Virginia Wine-Fine Wine-My Wine
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We were having a talk the other day with some like-minded individuals about the growing commitment to local food. We were discussing the whole local/organic/sustainable thing. We know, we know, we know…”Blah, blah, blah.”
During the course of our conversation, an interesting point came up: “How come nobody ever talks about Virginia Wine?”
The immediate response was curious, but somewhat true: “Well, Virginia wines have traditionally not been very…well…good.”
If you go back 15 or 20 years, that statement may have been true. A few short decades ago, everyone and their mother was on some sort of California/Australia/Chile kick, and vineyards in Virginia were someplace that you stayed while you were exploring the scenic countryside. The fact that these vineyards actually made wine was somewhat of an afterthought. “You mean you actually take wine out of those barrels and drink it? Cool!”
We often talk of our pal Thomas Jefferson, and he was certainly a lover of good wines.
“I have lived temperately…I double the doctor’s recommendation of a glass and a half of wine each day and even treble it with a friend.”
We wonder what happy hour at Monticello brought. While Jefferson had very mixed success with his efforts at growing grapes for wine, he was not the first to give it a go in the New World. The Jamestown settlers asked every man to grow at least ten vines. That was over 400 years and several carafes ago.
It wasn’t until the late 1800’s that Virginia wines started getting some press. A Virginia red was named “best in show” at the 1873 World’s Fair. But just when things were looking good, we decided to get on the wagon and enacted Prohibition.
Virginia wines were slow to bounce back, but over the past couple of decades they have come back with a vengeance, and today our Commonwealth can boast of over 200 working vineyards and labels. We are proud to feature a couple of them here!
One of our labels comes to us from Pollack Vineyards. Pollack is in Greenwood, out by Afton Mountain, one of our favorite places in Virginia. It is a relatively new vineyard, but the owners have some history with California wines, so they’re not necessarily new to the business. We carry a couple of their tasty reds and sport a delightful Chardonnay. It’s nice, with some hints of apple and lime.
Barboursville is right down the road from Jefferson’s crib, and the Barbour family was known to have partied with Thomas. Their friendship was such that he offered up a design for their home on the property, one of only three private homes that he designed for private owners. Pretty cool drinking buddy.
The Barbour family shared some grape-growing tips with Jefferson, but it wasn’t until the Zonin family got the property in the 1970’s that wine making began in earnest. The mansion that Jefferson built is in ruins now, victim to an 1884 fire, but the home where the Barbours lived is now an inn, and you can taste some really great wines there. We carry a nice Pinot Grigio and a zippy Merlot. The Pinot is pretty mellow with some nice fruit flavors, and the Merlot balances its oak with some red berry.
Williamsburg Winery is in…well, Williamsburg. The End.
It’s actually a neat place. The current vineyard goes back to 1985, but the property, known as Wessex Hundred, has been rocking the vino since the early 1600’s. The name is a reference to old world tax descriptions: “This parcel can support one hundred families.”
Williamsburg has been winning some awards over the past few years, and has even tickled the palates of judges in London and Europe. Noted wine expert Kevin Zraly said that the folks by William & Mary are making “…some of the best wines in the world.” The Winery is a great place to visit, only about 45 minutes from here, and they have two nice restaurants on the property (but we still recommend that you eat here). We offer a smooth Chardonnay and a fruity Cabernet.
Lake Anna: Home of the McMansion. A mecca for jet-skis, repository for parked houseboats, and habitat of the three-headed Reactor Bass. Lake Anna is also home to a pretty kicking winery.
Bill and Ann Heidig were doing some business in France in 1981 when they noticed that the scenic vistas were not that different than the ones that they saw from their Spotsylvania farm. They figured that if the French could make tasty wines, why couldn’t they? So they came home, dug up some dirt, and planted several thousand grape vines. In keeping with the water-sports theme of the area, it was a “Go Big or Go Home” moment. It was all “Big” for them.
After some trial and error and some selling of grapes to other wineries, they got busy making their own label. Lake Anna Vineyard is now run by their sons, and they have a full-fledged winemaker (Brad McCarthy) on the staff. They have had some pretty big vintages over the last decade, and hope to get production up to 10,000 cases.
We carry the Lakeside White, which is a little on the sweet side, a surprising Cabernet with hints of mocha and hazelnut, and a few other labels. While you usually think “Styrofoam Cooler” and “Twist-Off” when you use “Lake Anna” and “beverage” in the same sentence, the wines from Lake Anna Vineyard are serious contenders, and deserve a nice goblet. Leave the straw by the campfire.
So there. Local isn’t just about the vegetables, the guy down the road making honey, or the lady in Mechanicsville whipping up lip balm. You don’t have to travel far from The Urban Farmhouse to find some exciting wines, made right here in Virginia. Being the helpful folks that we are, we brought some of our favorites here for you. Take a gander the next time you wander down the Old Cary Street.
Let’s Talk About Us: As in Richmond
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Organic. Sustainable. Fresh. Craft Beer. Local. Big Ag stinks.
There. Now we’ve said it. We don’t have to talk about food anymore this week. We’ve decided to talk about our town, instead.
