When visitors meet our cattle, they notice how tame and calm they are. Some of them can be touched, and many of them come up to greet us and may lick our hands or smell the vehicle we are in. Our most placid animal is our herd bull, Kyle. He is like a big gentle beast who comes when he’s called and loves to have his head rubbed. We don’t encourage visitors to pet him because of his size (2000 pounds), but we show them that we can pet him and he is not a bull to be feared. The cows love him too.

Below is a picture of our tranquil Kyle.

2000 Pounds of Sweetness

Taylor Barron

                          Indian Creek Angus

   Indian Creek Angus is the best farm in the world.  It has horses, cows, cats, and dogs.  Every animal is extremely well treated including our grass-fed cows, each raised with love and care. 

    Our visitors are some of the most important people of our farm. We treat them each with love and respect as we give them a farm tour and tell them all about our beloved farm.

    Indian Creek Angus is run by a family of farmers, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Barron family. If not then I’ll introduce some of them to you. My granddaddy, Dennis L .Barron, and my grandma, Carol Corbin, own the farm. My daddy, Dennis L .Barron II, my brother, Dennis L .Barron III, and I, Taylor Kaye Barron, live and work on the farm. We all hope that you, our customers, can come and visit our farm and enjoy our grass-fed beef.

                                                 By: Taylor Kaye Barron

Niece Catie's picture of cows on a winter's day at Indian Creek Angus

AGAINST THE GRAIN

By Bill Keep

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.”  God banished Adam from Eden – and farming began.

     So says Richard Manning in Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization (232pp, North Point Press, 2004).  If Eden was the hunter-gatherer world, expulsion to a life of farming “was a curse indeed.”   

    Manning turns the history of agriculture and of human societies on its ear. Throughout our hunter-gatherer millennia (290,000 years) we lived in an eternal Now, without expectation of change. But with agriculture (a mere 10,000 years old) we could create, store and distribute food; thus the few could gain power over the many, and our deepest and most widespread religion, belief in progress, could begin. Among the results, famine – “the mark of a maturing agricultural society,” and poverty, “agriculture’s chief product.” “The goal of agriculture is not feeding people; it is the accumulation of wealth.” 

     Once societies became dependent on nutritionally poor grain and potatoes, several things proliferated – malnutrition, tooth decay, vermin, weeds, crowd-related diseases and (until recently) smaller bodies for humans and domestic animals. Soft foods allowed earlier weaning and more frequent birthing, which created a “huge force of stoop labor” for building pyramids, mounds, ziggurats and temples, and created population explosions which required migration, disease, war and famine to control.

     Ensuing centuries played endless variations on these patterns – famines, regularly repeated up into our own times, forced migrations, imperialism and war (new markets, land for feeding exploding populations), slavery (fueled by sugar), great gaps between the few controlling rich and the many laboring poor.

     When we ran out of new cultivable land, we turned to industrial fertilizers, machines and plant breeding to increase efficiency. By now we had entered an era of permanent surplus of commodities (as opposed to food) – wheat, rice, and corn preeminently, in which prices were kept low and farmers depended on subsidies.  

     “Agriculture feeds the world.” True, says Manning, but very badly. Most of the world’s poor subsist on grains and are therefore constantly malnourished. Yet “tying food to the health and well-being of humans is heresy within . . . all political systems.” The USDA, finding nutrition and the expanding of markets at odds, has consistently promoted markets. And when industrial agriculture  demonized nature, processed food became the barrier between us and savagery. “The food processors were not offering nutrition; they were offering the illusion of wealth, stability, and order, and consumers became willing accomplices . . . .”

      And what of contemporary farmers? “The suicide rate among American farmers and ranchers is three times the national average.” “U.S. grain . . . puts third world farmers out of business.” The number of U.S. farms has shrunk dramatically – our bread basket now a “basket case,” a sea of grain controlled by a handful of processors, who take most of the profit – industrial agriculture with “the countryside as factory.”

     There are positive trends — micro breweries, bakeries, farmers’ markets, organic foods — but sustainable agriculture’s job is not easy – “to observe, to respond, to evolve, to co-opt the co-ops, to morph, to feed on a decaying system.”

     In Manning’s summary, “we need . . .  a system in which a variety of plants grow together permanently, performing . . . fertilization and defense from insects . . . as well as providing food. This . . . requires . . . a reinvention by selection, by breeding, by choice, by patient learning, by re-examining the genetic diversity that remains, by creating feral farming. Not back to the garden, back to the wild.”

It was once believed that purebred cattle were the best way to produce great beef. But in the last number of years, scientists and cattle ranchers have recognized the benefits of cross-breeding, or what is called heterosis. Heterosis means hybrid vigor. It is a way to increase the positive traits of a breed. Like mutts among dogs, cross-bred cattle tend to be stronger and healthier and exhibit few of the negative traits that purebred animals can.

Here at Indian Creek Angus, we are learning more every day about what makes great beef. Studies show that crossing Angus or Herefords (the British breeds) with Charolais, Limousin or Brown Swiss (the Continental breeds) creates a really strong cow with excellent beef. So that’s what we are doing. Our herd is primarily Angus, with Angus-Hereford mixes called Black Baldies. To diversify our herd, we have just purchased an excellent selection from a Charolais herd that we will cross with the Angus and Baldies.  In addition, we have one young bull that is a Braunvie, which is like a Brown Swiss. The cross between the Angus and Charolais will produce a gray colored cow, like the Braunvie or Brown Swiss. By crossing these lighter colored breeds with the Black Angus, we will get superior beef and a more heat tolerant herd.

Hereford cross, Motley-face Angus and Black Angus calvesOur new Charolais mother and calfOur young Braunvie bull--really still a teenager!

