Grass-Fed Is Best: “Recovering” Vegetarians And Growing Vermont's Farm Future In Huntington

By Bruce Hennessey

For seven years, I didn't eat meat, not because I didn't like it or objected to the killing of animals for food, but because the negative health and environmental impacts seemed to argue in favor of leaving animal protein out of my diet entirely. In retrospect, it turns out I didn't have the whole story. Getting to the meat of the matter has been a life-changing journey – and, oddly enough, our transition from a non-agrarian/vegetarian lifestyle to full-fledged grass farming came through unexpected circumstances.

Deciding to Grass Farm

Coming to care for a piece of land has a way of sharpening your focus. Several years ago, my wife Beth and I fell in love with the old dairy farm at the end of our road here in Huntington. Fallow for years, the pastures and hayfields sported poplar saplings and a healthy crop of goldenrod. The farm's hilltop views, wildlife and easy access to the Long and Catamount Trails first caught our attention. When it went up for sale amidst rumors of development, we made an offer. You might say it was an impulse buy.

It's amazing how different fantasy and reality can be. We'd given no serious thought to management, just vague ideas about keeping the meadows open. So we borrowed a tractor and brush-hogged eighty acres of rough, ledgy hilltop meadow that first fall. It was a miserable experience with lots of broken parts, diesel bills, and terrifying passes across our high angle terrain. We ended up miserable enough to decide to never to do it again.

We could have let the true forces of nature take over. Vermont entropy = forestation. But it became apparent that we couldn't let our open land slip into forest, leaving all of our forebearers' toil in the dirt. Perhaps there's something inherent in the human conceit that drives us to manage and mold rather than let things go. So we decided to keep it open.

But could we do it without compromising our environmental ethic? Might we use the farm without abusing it? We spent that winter of 2000 researching – reading, listening and learning - and settled on a farm strategy that focused on management-intensive grazing – a grass-based pastoral method that mimics natural processes better than most industrial-based agricultural approaches.

We began with thirteen Angus cows and a few horses (not nearly enough animals to keep ahead of our grass). Seven years later, we're raising 80 head of Angus, 200 sheep, 20 pigs, 400 broiler chickens, 150 layer hens and 6 horses - all rotated over the same stretches of ground. Our ruminants (cows and sheep) are fed entirely on grass, while our poultry, pigs, and horses receive supplemental grain on top of their sweetly diverse pasture portions. In the process, our soils have increased in fertility and organic matter without amendments. Even our vegetable gardens rely on grass as tilled-in fertility for each subsequent season.

Grass became the central part of our operation for a number of reasons, most notably the miracle of a ruminant's ability to extract solar energy out of grass. We also wanted to minimize our use of fossil fuels by allowing the animals to harvest their own feed. And then there are the fringe benefits: building soil fertility and eliminating erosion, reducing our contribution to water pollution, eliminating the use of herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers, breaking the parasite cycles, good exercise for both us and our animals, fresh air, and the joy of seeing and hearing those first mouthfuls of fresh salad in all those mouths everyday.

In short, we are striving for a farm full of healthy and happy animals who express their essential natures, animals who provide the healthiest and tastiest food possible.

The Practice of Intensive Grazing

During the grazing season, we daily move our animals to fresh pasture. The paddocks are sized to accommodate each group's daily needs for feed. Depending on the time of year, we'll let each paddock rest and recover anywhere from 14 to 30 days before returning to it for another grazing session. In our program, the idea is to graze each pasture when the grass is at the height of its adolescent energy – well grown, but not to the mature seed head stage. This process allows the animals to gain the greatest benefit from the grass, while allowing the grass the best chance to recover fully before the next grazing. Many species of young weeds that are either eaten or trampled can't seed out, and are eventually overtaken by hardier grasses adapted to growing back quickly. Daily movement naturally distributes manure and increases organic matter and fertility on the farm.

This type of Intensive grazing mimics the natural methods of wild ruminants who eat intensely in close herds for security, then move on as a group, allowing the previous ground to recover before returning. The process also allows farmers to take advantage of high quality feeds and essentially free sun, soil and rain inputs without the added financial and environmental expense of tilling, harvesting and transporting feed to animals using modern machinery. The animals benefit from the movement, fresh air, and sunshine as they enjoy unrestricted access to their natural food, and move away from areas contaminated by fresh manure.

We continue to pay the ultimate compliment to the natural design by integrating all our animal groups so that they are connected to each other in mutually beneficial ways. Cows eat the grass to a height more suitable for sheep. Both sheep and cows leave behind fertile manures that become delectable dinner plates for chickens, who digest harmful cow and sheep parasites, in essence “cleansing” the pastures for future rotations. Pigs till the soil, allowing us to renew and renovate pastures.

Not to mention the money we save not paying for tractor fuel.

With a developed electric fence and water line infrastructure, the amount of labor needed to manage our animals is much reduced, when compared with other methods. Temporary fences go up in minutes, and the animals adapt quickly to moving from paddock to paddock. Our labor for basic cow care, for instance, averages fewer than 30 minutes each day for one person.