The Brookings Institution ranked the world’s 200 largest metropolitan economies, and Richmond was #10 for the Least Dynamic Metros. The report, summarized in The Atlantic, cited cuts in government spending and the financial crisis. The worst on the list were, in order: Athens, Greece, Lisbon, Portugal, Dublin, Ireland, Seville, Spain, Sacramento, California, Madrid, Spain, Naples, Italy, Barcelona, Spain, Valencia, Spain, and us. Some bright points to the listing are that we are considered one of the 200 largest metropolitan economies and we’re not living in Spain.
We thought that we’d take some time and talk about all of the cool things that are going on in Richmond.
The River City rode pretty hard on the Picasso Exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. We were one of the few cities in North America to host the collection, and we beat out Washington and New York to show it. The VMFA followed that up with a Faberge Collection that added some loaned pieces to their current collection. The permanent collection at the Museum is the largest collection of Faberge Easter Eggs outside of Russia, and the exhibit last summer became the largest collection in North America. They’re currently featuring Secrets of the Tomb, which shows over 100 Egyptian artifacts from the British Museum.
We saw some real-life movie stars when Lincoln came to town. Daniel Day-Lewis, James Spader, Chris Cooper, and Steven Spielberg were all hitting the Cary Cobblestones. They weren’t the first movie to come through, and they shouldn’t be the last. Movie Maker Magazine said that Richmond is one of the 10 best cities to be an independent moviemaker. We’ve seen big Hollywood productions, but also documentaries on the Loving family, Hollywood Cemetery, and moped gangs (Satan Since 2003). The moped doc went all the way to Sundance! Who needs catering trucks?
In more news of art and art, next fall we’ll see the return of the Richmond Folk Festival. It started here when we hosted the National Folk Festival for three years. Then the National moved to Nashville and got all snooty. We see great international artists at The National venue, so we changed our festival to “Richmond” and kept going. For three days in October, thousands of people will come to town to hear dozens of acts at multiple venues. It has become an internationally recognized event.
Parking for the Folk Festival is always entertaining, so a good idea would be to ride your bike. That would probably be good practice for 2015, when we host the World Road Cycling Championships. Think of it as the Tour DuPont on steroids (without the Floyd Landis jokes). The Championships are going to bring a half million people and over $100 million to our area. It is the first time since 1986 that the United States has hosted the race, and we beat out Oman, Paris, Copenhagen, and other big-name sites for the privilege. Nine days of racing around town in several different categories. Now we just need some more Bike Lanes.
We’ll get some practice in hosting big sporting events this summer. We’ll be hosting the National Veterans Wheelchair Games at the end of June. In addition to hand-cycling road races and slalom, veterans from around the country will compete in sports like archery, basketball, weightlifting, and quad rugby (Murderball, anyone?). It’s kind of neat that over 500 athletes are coming to the home of the games. The first event was hosted here in 1981 by the Richmond VA Hospital.
Dominion Riverrock will be back this summer, with trail running, bouldering, biking, kayaking, and flying dogs. It brings outdoor enthusiasts from around the country for what has become the East Coast’s biggest outdoor lifestyle festival. Why do all of these outdoor sportsmen come to us? BECAUSE WE HAVE A RIVER!
Here in Richmond, we can literally say, A River Runs Through It. Don’t know that we’ll see Brad Pitt fly fishing any time soon, but the water is there. We are one of the few large cities in North America to be blessed with this sort of resource. The James has seen a return of Atlantic Sturgeon, a species that is endangered, and we’re a breeding ground. You can stand in front of The Urban Farmhouse and see Peregrine Falcons and Bald Eagles riding the hot air rising from the General Assembly. A few years ago a manatee was spotted in the water just below the city skyline. As you head west you’ll find prime canoe and fishing areas, just below Richmond is deepwater that allows passage all the way to the Chesapeake Bay, and it is the only place in the country where you can raft a class IV rapid within sight of skyscrapers. You can go from City Hall to Hollywood Rapids in about ten minutes.
That gives us some ideas for City Council…
We’ve got a lot of really cool things going on in our city. Sure, we need some work in the public transportation department. We may or may not have our heads screwed on straight when it comes to baseball. But we’re a city small enough that you can walk into a local shop or restaurant and know someone who works there. We’re big enough that you can see a great band, enjoy some refined art, or run into an international celebrity. We’ve got a great and growing food movement, and a committed community of small business owners who think big.
It seems that the bigger world out there is starting to notice. What took ya so long?
Been watching some Presidential debates lately and quite frankly they’re not very presidential. A couple of things stand out, though:
- Ron Paul stays remarkably fit.
- Mitt Romney must eat a lot of salmon to sustain his coiffure.
- Newt Gingrich must eat a lot of…well, everything.
The challenger is our incumbent, Barack Obama, and we hope that he is eating what the First Lady puts in front of him. Michelle Obama started her White House residency by putting a garden on the grounds, and it is there that the First Chef, Cristeta Comerford draws her inspiration. Comerford likes to base her dishes around seasonal items that she can source from the garden and from local vendors.
All of this politicking and food talk made us wonder about other Presidents and what graced their plates.