We learned a lot at the conference, and a lot of what we heard validated what we are doing. We know we can do some things better, but we are definitely on the right track. We also verified our suspicion that we are selling grass-fed beef cheaper than most of the other producers. One of our goals is to make healthy eating something attainable by all Americans, or at least those within our area. We will keep our prices down as low as we can while still keeping our heads above water.

Our new calf has a great life ahead of her. We are committed to improving the grass meals she will eat, to adding more trees to the pastures for more shade and wind break, and to fencing off smaller pastures so that we can sow more varieties of plants for our cattle to graze on. We thank Ann Blanchet for her great seminar about that.

Come out and see our newest baby. Just give us a call.

beef stew

Here are a few grass-fed beef recipes that we have tested in our kitchen at Indian Creek Angus. Add any of your favorites to the blog.

Why local grass-fed beef costs more.

When you think about farmers who raise cattle solely on the grass in their pastures, you would think that they would have less overhead than the ranchers who fatten their cattle on grain in massive feedlots. Getting cattle to the feedlots requires fuel because a great many cattle are moved long distances, fattened, and then slaughtered miles from where they were born. And the grain too is an expense.  This all has to cost a lot of money.

Why, then, would grass-fed, local beef cost more than grain-finished feedlot beef shipped miles to your grocery store? The answer lies in two important factors that the industrial beef industry demands: speed and weight. Speed means that the time it takes to grow a calf from birth to the age at slaughter needs to be reduced as much as possible in order to make maximum profits. And weight is the basis for pricing the beef, from the quarter pounder at McDonalds to the 8 oz. New York Strip at the local restaurant. Beef is almost always sold by weight. Therefore the primary goal of cattle ranchers is to increase the weight of the cattle as rapidly as possible.

The quickest way to increase a cow’s weight is to feed it grain and growth hormones. After weaning, cattle are sold to back-grounding pastures where they will reach about 600 pounds. Then they are moved to feedlots where they are fed grain until they gain another 400 pounds. Feedlot grain is often a combination of genetically-modified grains such as corn, as well as soy and food by-products. The grain is highly subsidized by the government. In addition, both feedlot cattle and dairy cows receive hormone injections to increase their weight and milk production. Basically feedlots quickly turn an average healthy cow into an obese sick cow. Then they are transported to the slaughterhouse where up to 250 animals are slaughtered an hour. 

On the other hand, increasing the size of cattle grazing on pasture takes a long time. The cattle are not artificially fattened, but instead retain their natural weights based on a diet of grass—the diet their bodies are meant to eat. They also receive no hormones or antibiotics (except to save their lives if they become sick). Although these injections and additives are an expense to the feedlot owner, they still make it possible to increase the cow’s weight sufficiently to make feedlot meat very cheap. Over 90% of America’s meat is processed this way.

When consumers see rock-bottom prices for meat at grocery stores or fast-food restaurants, they are seeing the end-product of an industrial system designed to alter the natural biology of a cow. In other words, cattle are molded into a product that meets the requirements of an industrial food system that is focused on profits and feeds many people very cheaply.

The downside of the cheap meat is that it is not very healthy. Loading the cattle with grains and hormones makes them sick, and they require antibiotics to stay alive. All of these additives end up in the food system and in humans. There is direct evidence that America’s epidemic of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer is linked to the foods we eat.

It costs your local farmer more to grow cattle to the ideal weight for slaughter because it takes at least twice as long (2-3 years) to grow a beef to the necessary weight. It costs your local farmer more to take several cattle to the local butcher whose treatment is humane and who pays the workers adequately than it does to transport hundreds of cattle to slaughter. Your local farmer receives little subsidization. And there is not a large network of marketing experts and outlets helping the small farmer sell his or her beef.

Yet, consumers who are aware of the health benefits of grass-fed beef and who recognize the environmental and societal impact of buying locally and getting to know where your food comes from are spending the extra money to improve their health and the health of the planet. Doing the right things isn’t cheap. But it is the right thing.

The Eat Wild website states:

When you choose to eat meat, eggs, and dairy products from animals raised on pasture, you are improving the welfare of the animals, helping to put an end to environmental degradation, helping small-scale ranchers and farmers make a living from the land, helping to sustain rural communities, and giving your family the healthiest possible food. It’s a win-win-win-win situation.

Today some people are attempting to replicate this diet, but one of the hard things to find in the grocery store is grass-fed meat which the Paleo-diet recommends because of its low fat content. Grass-fed beef, like the beef sold by Indian Creek Angus, has the same nutritional qualities that wild game has. It is two to three times lower in saturated fat than grain-fed beef. Grain-fed beef is a relatively new product and gained popularity after World War II. Its popularity paralleled the rise in obesity in the United States, along with the diseases known as the western industrial diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Many people are taking some tips from the Paleo-diet without necessarily removing all grains from their diets. There are other good reasons to switch to Indian Creek Angus grass-fed beef. One additional benefit is that it has no antibiotics or other chemicals that feedlot beef contains. It is generally a much safer meat to consume.

20 Pounds of Grass-fed Ground Beef—Variety of ground round, ground sirloin, and ground chuck.  $125. (1/16^th Based on hanging weight of 500 pounds).

20 Pounds of Grass-fed Boneless Stew Beef—Great for stews and beef dishes. $125. (1/16^th Based on hanging weight of 500 pounds).

20 Pounds of Grass-fed Roasts—Variety of roasts including shoulder roast, rump roast, sirloin tip roast, etc. $125. (1/16^th Based on a hanging weight of 500 pounds).

45 Pounds of all Three—15 pounds of ground beef, 15 pounds of boneless stew, and 15 pounds of roasts. $285. (1/8^th Based on hanging weight of 595 pounds).