More Benefits

Most cattle and sheep (even those raised in natural and organic programs) are fed grain as a primary diet source for thirty days or more. The advantage to this method is that animals can be fattened and brought to market more quickly. Unfortunately, ruminants have not evolved to eat such high-energy, easily digested feeds without serious negative ramifications for their health, as well as the health of those who consume them for food. Grain diets raise the acidity of the rumen, allowing unhealthy bacteria to flourish and often making the animals sick with a disease called acidosis. This condition is so rampant in conventional feedlots that animals receive antibiotics as a regular part of the daily diet.

Feeding ruminants grain also changes the fat make-up of meat. Much of the Omega-3 fatty acids and Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLA's) found in balanced amounts in grass-fed-only meats are missing in grain-fed meats. Omega –3's and CLA's in human diets have been linked to lower cholesterol levels, reduced risk of heart disease, some types of cancers, and adult-onset diabetes. By contrast, thoughtful consumers have long known that conventional red meat holds increased risk for these conditions. It used to be that the only source for these essential fats was wild fish or flaxseed oil. Now, meat-eating consumers can get the same benefit from their local grass-fed meat producer.

Management intensive grazing also offers many environmental benefits. While we still use tractors and other equipment to make hay and baleage for the winter months, we finish cattle for market using about half the fossil fuel energy of confinement or feedlot methods. The natural distribution of manure alone saves hundreds of gallons of fuel each year. Additionally, our farm remains a very low risk for nutrient loading or “eutrophication” – the process by which large amounts of phosphorus from farm fertilizers make their way into our local watersheds, causing algae blooms and other plant growth that chokes our waterways, robs our living waters of oxygen, and destroys other local aquatic life.

The benefits to our farm family are embedded in our everyday life. Working outside within the natural seasonal cycle, and orchestrating carefully timed movement of five different animal groups on the same piece of land, has its own intrinsic rewards.

Challenges

Lately, we've had a good laugh over the parable of the First and Second Mouse as they approach a newly set mousetrap. Both tremendous potential and great risks abound. While the First Mouse explores the new potential, the Second Mouse, of course, nearly always gets the cheese. Wind turbines that are down more than they're running, solar water heaters that ice up in a mild winter, silver bullet winter grazing ideas that fail due to timing, incredibly industrious beavers, and excessive climate-change related rainfall place us as a farm family squarely in the realm of the early adopter.

With any method there are challenges, and management intensive grazing is no different. Currently it takes us twice as long to finish beef steers on grass in Vermont as it does to finish steers on grain. This means we take our steers through two winters before market - an expensive proposition. It is also difficult to raise grass-fed beef and lamb with as much intramuscular fat (marbling) as conventional meats. The result can be toughness, though we've made great strides in this area through rotation management. Finishing an animal is commonly thought of as the feed regimen during the last 60 days before slaughter, and Conventional beef is finished on corn and soybeans in feedlots. The grass-fed animal is finished on grass (of course), a process that requires timing the steers' weight with the height of feed energy in the pasture. Many grass-fed producers assume that finishing should happen during the fall and only bring their animals to market after the perennial pasture has essentially stopped growing (known as the ‘last blade of grass' method).

But extensive research shows that finishing at that time of year is actually the worst time to do so, as most native perennials have lignified – meaning they have stored the majority of their carbohydrates and proteins in the roots, leaving a woodier, less palatable plant with significantly less nutrition. By ‘finish timing' I mean that we time our calf births so that they are about 2 years old when we hit the height of our pasture energy (usually June, July and early August. And, currently, we only take our steers to market during these months as their daily weight gains on grass are at their peak, producing the fat marbling in the steer muscle that is an essential ingredient to tenderness.

Our management intensive grazing methods sit outside the norm of the corporate industrial farming paradigm. It follows that our marketing is going to be different, as well. Obviously, we could not be sustainable financially if we were paid at commodity prices. In addition to our increased time to market, we do not have the unfair advantage of heavily subsidized grain production enjoyed by conventional producers. Being outside the mainstream also means that we have to market directly to health-conscious consumers who are willing to pay for the real costs of food. As tough and time consuming as direct marketing can be, it comes with a distinct benefit. Our customers get to know us personally, and through that relationship, they come to trust us, and the foods we provide. We joke with our friends that we specialize in “recovering vegetarians” – which is not far from the truth, as we've had several vegetarians and even vegans start eating our meat for health reasons.

What's Next?

We're not satisfied. We want to extend grass-farming and rotational grazing into new frontiers. Currently, we're looking seriously at developing enough stockpiled pasture to take all our animals through the winter without making hay. Seeding high value, cold tolerant, winter annuals into our pastures may be a part of this program.

Looking for the same health benefits from grass-fed dairy products that we find in our meats, we're considering seasonal, once-a-day milking of cows or sheep to offer high value, healthy milk, yogurt and cheese without using grain.

It's tempting to depict our methods and elements as components in a finely run machine. Far from perfect, the farm is our attempt to stage a wildly complex interaction between soils, plants, animals, and people to the benefit of all.