Eight of our President’s were from Virginia and their menus showed it. George Washington liked fresh fish from the Potomac. James Madison liked crabs and oysters finished with some of Dolly’s cakes. James Monroe liked fried chicken. John Tyler liked game birds like woodcock and duck.
One standout was our favorite, Thomas Jefferson. We talk often of his contribution to Virginia’s agriculture and he certainly maintained a robust farm, but his travels overseas seem to have made an impression. Jefferson liked to add accoutrements like Parmesan, figs, olives, and waffles. He discovered waffles in Holland and liked them so much that he brought a waffle iron back to Monticello. 
John Adams spent much of his career in France prior to becoming President. You can’t take the New Englander too far from the sea, though. He enjoyed codfish cakes, poached salmon, clam chowder, and oyster rolls.
Andrew Jackson grew up in Tennessee, which in his day was as far from civilization as you could get. A true soldier, he ate simply and simply drank. He offered a punch laced with sherry that one diner remarked of, “anyone who drank this, one cup would do it.”
Zachary Taylor spent a good amount of time in Louisiana, and brought some Creole to Washington with him. He would eat almost anything, but insisted that it be “properly cooked and well served.” We would assume with some 1850’s “BAM”.
Millard Fillmore liked a simple menu. He did, however, install the first cookstove in the White House. Must have been his version of the microwave. “I doth not care. Heat the victuals and serveth them.”
Abe Lincoln left his creativity to his oratory. Every day, the same black coat, the same ridiculous hat, and pretty much the same meals. Coffee and eggs for breakfast, biscuits and milk for lunch, and something with bacon for dinner. Seems that everything was good with bacon in Abe’s day, too.
James Garfield liked squirrel soup. He liked it so much that he gave orders for the active hunting of squirrels in the city of Washington. The White House physician was even engaged in the hunt. It was rumored to be good for an ill man’s appetite. We’ll never know if it worked for Garfield; he was felled by an assassin on July 2, 1881.
William McKinley chose as his only indulgence Hot Lobster Salad. He only asked that meals be plain, and in substantial quantities. He had nothing on Taft, though.
William Howard Taft was our most rotund chief executive. He had a corpulence of such a scale that he frequently became lodged in the Presidential bathtub. He once stopped for breakfast in Savannah, Georgia, where he ate broiled venison, grapefruit, broiled partridge, waffles, grilled partridge, rolls, hominy grits, and more venison. He also had a taste for salads, and apparently a lot of them. Perhaps he was swallowing the pressures of the office, along with a lot of…well, everything. Sorry, Newt. It’s not a new idea.
In 1913, skinny people took back the White House when Woodrow Wilson succeeded Taft. Wilson was the “bleh” President when it came to food. The White House physician was always on him about his weight, and conducted an extensive survey of the staff to see if there was anything that Woody forked into with gusto. The reports were not promising. The only dish that he ever specifically asked for was for breakfast: two raw eggs in grape juice. Bleh.
Franklin Roosevelt has been called our greatest President. Want to know why we love him? He served hot dogs to the King and Queen of England.
John F. Kennedy’s term in office is remembered for many things both proud and tragic, but also the style and grace of his wife. Jackie brought many sophisticated dishes with her Chanel outfits, but she could never get JFK off of soup. He loved to dine well, but had to have soup. She said that he was a “soup-sandwich-fruit man, just always soup.” Maybe he could have used that on Castro: “No soup for you, Fidel!”
Nixon was remarkable for introducing China to capitalism, Checkers the dog to America, and “-gate” to our national lexicon. He also introduced catsup to cottage cheese. We understand that they got along famously.
George H.W. Bush is food-famous, not for what he ate, but for what he refused to. “I do not like broccoli and I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m the President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.” The office does come with some perks. George #41 apparently didn’t like Japanese food either. In 1992 he purged some makimono on the Japanese Prime Minister.
His son was a little more adventurous, enjoying Tex-Mex and meats. He did not, however, like pretzels. George W. Bush showed up at a press briefing with bruises on his face and a cut lip. The offending pretzel was convicted of rendering him unconscious during a football game that Dubya was watching on t.v. It was last seen in U.S. custody wearing an orange jumper. Rumors of its rendition to Croatia could not be substantiated. Choke-inducing pretzels were placed on a no-eat list at the residence for the rest of his term.
So maybe you pick your candidate because they promise jobs. Perhaps you’re anxious to mine the Moon. Some go to the polls to protect our borders or Occupy the Federal Reserve. Some are concerned about what our elected officials are stuffing in their wallets.
As we get closer to the actual election maybe we should look at what they’re stuffing in their cakehole?
The Urban Farmhouse 451
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What is your favorite pastime when you come to The Urban Farmhouse?
With the weather that we’ve been having, many like to sit by the windows and people-watch. Some come to enjoy a coffee or frosty Starr Hill with a snack. Many grab a glass of Yellow+Blue while they soak in some artwork. We often have folks who like a little music (with real musicians) while they tuck into a Fruits of the Farm salad.
More often than not, we see a sea of glowing faces when we look over the counter at our beloved clientele. Laptops, tablets, and a bushel of smartphones light the landscape like a roost of Chinese lanterns. Unlike that other place (“St#*@ucks”), we’ve yet to see a desktop, but it could happen. 
