TLR Newsletter

 When we think of a meat butcher, many of us think of the familiar picture of the portly gentleman in a white smock, preparing cuts of meat right down the road for us to purchase fresh as can be.  And of course, we all know this picture is largely outdated, save for a few exceptions.  Instead, the modern meat packing plant consists of a huge team of employees all trained with highly specialized skills (rather than the broad-spectrum knowledge of butchers in the past).  The production line is essentially a (dis)assembly line, with each worker making a limited number of repetitive motions to accomplish one narrow portion of the butchering task, as the product moves by at a set speed on meat hooks and conveyers.  Employees work in close proximity to one-another, and conditions are ripe for a highly contagious disease like Covid-19.  The meat packing industry has also consolidated over time,  just like every industry has, with the bulk of the supply moving...

 As you would expect, the tasks completed at TLR change depending on the season, giving the year a certain rhythmic workflow.  We have now begun our fall tasks, which in our fifth year of production, have taken on a grooved familiarity. Since the years flow in a cycle, it can be hard to define a "starting point" for the year's activities.  But in some sense, our production year begins in fall.  Summer tasks are winding down, and we begin preparing the farm for our earliest rains.  Hay is tucked away safely in the barn, to keep it from molding in the rain.  The barn is checked for leaks, and loose sheeting that may allow water infiltration, or may blow off in a storm are battened down.  (TLR is high up on the side of a hill in the Salinas Valley; the valley creates a "wind tunnel" effect, which concentrates wind energy in the valley, especially at our elevation, so winds can be extremely destructive during winter.) Fall is the main mating season for goa...

 Throughout the season, we make various bulk purchases of hay to get us through the dry summer months, and the slow-growing winter.  Historically we have experimented with wide array of options for feeding hay, including Bermuda hay, orchard grass, oat hay, teff grass, and alfalfa.  Based on this experimentation, we have found that alfalfa gives the best return on investment, with high protein content, high palatability, and high utilization by the animals.  Alfalfa is the gold standard for protein, and all other feeds use alfalfa by way of comparison for the amount and quality of protein they contain.  Alfalfa is also high in minerals (the "Ash" content in the image below), which ensures that the animals are not eating empty calories, and are instead eating a ration that truly produces healthy animals and healthy meat.  Alfalfa has a digestible energy content of 10.7 megajoules per kilogram of dry matter, and sorghum Sudan grass has a digestible energy con...