Eldon Farms

John Genho, is a 29 year Ivy League school graduate who reads the Wall Street Journal and farms 7,600 acres of pastureland and forest in Rappahannock County. His crew includes a cowboy from Florida, a former rock-n-roller who had a top 40 hit, two other farm hands, an office person, and a pack of border collies and other types of working dogs.

People who live in Rappahannock County know Eldon Farms, if only by reputation, as the local environmentalists eye what might be the largest tract of contiguous land in three counties hoping the owners never carve it up for development. Running all the way from Slate Mills Rd to  Sperryville this sprawling farm cross both sides of highway 522 with 24 rental houses and 100 buildings on the property plus 65 miles of fencing. Unlike so many of the hobby horse and cattle farms in the county—whose owners sometimes say they “farm” although they produce no profit--this farm is a working farm whose revenue pays the salaries, the medical bills, the food, and the clothing for the handful of people who work there.

Eldon Farms has for 40 years belonged  to the Lane Family whose founder William “Bill” N. Lane, II  died in an automobile accident near the family's Bell Ranch in New Mexico some 30 years ago. The late Mr. Lane was an astute businessman who bought an interest in a Chicago book binding company acquiring other properties which continue under family ownership as Lane Hospitality, Acco Brands and others. His widow continued to spend time at the house they call “Little Eldon” and his son Nelson still knows people in the county.

John Genho does not deal with the family members too much since Eldon Farms is owned by the corporation and run as a business. The same environmentalists who are eager to assert an easement across the farm will be comforted by the fact that John sits on the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District board, a generally elected position, with Monira Rifaat who of course is an advocate of conservation easements. Cliff Miller was formerly on that board and has put much of his Mount Vernon Farm into the CREP and BMP cost sharing programs which pay farmers to keep cattle out of the stream. Eldon Farms is doing that too although it will take a while with so many miles of fencing to replace. The BMP cost sharing program has been boosted from 75% to 85% plus Rappahannock has a matching funds program from a donor for $50,000 for the 15% gap.

John is a Mormon who went to school at Brigham Young then Cornell where he studied animal genetics. He lives on the farm in a large house with his child  ren and wife who likes to take photos and upload them to the family's blog.

Farming, of course, is hardly profitable anymore the costs of machinery, grain, and land having put profitability out of the reach of possibility for most family farms. John says Eldon Farms breaks even and has a positive cash flow in the years when he is able to cut timber, the mountainous forest here harboring some veneer quality red oak. Because of the crash in the housing market ,  timber prices have  fallen  to “65-70% of what the value was a couple of years ago” so logging is no windfall.

John says, “When you look at our accounting we make money off cattle.” But it won't make you rich adding, “It's not something you would want to take out a loan and start a business. We have 24 rental houses. If we can cut timber we have positive cash flow.”

Every day John checks the price of feeder cattle and corn on the Chicago Board of Trade. He says that for years corn traded for $2 to $4per bushel. “But last summer corn was trading over $7 dollars. Grass has all of a sudden become more valuable.” The traditional model for a cow calf operation has been to raise cattle to 500 pounds weight then sell them at the livestock auction where they would be shipped off to large feeding operations in Nebraska or small Mennonite Amish-run operations in Pennsylvania where they would be fed corn until they reach their 1,200 pound slaughter weight. Corn is now back down to $4 per bushel, still feedlots prefer calves that weight 700 to 800 pounds because it takes less time and less money to fatten up the cows for slaughter. In order to each that extra weight 200 to 300 pounds of weight the rancher needs to overwinter the cattle which is difficult to do if you have to pay for hay. Eldon Farms does not have to buy hay because they bale their own  and stockpile fescue for the winter—that means they simply leave certain paddocks ungrazed and unclipped.

John has 1,400 head of cattle on the farm including 500 calves which in June will be headed to market. In January he sold those calves which weighed more than 600 pounds to the Winchester livestock market and was pleased by the price in the off season sale. October and November are, “The Absolute worst time to sell them, because no one wants to take them through the winter.”Calves kept over the winter are called “stocker cattle”.