The other day, we saw something truly miraculous. A faithful Urban Farmhouse patron was…ready for this?
We actually saw someone reading a book.
This is not anecdotal evidence, like, “My sister’s friend Mary said that her boyfriend heard that someone saw…” This was the real deal. Not that this should strike us as so unusual, but we started to tally things up.
We frequently take a run up Main Street and pass by Black Swan Books. If you’ve not been, it’s a neat place with a great old-world vibe and has an eclectic selection. Good books, both rare and used, and nary a Justin Bieber tell-all in the stacks. Rarely crowded, though; just the owner, a large, friendly dog, and us. We passed it the other day on our way to Barnes & Noble (don’t judge; a new release of the collected letters of Hunter S. Thompson). It was an early weekday evening, and we walked through the massive doors of the bookstore-killer, anxious to find our tome and steal away unnoticed.
As we frantically searched for the screed of Gonzo, we noticed that the racks were pretty quiet. Most of the customers of said big-box were planted across the games and magazines at the ubiquitous St#*@ucks. They, too, had the unearthly glow of electronic devices. Easily 25 people crowded around pea-sized tables drinking expensive double lattes, and none of them had a physical book in hand. Not a magazine, newspaper, periodical, or fanzine to be found.
There is some data to back up this shift in reading. Amazon has become one of the biggest distributors of reading material on the planet. And in what format do they get this valuable resource out the ravenous public? EBooks. On an eReader. Barnes & Noble has a dog in this fight, also. They’ve bet so much on their Nook reader that they’re willing to sell their publishing arm to fund it. Barnes & Noble has also just entered into a “My reader can beat up your reader” contest with Amazon. As they spend more and more on electronic content, they announced that they would not offer, support, or sell any titles that were published in partnership with Amazon. You see; Amazon also has a publishing arm.
When we were in college, a serious addiction to music kept us at the local record shop to buy the latest new releases. Then it was the rush home, the quickly slammed door, the lowering of the lights as we peeled back the shrink-wrap. Our breath quickened as we slipped the disc from the sleeve, and we reveled in the sweet smell of vinyl. We eventually entered a 12-step program and got down to a few records per month. But still, we craved the ritual.
The same is true of our love of books. We smiled at a brilliant cover, and we trembled at the first rush of the table of contents. A need for a quick fix found us scanning the back cover. But nothing could beat the high of getting lost in the pages of prose. The window would open, coffee would be drunk, pages would be carefully folded back, and we would bask in the warm glow of literature.
Somehow that experience loses something in the translation to a tablet. If you doubt this, try propping up your futon with an iPad.
We still have most of our college collection, gathering dust in our Billy Bookcase. We bought the Billy in a freshman frenzy at IKEA. It took mom forever to tie it to the roof of the Taurus. We occasionally crack an Updike or whisk open an Irving for old time’s sake.
Did we mention that IKEA is changing the design of the iconic holder of folios? They are making it deeper and giving it doors. According to IKEA public relations manager Marty Marston, “It really was to accommodate those people who wanted to use Billy as a display case. We really see books as decorative.”
Oh, Billy, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo…………..
Hey, That’s Not Fair
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In September of 2001, the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed.
Pretty heady stuff, isn’t it?
The Harkin-Engel is also known as the Cocoa Protocol, and it was enacted to protect the rights of children working in the cocoa fields of Africa and Central America.
The United States will spend about $14 billion on chocolate this year. All of this chocolate is produced overseas, and it’s about 7 billion pounds of the sweet stuff. We’re going to consume about 4 billion pounds of that, or a little over half.
The problem is that most of this cocoa is grown in West Africa, in countries like Ivory Coast. Ivory Coast, like much of Africa, is not known as a hotbed of human rights and is more often than not embroiled in civil war. Ivory Coast is also the world’s largest producer of cocoa.
The problem is that it takes a pretty heavy labor force to get to the little cocoas, and with farmers only getting about 5 cents of every dollar spent on it, that labor needs to be cheap. That’s where the children come in.
The cheapest and hardest working laborers in choco-land are kids. According to UNICEF, about 200,000 are working in Ivory Coast alone. Most of them are slaves, and many were smuggled from Mali and Burkina Faso to supplement the labor force. They get caught in a Catch-22 whereby they aren’t really paid for their work, so they can’t improve their lives, which they only have because they are harvesting cocoa. It is estimated that up to 40% of the cocoa sold in the world market is harvested this way.
Harkin-Engel was supposed to prevent this. They got plenty of grief from the chocolate industry, which was keen to police themselves. Since this cheap labor kept cocoa prices low, they were probably a bad choice to keep an eye on things (the ultimate ‘fox guards henhouse’ scenario). The protocol reached an agreement with the chocolate industry in 2001. This bill gave them four years to certify that their sweets were produced by free men, and not kidnapped children.
Seems easy enough, doesn’t it?
