quite right without pigs! The layer chicks in the coop and those in the brooder are all doing very well. The next batch of 9 are in the incubator, and when we candled them yesterday, all appear to be fertilized and growing. We will candle the guinea eggs tomorrow for our first check of any guinea eggs. Hopefully they are also fertile and growing. I culled a couple of beef chickens (prior blogs and YouTube video explain why we call them Beef Chickens) yesterday. They could not get over their prolapsed vent and were not growing properly. We are now at 75 on the pasture and all remaining look good. The bottom 2 pics are the beef chickens, only 4 weeks from processing. The next batch of beef chicks arrive in a week! The 3rd pic is the milk cows and calves in their new paddock this morning. The grass around the milk barn is getting thick enough that we gave them a smaller paddock which will force them to eat all of the stuff growing, not just the best tasting. Joel Salatin describes is as forcing them to eat from the salad bar, not just the ice cream. Speaking of ice cream, we made some homemade ice cream from our cream, milk, and eggs with vanilla and powdered Swerve (zero sugar sweetener made from a sugar alcohol which doesn’t cause an insulin / blood sugar response). It was amazing! We are going to make more today. The big news…drum roll…the flerd is formed! We gathered the cows from the pasture they had been in for a couple of months by calling them—“Come on cows! Come on cows!” After a bit of hesitation at the gate, they moved down the lane and into the pens without incident. We made a YouTube Short of the move. We calmly and almost silently ran all through the chute and vaccinated/boosted them. The bull was probably the calmest of the bunch, never even breathing hard. As each one left the chute into the paddock which already had the sheep and 4 guardian dogs, they were so eager to eat the fresh green grass, they largely ignored the sheep and dogs. The dogs were mildly interested in the cows and even laid near the chute to watch them emerging. By the time we finished with the smallest calves, it was as if the groups had always been together. The top two pics are the flerd to include the guardian dogs. It seems that the only hesitation or excitement was from the humans. Once yesterday evening, a heifer was walking toward Tank while he was lounging and she acted as if she was just going to walk right over him and he jumped up, snapped in her direction with a quick bark, and she decided she wouldn’t step on the dog after all. Satisfied, Tank went back to his lounging. The flerd is formed!
A few of you commented on the Sugar Addiction blog, which is awesome! I’ll add a bit more of my thoughts and a few more resources. In my version of the nutrition story, Ancel Keys is the villain. His 7 Countries Study resulted in the demonization of cholesterol and the rise of the low fat, high carbohydrate nutrition guidance still alive and well today. He took advantage of the high profile heart attack of President Eisenhower to grandstand his views that heart attacks are caused by cholesterol and saturated fat, cementing them into medical commonplace. Recent research contradicts Ancel’s theory, although unpopular in most medical circles, stating that the real reasons are quite different. Inflammation, caused largely by sugar, seed oils, and grain, causes tiny lesions in the arterial walls. Cholesterol, doing its job of acting as a bandage, coats the lesions. More inflammation—more lesions—more cholesterol bandaging the sores. Over and over. The result is the cholesterol build-up in the arteries we are all familiar with. The problem with Ancel’s theory is that it isn’t the consumption of cholesterol and saturated fat causing the build up, it’s actually the inflammatory foods causing lesions which then require cholesterol to try to bandage. Instead of demonizing cholesterol, which is an absolute requirement for continued life and healthy brain function, we should look to the actual root of the issue—the inflammatory foods. Remove them and it’s no longer necessary for cholesterol to bandage the arterial walls, it can be used in the brain to maintain proper function. We are all seeing the result of following Keys’ theory (represented as fact by the medical community). As a nation, we are more overweight, have MUCH more cases of diabetes, and mental demise in the forms of Alzheimer’s and dementia is prevalent among our older population. Weight gain and diabetes is a direct result of a high carbohydrate low fat diet. Mental decline is a result of the artificially low cholesterol levels we are required by the medical community to achieve. And we still have high numbers of cases of heart disease and heart failure--even with all of the cholesterol lowering drugs. It's a vicious circle with our declining health at the center.
Some more resources for you to peruse:
John Yudkin—physiologist and nutritionist—on the opposite side of the argument as Keys but not as charismatic—he wrote several books recommending a low-carbohydrate lifestyle, to include “Pure White and Deadly—How Sugar Is Killing Us and What We Can Do To Stop It.”
Robert Lustig—Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology University of California San Francisco—wrote multiple books to include “FAT Chance—Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease;” “Sugar has 56 Names—A Shopper’s Guide;” and “Metabolical—The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine”
Gary Taubes—Harvard grad—Journalist & Author—wrote “Good Calories, Bad Calories;” “Why We Get Fat;” “The Case Against Sugar;” and “The Case For Keto”
We made a couple of YouTube Shorts—one of the beef cows moving to the pens and one of us moving the beef chickens. Check them out, if you like them—hit the like button, and as always, if you aren’t—subscribe!
Cattle move— https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ceia5raCTQA
Chicken move— https://www.youtube.com/shorts/q0j9Pjwogv8
Local Farm Report for 17 April 2023:
Harvest:
32 Chicken eggs
12 Duck eggs
1 Goose egg
0 Guinea eggs
7 Gallons of milk—***A NEW WORLD RECORD***(at least our world!)
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
Well we will train them to go to and then run them through a panel system (like sweep). We did that for the first load last time but it wasn’t big enough for all the cows. We bought a few more panels to give us more room as well.
I recognized the Joe Salatin design of the tractor. I’ve seen it some on YouTube. I purchased a 9.5’x20’ chicken run (really a kennel with A-frame peak) that I covered with a tarp and made an axle for like $35 that I could just pick up the one end and set it down on the axle then tile it 20’ to new grass. Axle was rigid metal electrical conduit, 2 x…
Just watched the two videos. Well done on moving the cows. We attempted to load some the other day and went 1 of 3. Had to reschedule the processing date.
How wide are your Chicken tractors? How heavy are they on one end? Reason I ask is you might could create a make shift axle to move that run around. You just lift the tractor onto the axle and then move to where you want then take the axle of to use on the next tractor.