Of other parts of the country John says, “Nebraska grasslands are prime cow calf country”. But the disadvantage there is you have to supply hay in the winter while in Virginia fescue grass can be stockpiled for the winter. He says, “The three best things about fescue  are January, February, and March and the worst are June, July, and August.” By this he is referring to the endophyte infected tall fescue grass which dominates the landscape here. The fungus lives in harmony with the plant thus giving it the ability to tolerate the cold winters here. But in summer endophyte causes cattle to lose rather than gain weight as their respiration and heart rate increase. The alternative would be to try and kill all the fescue and replace it with orchard grass or something like MaxQ fescue but that takes time and costs money.

To boost protein Eldon Farms plants some summer annuals like pearl millet and small grains like barley but only on a small scale for their heifers that will become breeding stock to give them an extra boost. His focus instead is to maintain the highest quality pasture as he rotates stock from one paddock to another to both improve the grass stand there and keep the animals from overgrazing pastures, which would expose them to lethal intestinal parasites which live in the soil.

John's ideal pasture management system would be to sample 20% of the pastures each year and then apply fertilizer according to the soil sample. But prices have wrecked havoc on the ideal situation. He says, “What we are really interested in is getting the phosphorus and potassium right and for nitrogen we figure if we can clover into the field nitrogen will take care of itself. Unless we are stockpiling fescue we cannot afford to put nitrogen on the field.” But he ads, “Potassium prices went from $100 per ton to $1000 per ton so we cannot afford to buy that. I would love to put potassium and phosphorus  down on our field. Nitrogen gives you a short term bloom but it leaches out pretty fast. Potassium and phosphorous give you a good healthy field.”

The two cowboys Robert Gainer and Rich Bradley and the farm manager John Genho offer to saddle up the horses and move the cattle on horseback for the visiting journalist but pick up trucks and dogs will do just fine. Ray Bennett is waiting at the other end of the pasture several miles away as the  lowing herd is marshalled toward tender new ungrazed grass at the other end of the village of Woodville. The grass here is a mix or orchard grass and clover with some blue grass and fescue mixed it—it is what the farmers would call “lush”. A dozen bulls barely lift their heads as we drive by in a pickup truck in order to meet the cowboys and the herd. The bulls have long ago worked out which one is dominant and the lesser males take care to stay out of the way of the largest. John says each year a couple are injured killed fighting.  He says, “This is what it means to be a male.”

We have completely blocked one of the winding lanes leaving Woodville as the herd is turned down the road. The working dogs snap at the heels of the cows as they push them along. There are so many cows one wonders for a moment whether you  would  be crushed if they stampede. John's border collie is meant to be at the front of the pack but is working at the back as he responds to John's verbal signals. The border collie lurks behind a few stubborn cows then nips at them as the cows briefly challenge the dog then retreat. A couple hundred heifers are in the pasture on the other side of the road and crowd the fence trying to join the larger herd. Traffic, if there were any on this almost abandoned road, would not be able to pass as the animals have taken over a ¼ mile of unpaved roadway. The cattle kick up dust on their way to the other pasture. The herd moved to the new location the cowboys return to their never ending task of maintaining the fences.

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Eldon Farms

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What Happened to All the Silos?

Drive across the landscape in Virginia and the observant person notices that practically all of the silos here are no longer in use except on some dairy farms. Instead of being used to store silage—that is, grain that is fermented so that it will not spoil—trees are growing up through the middle of these ghosts of the landscape which have not been used for some years.

There is an old saying which is very much true for those who bale hay: “Make hay while the sun shines”. When you cut hay you have to let it dry for a couple of days in the sun before you bale it up. Otherwise if you bale it damp it will rot. Not so for what is called “bailage”. This is grass which is cut then baled straight away and wrapped in air tight plastic. The bales ferment turning into something akin to vinegar. Cattle love it, the cow hands at the 7,600 acre Eldon Farms in Rappahannock County say they even lick up the juice from the plastic and the ground.

In the past sillage was made by lifting grass or corn stalks into the anerobic (i.e. oxygen free) environment of the silo. Sillage can also be made by shoveling forage into a pit into the ground and covering it with plastic and tires. Or you can just bag up some green grass in a plastic bag and wrap it up tight.

Jim Bowen farms wheat, cattle, and hay on 3,700 acres of land in Culpeper owned by the Germans. He has been working here since 1981. His farm is well-known throughout the state having hosted the annual Virginia Ag Expo which is the largest event in the state for row crop farmers. Jim is well-positioned to explain why there are no more silos.

Standing in front of an enormous 8-tire 248 horsepower tractor in front of empty silos and functioning grain elevators Jim explains what he does here.