The chocolate industry asked for an extension. A guy was concerned about child slavery and wrote letters to over a hundred chocolate companies asking them about their practices, and the one from Hershey was pretty typical of the bunch. In a letter received in June of 2001, a representative of the company told him, “…the recent unrest in the Ivory Coast has made a thorough, in-country investigation impossible, we have been in contact with representatives of the World Bank as well as with other chocolate manufacturers and cocoa buyers, all of whom have decades of experience in West Africa. To the best of their knowledge, this remains an isolated problem…”
An “isolated problem”? To say that 200,000 children in serfdom is an isolated problem is like saying the reactor in Fukushima experienced a “glitch”.
After a pass in 2005, a new deadline came and went in 2007. In an “Okay, we really, really mean it this time” moment, 2010 went out with the bathwater.
One of the leading voices in the movement to end this practice is the 10 Campaign. They were involved in a recent piece on CNN that addressed child slavery and cocoa. They invited a representative from the Global Issues Group of the chocolate industry to make a comment. Joanna Scott said, “The progress isn’t enough. We have to do more.”
Holy Cow. Like a politician shrugging his shoulders and saying, “Yup. Lied to you.”
(ed. note: Very analogy heavy today.)
So how can you know that your little morsel is free from the stink of slavery?
The first step is to certify that your sweet is Fair Trade. A good tool to use is this app from Fair Trade USA. Fair trade means that a company like Hershey’s is going to look out for the welfare of the farmer and his workers. There are some unscrupulous characters out there, withholding payment, undercutting prices, and making it hard for growers to earn an honest living. Fair trade does not mean “slave-free”, but it’s pretty darn close. A business that is transparent enough to go after that label is probably going to allow for a pretty thorough review of their labor practices.
Another good idea, and we always like this one, is to go organic. A grower has to submit to some pretty good scrutiny to get that badge, and it’s hard to hide your slaves when you’ve got organic inspectors snooping around.
Lastly, think about what you buy. Hershey’s and Mars are in control of 2/3 of the U.S. chocolate market, and for that matter, most of the world’s. Do you really think that they know the provenance of every cocoa bean that they use? Read the label.
Chocolate is sweet, but slavery ain’t cool.
Another Nag on Big Ag
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We saw some interesting news this week that made us get right back on the Urban Farmhouse Big Agriculture soapbox. A farmer in California celebrated the birth of cow quadruplets.
At face value, not a big deal, right? Curious, interesting, heartwarming, maybe, but worrisome? It happens. We came across an article from a few years ago that talked up an Iowa farmer who had a cow deliver quads. His made sense, too, as his farm was in “Fertile, Iowa.” Must’ve been something in the water.
There were a few things that made us wrinkle our nose, though: this is becoming more frequent, some cows have delivered multiples more than once, and the odds of it happening at all are ONE IN 179.2 MILLION!
As exciting as it may be for Farmer Brown to have celebrity cowlets, let’s look at the facts:
- A cow is typically of breeding age at about 15 months.
- A cow generally has its first calf at about 24 months.
- Farmers like to give momma cow about a year or so between births.
- Cows quit getting the urge to listen to Barry White and get frisky at about 5 years.
- The average cow has 2 or 3 calves. At a time.
Folks who follow big, commercial farms are asking 2 questions: what are we feeding the cows and what are we shooting them up with?
Cows are ruminants, which mean that they like to forage for grass. Remember our friend Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms? Cows have this very highly developed stomach that allows them to process these grasses. Their stomachs are basically big fermenters. Maybe that’s why they look like they’re smiling. They’re full of pasture beer.
Grass-fed beef is usually pretty lean, and that’s bad for cattlemen. The USDA grades beef by the amount of “marbling”, or fat. The more marbling, the higher the grade. Did you ever wonder what the big deal was about Kobe Beef? Lots of fat.
The other thing that cattlemen want is a big cow, with lots of beef to take to market. A factory farm feeds cattle lots of grains and proteins that help to build big, fatty cows real quick. Most of this is in the form of grain, namely corn. And it’s not the good kind of fat, either. It’s the kind that stomps on your ticker and hangs over your belt. To make things easier, cattle guys search for cheap stuff that bulks up the animals quicker, like starch and sugar. They began feeding them rotten potatoes, and in one experiment candy. Yup, candy. They got candy that couldn’t be sold because the wrapper was jacked up, because it was out of date, or because the recipe was wrong, bought it for pennies, and fed it to the cows. In a study at the University of Illinois, they found that not only did it add quick weight to the cows; if you fed it to them in the wrapper it provided roughage that the cows were missing because the animals no longer had access to grasses and hay.
The Journal of Animal Science published a report on an experiment to mimic the effect of grass in cow stomachs. They surgically implanted plastic scrubbers. The animals with the scrubbers were healthier and showed more weight gain. Pot-scrubbers for cows. Healthier and cleaner? Who knew?
So, fatter cows, but is that bad? Depends on how you like your beef, but bad for the cow. A lack of grasses causes cows to have acidosis, or cow gas. The fermenter won’t work without some good forage, so cows swell up, get ulcers, and have liver problems. Sometimes commercial cows get so bloated that they can’t breathe, and they have to be put down. The liver thing isn’t a concern to Big Ag because there isn’t that big of a market for liver these days. So cows get medicine, and lots of it.
The medicine starts when the cow is a little heifer. It gets antibiotics to get things rolling, and hormones to give it a growth spurt. When it starts getting bigger it gets drugs to combat bloat, more drugs to combat ulcers, and more drugs to combat diarrhea, and more drugs to combat pneumonia.
