Welcome to our Blog!
This is the blog of Deep River Cattle Company and the Allen Smith Family. In it you will find updates on our farm production and doings, information and pictures of the farm and family. Our son Corey provides all the photography. It is our family's goal with this blog to use it to inform our customers and help them get to know us, and also help our friends we have in many different places to keep up with what we are up to. Because this is a family farm, you will also find comments on other things that are important to us, especially our faith as Christians.

Archive for February, 2010

GRASS FARMING

Friday, February 26th, 2010

The most important factor to producing healthy grassfed beef is growing grass naturally. To produce healthy grass naturally, there are many obstacles.

1. Chicken litter from commercial houses has organic matter and builds topsoil, but arsenic and growth hormones given to the chickens are passed through to the soil. It also grows weeds in abundance.

2. Commercial Synthetic Fertilizer- heavy doses of Nitrogen kill beneficial bacteria and earthworms in the soil,

So our approach is to use management intensitve grazing, which moves the cattle in a mob every one to two days to mimick nature, and to give the soil rest. This builds the soil by giving more rest and distributing manure more evenly. The heavy mob affect and long periods of rest is beneifical to the soil.

We are also using compost, which while more expensive is an organic approach that builds top soil and enables the soil to build up micronutrients as well as the major soil compounds.

Finally, we plant legumes (white clover), which capture nitrogen from the atmosphere naturally, 100 to 140 pounds a year naturally.

This is part of our comprehensive commitment to have healthy soils naturally. Healthy mineral content in the soild without unnatural additives will mean healther beef that contains healthy micronutrients

Michael Pollan on Unhealthy Feedlot Beef

Friday, February 26th, 2010

" . . . And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth HIS fruit in HIS season . . ."
(Psalm 1:2)