“I have silos and grain bins and grain elevators I don't use the silos. Mostly what we do is we use it grain for sale corn and to store [soy] beans for grain.”

For his cattle he says, “All I feed is hay but I feed sillage hay. I use ballage which is sillage wrapped in plastic. You can make the hay at 50% moisture. All I do is cut it and bail it.  No need to dry it. With ballage you can bale it the next day.Wrapped it tight and it ferments. Used to be, to make a bag you would push 50 rolls into a bag and you would cut a little slit it in but now you don't have to do that because we wrap it so tight. Almost all dairy farmers use silage.  It is a great feed. Pits work the same way. You put the sillage into pits and you pack it as you put it in. Cover it up and keep the air out. Uncover it as you feed it. So it won't turn into compost you need to pack it good. You don't want air to get all in it.” He says most sillage pits are made of concrete..

Jim says, “You can make hay and sillage out of winter rye. Its a real early crop its almost ready now [April]”. At this time of the year area lawns and pastures are still grey from winter but rye and wheat feels are bright green especially if they have been fed nitrogen.

Asked about fertilizer he says, “I will put nitrogen on the wheat in the fall or early spring. I just put nitrogen on it last week. Last fall I bought nitrogen. I paid $450 per ton right now it is $200 per ton that costs 70 cents per unit—I can hardly make money at that”

Jim runs about 200 Angus cows. He put has 7 frost-free Merafont watering systems that use the temperature of the soil to keep themselves ice free even when it is below freezing. He says, “ I try to limit the grazing along my farm banks. I didn't want my cattle in the streams.”

When straw prices are high Jim sells straw but otherwise leaves in on the ground as he rotates to the next crop. Because of the crash in housing prices there is not much demand for straw now as few builders are seeding new lots.

“Hay” is forage which is cut wet, allowed to dry, then baled. “Straw” is wheat which is allowed to dry then cut after the combine has taken away the grain. Jim farms and sells orchard grass to area horse and cattlemens. They prefer that over alfalfa he says, “There's not many people who buy alfalfa. They don't want something which such high protein. Because most of these horses are not working. They get fat if you feed them alfalfa. Most horse people in this area like the 2^ndcutting orchard grass which is a lot shorter and finer cut.”

Of the costs and revenue he says, “It probably cost me $70 year fertilizer on my orchard grass and I normally make 2 – 2.5 tons per acre of hay. Selling it for $45 per bale I am grossing $200 per acre and $45 for 800 an pound bale. I do some small bales too”.

Most of what Jim grows is corn and soybeans which is pretty much what most row crop farmers do and they collect a subsidy for that but Jim does not as this farm is foreign owned. Jim markets his grain to the chicken industry. I have written about two row crop farmers on this blog to date and both of them sell to Perdue. These chicken operations obviously buy a lot of area grain.

Jim says, “Everything you see here thats green here like that is wheat. Most of my wheat I sell to Perdue farms and it used for export out of Norfolk. I grow wheat corn soybeans rotation. I sell it by the bushel. 60 pounds to a bushel. I sell spot market and futures contract..”

Because of all the chicken farms in Harrisonburg and elsewhere there is a surplus of manure available for fertilizer. Jim says, “Right now chicken litter is $30 per ton just dumped on your farm. Contact Mount Pony Farm. They are brokers. Talk to Billy.”

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What Happened to All the Silos?

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Cliff Miller's Mount Vernon Farm

As county administrator he had responsibility for the maintenance of the roads.  As a poet he was less inclined to do so.----paraphrased from Julian Barnes

 

Scene:  A young suburban couple shopping at a grocery store

 

Shopper A:  Look.  This tea is on sale. 

Shopper B:  Let’s buy it. It’s organic.

Shopper A:  Yes, it must be better than that one.

Shopper B:  That’s right, because it’s organic.

  

For Cliff Miller “grass” is a metaphor for all that is good about ranching.  While farmers around him break even or lose money selling cattle to grain-finishing feedlots, Cliff’s revenues are up over 20% from last year from the sale of grass-finished beef and lamb and pastured pork that he sells directly to retail customers from his Mount Vernon Farm in Sperryville, Virginia.  His secret lies beneath his feet saying, “This is a grass farm.  What we are really about is growing grass.”