Did we forget to mention pneumonia? A Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, or CAFO, feeds thousands of animals in a very small space. About 25 years ago it was thought that the tipping point for a herd was about 25,000 animals. Polyface has a small herd on 400 or so acres, while new efficiencies at CAFO’s allow for as many as 100,000 animals in a couple of hundred acres. The tipping point is now tipping cows. This leads to a ton of dirt, a ton of waste, and in the dry heat of summer it gets airborne and the cows stand around all day breathing it.
So animals in a feedlot are pretty much sick all the time. It’s to be expected.
Cows are also bred to get big quickly. This builds big cows, but this straight-line breeding causes genetic issues. Have you ever seen an American Bulldog? They huff and snore and are prone to all sorts of respiratory issues. They are like this because they’ve been so selectively bred that nature has washed its hands of them. “Ask Darwin, we’re done.” They don’t look at all like their English Cousins. Big Ag has done this with our chickens, too. If you buy a white egg in a grocery store in the United States, there is a 99% chance that it came from a very carefully genetically modified Frankenchicken known as a White Leghorn. The same holds true for cattle. Frankenmoo.
Big Ag has its hands in this from start to finish. The USDA used anti-trust laws to break up the monopoly of the 4 or 5 companies that controlled 50% of our beef supply. That was in the 1920’s. Today it’s 3 companies controlling over 80%. The former Secretary of Agriculture points out the similarity to the automobile and banking industries, but says that as long as people get their hot dogs, who cares? So today, companies like Cargill, Tyson, and National Beef control all of our steaks, while Monsanto (remember them?) controls 80% of all of the genetically modified crops in America, which is pretty much all our cows eat. Most of the corn and grain that our big farms are producing goes to animal feed, then ethanol, and then for us. Not to start an “Occupy the Barnyard”, but 2% of our livestock farms raise 40% of our chickens, pigs, cows, and even goats, rabbits, and other feed-animals.
So if this concentrated push for more efficient beef production is leading to weird births and sick cows, what could it be doing to us? Back in the 50’s if someone ate something and got sick you could generally trace it directly to an event like a picnic or church social because all of your friends were sick too. These days you get sick and don’t even think about it. What made you sick was raised, processed, shipped, distributed, and marketed all over the world. By the time you connect the dots and say, “Oh yeah, the hamburger!” it’s made hundreds or thousands of people sick all over the place, but you don’t know them. It also impacts the cattle, because like an elementary school, what infects one infects many, really quickly. You also have to consider the fact that as many as 1,000 animals may have fallen into the meat grinder that spit out your burger.
Yum.
The CEO of National Beef says that he thinks that his cows have it pretty good. Plenty of food, water, and medicines when they’re sick. “All of their wants and needs are really taken care of in a very pampered sort of way…”
If I were a cow, I’d pierce my nose, paint a sign, grab a djembe, and get all activist on a rancher.
A Little AlliterUrbanAtion
By · CommentsNothing preachy this week, but instead, some Urban Farmhouse wordplay:
On the eve of the holiday way down in the Slip
the Farmhouse was quiet. Not a squeak or a drip.
The shelves and the counters were scattered with goods
from farms and from gardens; some things from the woods.
Some natural fragrance (with local beeswax),
to keep your kiss moist: some lip smack from Mac’s.
Some bottles of wine labeled biodynamic,
and delicate spices from Simply Organic.
But The Urban was quiet as friends spread good cheer
with balsamic salads and Virginia craft beer.
Perhaps they are snacking on Chappaqua Crunch?
No artificial flavors to be found in the bunch.
We hope that they’re noshing on food with a face.
The face of a farmer we caution in case…
And spending their holiday with friends warm and dear
as twenty and twelve draws ever near.
The Urban will be here with music and art,
and savory vittles we’d like to impart.
So stay nice and cozy and share Christmas cheer
with hormone-free chicken and gluten-free beer!
Happy Holidays from The Urban Farmhouse!
Aloha from the Shenandoah Valley
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When you drive across the Blue Ridge Mountains, start down 81, whistle past Staunton, you’ll eventually see some signs for “Raphine”, Virginia. Get off of the highway, get lost, turn around, and start following the shadows surrounded by bricks that constitute some of the old homesteads of the Shenandoah Valley. If you’ve given up, you may have located Polyface Farm, in Swope, Virginia.
Polyface Farm is the domain of Joel Salatin, a self-professed “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic-farmer”. And his farm is unlike any that you’ve ever seen.
He has a list of ten things that drive the ethos of his piece of agrarian heaven: No sales targets, no trademarks or patents, a clearly defined market boundary, incentivized work force, no initial public offerings, no advertising, stay within the ecological carrying capacity, people answer the phone, and quality must always go up. Off the grid. True to the land.
So what’s so darned different and radical about what Salatin is doing?
Grass-based livestock and poultry, mimicking natural patterns.