 

What is wrong with feeding cows grain (corn, oats) instead of grass?  Michael Pollen in “Omnivores Delight” put into print what followers of Alan Nation, editor of “The Stockman Grass Farmer”, and other grass-farming profits like Jo Robinson, author of “Pasture Perfect” have known for years.  Cows, lamb, goats are ruminants designed to eat grass and not corn.  Ruminants have a special 4-chambered stomach which is designed to break down the cellulose fiber found in grass and leaves.  They can consume and in fact thrive from vegetation that other animals would hardly find palatable.  Having digested a meal for the first time ruminants regurgitate it, chew it some more, and then digests it again.  This is where they old expression “chewing the cud” comes from. 

But man, or rather corporations, in their quest for quick profits are impatient with nature.  As the documentary film “The Corporation” makes clear their only interest is “the bottom line” so the morals of what they are doing are not a factor in their design.  So rather than wait two years as Cliff does to grow cattle to slaughter weight—that is, to “finish them off”—90% of farmers pack them off to the misery of the confined feed lot where they are fed grain, a diet which will kill them as it lowers the pH in their stomach and eventually causes their liver to fail.   The feedlot is a downward spiral of discomfort from which they are given antibiotic shots just to keep them alive. 

 

Jo Robinson in her book writes, “Most of our animals today, including cattle, are being ‘finished’ in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, of CAFOs—corporate owned, highly mechanized, fuel-intensive factory farms where large numbers of animals are confined in a small amount of space.”   Gauchos in the pampas of Argentina--whose vast corn, soybean, and of course cattle production rivals that of the United States—believe the white colored fat of an American grain-fed cow indicates an unhealthy animal preferring their own leaner grass-finished animals.   All of these concerns have been shunted aside in the decades head-long rush toward profits that is the corporate farming model.

 

Here in rolling bucolic Rappahannock County the mountains of Cliff Miller’s 850 acre Mount Vernon loom above the village of Sperryville surrounding it on three sides.  In addition to owning a forested mountain Cliff is in the enviable position of having over a hundreds acres of flat river bottom land through with the Thornton River glides having tumbled from the rapids of the Shenandoah National Park which lies just beyond the town.  Cliff and his family have been farming this same land for 181 years.   For generations they disked the soil, spread fertilizers, and raised orchards, livestock, and row crops.  But in the 1970s this once profitable local farm, like so many across the nation, began to lose money as the model of local sustainable agriculture was cast aside in favor of much larger farms where profits could be managed only by planting thousands of acres of corn and soybeans instead of hundreds and where one needs thousands of cattle instead of dozens in order to turn a profit.  So Cliff began to look around for a way to make his farm profitable so that his heirs would not have to sell it off to others would could potentially carve it up into smaller lots.

 

Cliff’s full-time live stock manager, Darren Busét, is a pig farmer from Warren County with years of experience.  With a heavy canvas jacket, range hat, and a pony tail mane, Darren is an experienced veteran rancher to whom Cliff has turned mainly for his knowledge of raising hogs.  Darren’s dawn to dusk job is to maintain the electric fences, keep the water lines drained at night, and most importantly move the herd.  Cliff says, “Darren is a great addition to the farm.  He is the point man as far as the animals are concerned on the farm.”

 

Mount Vernon Farm practices what is called “management intensive grazing".  This basically means Darren sets up and tears down portable electric fencing to move the cattle from one paddock to another every couple of days or more frequently.  For example in one 40 acre field, 50 cattle are herded together in one small 1/3 acre moveable paddock.  When Darren tears down the paddock the cattle go willingly into the next 1/3 acre enclosure which Darren puts together in about 30 minutes.  What they leave behind is a sheen of cattle manure that fertilizes the field.  Darren will march the animals across the pasture in this fashion all winter.

 

Most cattle farmers simply turn their cattle loose into large fields and then feed them hay all winter.  Such a wide dispersal of animals does little to fertilize the pasture as their manure is placed haphazardly as they cherry pick the most succulent forage leaving thistles, Johnson grass, and other undesirable weeds in their wake.  If you herd the animals together tightly it not only controls the weeds it also lays down manure fertilizer in proper amounts.  This improves the pasture and lowers the farmers cost of production as well.  Cliff says, “For years this was a traditional farm and we put down whatever [fertilizer] we were told to put down.  And we have not put down chemical fertilizer for 8 years.”  He doesn’t bale hay either saving the cost of diesel fuel and avoiding a practice which he says takes nutrients away from the soil.  He says, “We’re not having to make the hay. We’re not having to feed the hay.  We’re not having to spread the manure.  That is being done by the cows.”   Asked how all this dormant tall fescue grass compares with baled hay he says, “It [the dormant grass] is full of sugar.  It tests better even than the best hay, even in February.”    

 

Cliff does not give his animals growth hormones, vaccinations, or dewormers either.  He says, “Everything fits together here”.  The sheep are rotated behind the cattle.  They also naturally kill each other’s worms.  We never deworm our cows. And for the last 8 years haven’t vaccinated any animals.”   As for the pasture Cliff explains, “The sheep and the cows only compete for about 30% of the grasses. “ In other words, “They don’t eat the same thing.”

 

Cliff says when you rotate the heard the grass is eaten in what he calls its “adolescent” stage where it is neither too young—so that grazing it would damager the plant--nor too old—in which case it could damage the cow especially if it is so-called endophyte infected fescue which is what dominates the landscape here in Virginia.  The result is twofold:  the cattle graze the highest quality forage and the field is fertilized with a large dose of manure which causes a flush of growth in the spring.  The cattle are then moved on the next spot and the cycle repeats itself. 

 

One problem with all the boutique farms that dot the Virginia landscape is they don’t always have enough inventory on hand.  This is why the big grocery stores prefer to deal with Cisco and other mega distributors who buy their meat from Midwestern cattle producers and produce from California growers.  This is the biggest problem for the local food movement and proponents of local sustainable agriculture.  Cliff wants to avoid these inventory problems so he is expanding into poultry and has tasked Darren with growing the herd of swine.  Cliff says, “It also helps with our sales to have three different meats”.

 

In prior years Cliff bought 65 pound piglets from a breeder in Gordonsville and finished them off here.  He raised them for about 5 months and then butchered them at 180 pounds.  Now he and Darren plan to breed pigs themselves and raise them year round.  Pigs are profitable.  Darren says old time farmers called pigs “mortgage lifters”.  (Note from author: My father raised everything from cattle to tobacco to catfish and eels making money only on hogs he said.)  Breeding as prolific as rabbits, pigs can have three litters per year but Darren plans to breed them twice saying it takes “3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days” for a sow to produce a litter.

 

Darren explains that the Tamworth hogs farmed here are a heritage breed that are known for their ability to thrive on grass pastures.  Pigs are not ruminants like cattle or sheep so Darren says, “You need to supplement with grain.”  He says they get, “Cracked corn and soy meal.  My grandfather added a little bit of wood ash for the potassium”.  Cliff says they also feed them vegetables and fruit from neighboring Roy’s Orchard.  “We get a lot of his stuff that he would normally send to the dump.”

 

The pigs here are working animals.  Darren explains that, “Every animal on the farm has a job”.  The pig’s job is to reclaim the 4 acres of vines and weeds where they are currently living and turn it into pasture. With their firm snout and keen sense of smell pigs root in the dirt turning it over as they look for grubs.  Cliff says, “They not only eat grass, like a goat they will east honey suckle, poison ivy, and everything else, which is what we have them doing which is denude the soil.”  When they finish cleaning out this area Darren will move them to another and turn their pen into pasture.

 

As we talk a dozen or so eager reddish brown piglets are munching on grass at our feet and one light colored fellow reaches out so Cliff can pat him on the  head.  The little pigs are supposed to stay inside the electric fence that contains the boar who is their father and one of the three sows who suckles 10 of them at a time with her two rows of teats.  One little fellow is not paying attention and he backs up to the fence with his hind end.  The electric fence cracks audibly and the piglet squeals having learned the lesson to respect the hot wire.  (The fence is not dangerous.  On my farm I am constantly being shocked by the same.)

 

One reason Cliff’s farm is more profitable while so many area farms are less so is he sells everything retail.  He says, “Primarily we sell by the cut.  We have buyers clubs at 8 different cities.  On the web site in an order form. This past year we did 18 hogs and planning on 30 next year.  We did 163 [lamb] last year and probably [will do] 200 for the coming year.  For the beef we could have sold twice and we did 18 [will grow to 30].”  Asked whether grass-fed beef is tougher than their grain-fed counter parts he says, “ If our meat was tough we wouldn’t sell our filet for $25 per pound.  If our lamb was tough we wouldn’t sell 200 of them per year to 500 to 600 people.”