Have you ever seen those documentary shows where you see the water buffalo moseying along with the egret on his back? As it is in nature, so shall it be on the farm. Starting with the cows, the animals at Polyface follow a cycle and a structure that allows them a healthy diet and allows the earth to heal. Cows are herbivores. Commercial cattle are cannibals. Commercial cattle feed contains ground up cow. Cows are also like water buffalo and elephants, which group together for society and protection from predators, and they migrate to find fresh eats. Polyface has a mobile fence that allows them to move the cattle to a fresh “salad bar” each day.
Once the cows are done “mowing the field”, Polyface moves the chickens in. They eat the tender shoots left by the cattle and dig through the cow dung for bugs and larvae. Because that’s what birds do. The chickens then add more natural fertilizer to a field that will rest until the next go-round.
They use this same idea with egg layers, with a mobile Eggmobile, turkeys in a Gobbledygo, rabbits, and pigaerators.
Yes, pigaerators. Like any farm in this climate, there are certain times of the year that it is hard to pasture cattle, and you have to feed them hay. Polyfarm has a large shed for this, and they line it with a bed of wood chips, sawdust, and old hay. The cows walk on it and crush all of the air out of it. Polyfarm adds corn, which ferments. Pigs come in and dig through the bedding to get the fermented corn, and the whole shed is them aerated. It becomes a big compost pile that Salatin can use all over the farm, hence: pigaerator.
Once the pigs get to a certain size, they graze in a “savannah” (pasture), and then head to the woods for acorns and shoots off of the forest floor. Just like in nature.
Now, Joel Salatin and the team have been somewhat successful. He gives interviews and writes books, and as part of his transparency you can visit his farm any time you’d like. For a nominal fee you can arrange a guided tour. His 400 or so acres bring in a little over $2 million per year. But he’s fighting the “commercial” farm moniker.
If you want to buy some of the good fruits of Polyface labors, don’t go to the grocery store. Ethos ticker #3: a clearly defined market boundary. If you can’t get down to Swope, you can’t have it. No big trailers, no shipping overseas. A writer for Mother Jones got curious and asked to have some chicken shipped to him. Nope. Mother Jones offered an overnight courier. Nope. Salatin feels that if you’re not within his “foodshed” then you shouldn’t eat it. The average meal in the U.S. travels about 1500 miles before you tuck in.
Consider this: There is a sugar cane field in Hawaii. There is a processing plant across from the field. The local workers go to a small café near the plant for lunch and a quick coffee. The little packet of sugar that they use comes from…New York. They cut the cane, clean it next door, and then ship it to California where it is refined into a pure, crystalline white. It is then shipped to a plant in New York that puts it into little paper packets stamped with the creative wording, “Pure Local Cane Sugar.” It then makes the trek back to Hawaii for the dining pleasure of the locals who got it out of the ground in the first place. Aloha.
Polyface doesn’t claim to be organic. That would bring the scrutiny of the USDA. Joel Salatin’s latest book is called “Everything I want to do is Illegal” and it documents his struggles to sell his products (he is a commercial enterprise so he needs a store, certain paving and parking, restrooms, yada yada yada), to live on his land (local zoning says that you can’t build a house under 900 square feet), to eco-friendly waste (he could not use a composting toilet, but had to have a septic system, and the only area approved for a septic field leeched into his streams and creeks. Really?).
The Salatin farm is also in the business of growing meat, for eating, which is not for everyone. Cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys, and little fluffy bunnies are all grown and loved and cared for so that they’ll brown slowly in a delightful beurre blanc.
One thing is for sure: In a very Hunter S. Thompson sort of way, Joel Salatin and his crew at Polyface Farms is working the land the right way.
A Taste of Honey
By · CommentsThere was no Boogie Oogie Oogie about this news:
A test at Texas A & M revealed that 76% of the honey purchased for sample at major grocery stores contained no pollen. It gets worse. They picked up samples at big drug stores and found that none of the honey purchased contained any pollen. If you grab a pack of honey on those frequent trips to Mickey D’s or the breakfast chain, you might as well eat the napkin. No pollen.
Part of the test was a lark. Vaughn Bryant is an anthropologist, a palynologist (he studies pollen and spores in fossils), and a melissopalynologist. That last one means that he looks at pollen in honey and determines where it came from. Now THAT’S a specialty. He wanted to find out where the stuff was coming from and the existing tests were very expensive took months to see results.
We told you before about the benefits of local honey. Good, local honey contains pollen from the very flowers that make you sneeze during allergy seasons. Eating the honey helps you to build a resistance to those pollens. And it tastes good.
So why would your store-bought bear contain no honey?
Many manufacturers put their honey through extensive filtering processes. They say that U.S. consumers want crystal clear honey. OK. They also say that they want to remove bee parts, wax, and debris from the hives. Fair enough.
Removing the pollen also makes it impossible to determine where the honey came from.
Much of the commercial honey purchased in the United States comes from India, Vietnam, and China. The Chinese honey, in particular, is of questionable quality.
In 2001 the Federal Trade Commission lobbed heavy taxes at the Chinese because they were flooding the market with cheap honey. In addition to putting the squeeze on American beekeepers, their honey contained chemicals, antibiotics, and even high fructose corn syrup (isn’t honey supposed to be sweet?). They’ve gotten around these tariffs with a two-fold scheme: Ship the honey to another country where it can be relabeled and sold, and filter the bejesus out of it.