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Cliff Miller's Mount Vernon Farm

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Adams Custom Slaughter

I went to Gene Adam’s slaughterhouse early one morning this week to talk to Gene Adams about his business and watch him slaughter a cow.  The state inspector Sean O’Brien and I ducked behind a door as Gene dispatched the first animal with a .22 rifle.  I was worried that the bullet might ricochet.  Mr. Brien told me he was crouching there, “Just in case”.  In the next room Gene’s mother Shirley and his brother David were grounding up patties while his Uncle Warren was sawing a carcass into t-bones. 

 

It took Gene and his assistant Ernie Holbrook only 35 minutes to slaughter and clean a Charolais Angus crossbred steer and move it into the cooler where the carcass would hang for 10 to 14 days for aging.  Mr. O’Brien, moving with the deliberate speed of a government employee, poked his knife blade into the cows liver and lungs checking for any discoloration which might indicate an unhealthy animal.  He was also on hand to make sure that the animal was handled humanely and killed without pain.  Ernie cleaned up the offal which would be shipped off to Valley Proteins to make dog and cat food, oil for biodiesel, and leather for which they pay $10 per hide.

 

Gene feeds about 80 cattle per year himself and slaughters many more buying cows and pigs from area farmers and both local livestock auctions:  Front Royal and Marshall.  He buys grain-finished cattle from Dale Welch who formerly managed the Fauquier Livestock Exchange and he buys hogs and cattle from Lindsay Eastham who is the current manager of that exchange.  Gene says there is “strong demand” in Rappahannock County for his beef and pork yet he only wholesales his meats at two area stores which are not much more than gasoline stations:  Mayhugh’s and Settle’s Garage.  Gene’s retail customers drive all the way from Richmond and from across I-95 to his on-site meat market which has no web site, is only open on Saturday’s, and is so far back in the woods you need to know where it is before you go looking for it.

 

Gene is sort of a burley country fellow who looked askance at this arm-chair intellectual carrying a camera and digital voice recorder when he gave me a tour of his facility.  Gene looks a little like a Black Angus bull standing there in the cooler with his dark hair and steely black eyes without a hint of a smile as I snapped his picture.   Perhaps he has taken on the countenance of the big creatures that he faces down each day.

 

One of Gene’s customers who I managed to track down is Chancellor’s Rock Farm.  They told me they give their meat to charity.  Let me repeat that:  they GIVE IT AWAY.  This is hardly the model of sustainable agriculture about which people in the local conservation movement are talking.  The environmentalists here worry that the county will turn into one large country club where people keep cattle simply as a way to lower their real estate taxes.

 

To be fair I did talk to the farm manager there at the 446 acre Chancellor’s Rock farm which, by the way, is for sale.  Karl Hoyle spoke highly of Gene Adam’s slaughterhouse and explained to me that their farm is a “cow-calf operation”.  That means they make money selling calves that have been weaned to feedlot operators.  He said, “That’s the one place that we allow our animals to be slaughtered.  We used to retail ourselves.  The owners of the farm give it to charity or we give it to the staff or themselves.  The owners are very concerned how their animals are going to be treated even after they are slaughtered.”   They gave up on the retail beef business not finding it profitable or worth their time.  Karl also says that the design of the cooler at Adams Customer Slaughter is ideal for aging meat.  He says, “When the beef is hung and aging if the air is not properly circulating around it gets a bad taste. It’s aged perfect.”

 

Bill Havlik has a farm in Loudoun County where he farms a handful of cattle which he butchers at Adams Customer Slaughter.  He too is not farming for profit.  (Good grief.  Another one.).  Bill says,  “I am a tax farmer. ”  Bill is well-positioned to comment on Gene Adam’s because Bill is a retired veterinarian with the USDA.  He oversaw a team of 20 scientists who flew to export markets around the world inspecting their slaughterhouse facilities and adherence to the strict standards of USDA import law.  Of Gene’s operation he says, “As far as I am concerned it is a fairly decent slaughterhouse.  They know what they are doing about slaughtering.  He does a good job.  He has a good cooler.”

  

I phoned up Kenner Love of the Agricultural Extension Service.  I told Kenner that I had gone to Gene’s slaughterhouse but had not come away with a story of any local cattle producer who was having Gene slaughter his beef then retailing their meat at Marshall’s IGA Grocer (they carry products from lots of local farms) or area farmers markets.  This is the whole vision of what community based food systems are all about and what Kenner spends so much time trying to champion. 

 

Several folks have told me that raising cattle is hardly profitable.  Gene sells sides of beef--slaughtered, wrapped, and packed--for about $2.35 per pound.  He is currently paying about $0.95 per pound for finished cattle.  (Five months ago the price paid to the farmer was $1.20 per pound).  This is called “hoof weight”.  That would mean a 1,110 pound grain-finished steer would bring $1,045 if the farmer sold the whole animal or $912 for the  645 pounds of meat produced by the carcass of an animal of this size.  So it might be profitable on a cash-flow basis but with corn, taxes, fuel, that sort of thing there is not much if any income for the farmer.

His packaged pork and beef patties are much less expensive than what you would find in the grocery store.  His current price for ground beef is $3.99 per pound and pork sausage is $2.99 per pound.

 

Gene currently sells patties to the Rappahannock school sports association and is looking to sell to the school system itself.  Of Gene’s business Kenner says, “He is proud of what he has done and we need to keep working with him to help him do more.   All the farmers need additional help with marketing.  The primary reason they need help is they don’t have the resources to go out and market.  They need all the help they can to market outside the commodity channels.  We don’t want to depend on those commodity markets because they are not sustainable long term.  It’s very efficient for large farms but we don’t have those large farms in this area.”

 

Farms that sell livestock for breeding stock instead of for meat are not contributing to local sustainable agriculture if you measure that by the amount food that they produce themselves.  Two other farmers I have talked to recently have found selling breeding stock more profitable.  That is true with Steve Shippa, who is the largest goat producer I know, and Alan Zuschlag who retails lamb and sells breeding stock from his Touchstone Farm.  While both of these guys say they make profits selling meat to consumers (Alan) or wholesalers (Steve) they suggest more money is to be made selling breeding stock.  I find this highly frustrating as I look about for ways to make my goat operation profitable.  The lack of profitability in the livestock business is exactly why Gene’s family started this slaughterhouse in 1994.  Gene’s family had a 1,600 acre cattle farm but “lost it” he says over the years to a subdivision covered in houses.  Of course Gene and his family have figured out how to make a living raising cows but not every farm can set up a slaughter house.  There are a lot of rules and regulations around that and of course you need a government inspector on the premise, gratis of course, paid for by the  US taxpayer.

 

There are two other slaughter houses in the area:  Faquier’s Finest and Blue Ridge Meats.  They do cater to farmers who wish to resell under their own label even producing halaal meats.  (Halaal is to Muslims what kosher is to Jews.).  Of course packaging meat for others to sell is not Gene’s business model and for him business is good.

Addendum

Definition:  To "finish" a cow means to grow it to slaughter weight.  Most cattle are grazed on pasture grass until they are sold at auction as "feeder" cows at around 700 pounds of weight.  Then they are fed a grain diet which causes them to gain about 5 pounds per weight until they are slaughtered at around 1,100 pounds at which point they become "slaughter" cattle.  A "grass fed" beef is one that has only been fed pasture forage.  

 

 

Here is how to get in touch with Adams Customer Slaughter:

 

Adams Custom Slaughter

27 Shurgen Lane

Amissville, Virginia 20106

540.937.7497

 

 

 

 

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Adams Custom Slaughter

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Grass-Fed Sheep at Touchstone Farm

Alan Zuschlag, owner of Touchstone Farm in Rappahannock County, doesn’t specifically target kabob-eating, halaal-consuming immigrant customers for his grass-fed lamb saying, “Most of my customers are yuppies from the D.C. metro area, double income sort of gourmet type people.”  Urban yuppie is the sort of person Alan was himself before he rolled up his sleeves and turned his weekend retreat into a working sheep farm.  He says before he got into farming sheep, “[All] I wanted was a nice lawn that I wouldn’t have to mow.”  His initial “lawn” of 25 acres has blossomed into a 108 acre farm that he purchased in sections from his neighbors and carved from a tangle of brambles, vines, and assorted brush that he brush hogged back to civility, fenced, and then grazed.

 

Alan says, “I had 25 acres and this was going to be a weekend place.  I had no intention to farm at all.”  But Alan is not the sort of fellow to sit idly around gazing at this rolling pastoral vista of fields and forest.  In addition to serving on the board of directors of a local environmental group he is brimming with ideas for how to grow his farm and local sustainable farming in general by creating cooperatives of farmers and getting others to raise sheep.  His business is such that he has grown from a one man operation to having recently hired a farm manager Jeremy Christopher who is well-know to area farmers having formerly worked at the Rappahannock Farmers Cooperative.