Most honey producers filter their product. It is only natural that you would not want a little bee leg in your tea. What is rendering your honey pollen-free is ultra-filtration. Ultra-filtration uses immense pressure to force a liquid through a membrane. If you make the membrane tight enough, you can filter out just about anything, down to the macromolecular size. Sneaky.
Honey comes in a wide variety of looks, consistencies, and flavors. This variety comes from the plants that the bees have been visiting. If the bees were close to fields of clover, then you should taste the clover. If they were partying by the orange grove then you should get some citrus. Beekeepers can control where the bees go about as well as they can hold back the tide. It is the guys putting it into the little plastic bears that are to blame.
Most of the honey that you see in the grocery stores and Walmarts of the world are processed by a few big companies. The biggest is Sue Bee. They’re actually the Sioux Honey Association. The Association combines the fruits of bee labor from over 300 members, but they declined to tell Dr. Bryant who or where the members were. They label about 60 million pounds of honey each year, half under their own Sue Bee, Clover Maid, Aunt Sue and Natural Pure brands and about half under store labels like Safeway, Kroger, and Super-Valu. Their web site says that they have a “long history of providing one of the world’s purest foods to customers around the world”. Pretty pure: Sue Bee, Natural Pure, Safeway, and Kroger were on the list of brands that contained no pollen.
This is why we like our stuff from Bearer Farms. They’re right out the road in Louisa, they don’t do anything fancy to their honey, and they love their bees. Unlike a lot of our stuff, it’s not labeled “organic”. They understand that bees like to roam and the folks at Bearer Farms can’t vouch for the practices of their neighbors. They do know, however, that the placement of their hives determines the flavor of their honey. Bees down by the river fly one way; bees up on the hill fly another. How do they know? They taste it.
Urban Artwork
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There are a couple of really cool things about working here:
- We have good food with a good conscience.
- We work in a very cool building with an interesting history and an eclectic neighborhood.
- We get to work to some great, home-grown, organic, live music.
- We get to look at some really great local art. It’s kind of Urban Artwork. We’ve become a market, cafe, and gallery!
We really started to think about this when we came across a post on Facebook from some friends at Rocket Pop Media about a mural that got painted on their building. Richmond artist (and Richmond Punk Rocker!) Ed Trask got them to allow the side of their building at Robinson and Main in the Fan to be his canvas. Here’s how it went down:
“Average day. Ed walks in. We know Ed from being around town and some connections in the local music scene. Ed says that he has this idea for a piece. He had a spot that he’d chosen but he thinks that this big, white wall would be better. He then goes on to explain that the piece is kind of commissioned by Converse, they want to film him painting it, and they want to put it on their website.”
“No problem, Ed, but we don’t own the building. You know that we’ve been trying to get a Trask for years. We would have to call the owner and get him on board. When would you need to start?”
“Now,” says Ed. “The Converse guy is outside with his cameras and my paint is in the truck.”
“Quick call to the landlord, some creative shuffling, and Ed is painting.”
If you’ve not seen the piece, take a quick run up Main Street. It is on the side of Rocket Pop Media facing Starlite. You can see the Converse video here.
It was great that Ed Trask got some international exposure and it was nice to see the Richmond art scene get noticed by a company as big as Converse, (and we’re a little jealous of the gang at Rocket Pop) but we get to see that stuff every day!
Lately we’ve seen our “Urban Gallery” graced by the likes of Laura Bell, Nicole Gomez, and Kris Krull.
Laura Bell, while still a student at the University of Virginia, has a very mature style. We read her bio, and it said, “I want to present the idea of the biological body as a playful orchestra of movement, sound, and color.”
Her work certainly does that! Colors leap from the canvas, and motion is implied throughout the works. We looked at her pieces when it was quiet, and they seemed to pulse with our own heartbeats, and when we were busy they seemed to move along with the sounds of the music, the coffee machine, or the bustle of our dining room. Like a moving scrim behind a static band, her works were a static scrim buzzing to the energy of their surroundings.
Nicole Gomez is a Texas native who now resides here in Richmond. The first piece of hers that we ever saw was a portrait of the Dos XX man (Stay Thirsty, my friends). It was a fairly straightforward image, surrounded by text. The more we got into it the more we felt a sort of Howard Finster reference. After seeing many of her works, we realized that they are certainly not derivative of Finster’s, but they do have a modern folk-art aesthetic that appeals to us. She has some wonderful watercolor works, but is equally adept at working with more vibrant mediums. She also has an affinity for Roosters, which made her a natural fit for us!
We don’t know how to describe Kris Krull. Artist? Furniture Designer? ReImagineer? They all seem to fit.
A friend of ours turned us on to a table that Krull had made out of found objects, but we’re really turned on by his latest works. They incorporate light, image, and structure in a very unique way. We’re sometimes reminded of a disco ball, sometimes a nightlight, sometimes we just don’t know. We do know that it creates amazing patterns across the walls, and they seem to glow with a stunning energy.
We’re looking forward to continuing our role as a gallery. You can just come for our food, just come to hear some music, or just come because it’s a neat area of town. Just do us a favor: the next time you stop by, look at the walls.