Alan makes money from his sheep farm selling breeding stock to farmers from as far away as Canada and selling frozen, packaged portions of lamb to buyers in Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C.  He explains, “I sell to anyone who wants to try it.  We sell whole and half lambs cut to their specifications.”  Taking orders by web site, telephone, and returning customers he arranges processing of the animals at the slaughterhouse and pick up on the farm or delivery to the customers.

 

Standing in a pasture with a farm cat tagging along and a wild turkey walking along the edge of the woods Alan explains how he has turned beaten down, overgrown old pastures into newly rehabilitated grassland.  He explains that, ‘Orchard grass is our workhorse grass here.”  In this particular field he disked the soil to rip out roots which had grown up in this formerly neglected pasture whose former owner had grown too old to care for it.  He adds lime to correct the acidity of the soil and then drills in a custom mixture of orchard grass, perennial rye grass, and white clover.  Alan says, “Overseeding is going to change the composition of the grass.  It will help thicken the grass. “

 

The experts would say that Alan practices “grass-based rotational grazing”.  Basically this means his sheep are fed nothing but grass and they are moved from one paddock to another so that the pastures are not overgrazed and the forage quality is kept at its highest level.  Using a cleverly constructed system of permanent fences with a moveable electric fence cutting the pasture into sections he moves his sheep from one square to another where they, “Graze 4 days at a time and only 4 days.  Then they get moved to the next paddock over.  After 4 days you start to get regrowth and they go back to the regrowth.  They don’t come back to where they grazed until another 30 days.  And that’s the rule.”

 

You can see this as you stand on the gravel driveway above one of the pastures where the ewes (females) are fenced in a square area guarded by a loud and somewhat pushy donkey.  The grass to their left is several inches taller that the grass in the paddock on the right.  When they graze this down Alan moves them to the next paddock rotating the whole affair through the grazing season and winter until they end up next to the barn when they are ready for lambing (i.e. giving birth to the little ones).

 

To say that your farm animals are grass-fed and naturally raised is very much in vogue today with all this talk of local sustainable agriculture.  Alan explains what this means while touting the merits of his lamb.   He says, “It’s not organic because my hay field has been fertilized.  They get nothing but good old Rappahannock County grass and spring fed water and that it is.  They are all natural.  We are a member of the American grass fed association.”

 

With a hint of irritation at the uninitiated who don’t understand he says his sheep are, “Not organic because they have been wormed.  That automatically disqualifies them because they have been fed medicine.” Of the rigid organic standards that cause many farmers to not even consider the government-monitored program he says, “I think it’s inhumane.  It doesn’t make any sense but that is how strict the organic people are.  It’s one thing to pick bugs off vegetables it’s another to let you sheep get full of insects or worms.”  With one effective sound byte he sums up saying, “Do you raise your kids organically?”

 

Always thinking of ways to grow and improve his business Alan says he is ready to give up on delivery lamb to his customers and have them come to him instead.  He says, “There is an organic market in Alexandria, for example, which wants me to have a drop off point there.   It works for them because it gets customers into their shop. What we are looking to do is to have a place like Sunnyside Farms or E-Cow [local grocer] have the customer come in and pick it up there.  Sunnyside is interested.  Our customer can pick up their lamb while they are there.”  Echoing Kenner Love, the local Department of Agriculture cooperative extension agent, Alan says the county needs a place for farmers to store their meat and produce for sale.  If the county had that he says, “We would be all over that.”  Industrial freezer space is USDA regulated and a significant cost for small farmers.  Cliff Miller of Mount Vernon Farms, another local sheep farmer, has that, but his business is different.  He sells individual cuts of lamb instead of whole, half, or quarter sections.

 

Turning to chase after a skunk who is threatening his penned-up chickens Alan says, “I am an economist by training and I do I cost/benefit analyst of everything.  And basically this farm is run in a way that input costs are as low as possible.  We retail directly to the end customer.  It is the only way you can make any money.  The farm pays for itself.  I have to prime the pump by buying additional land but any farm improvements come out of the farm checking account.  So any new fencing that comes out of farm profits.  The farm pays for everything.”  It’s a model that appears to be working for this thriving little business.

 

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Grass-Fed Sheep at Touchstone Farm

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