Blood & Dirt

One must have a penchant for blood and dirt to raise grassfed foods. Last week the post-pounder drew blood and this week I wallowed in mud to fix a leaking waterline. Such is the unyielding dedication of grass farmers.

Pictures below relate the story of the waterline. Sometimes one is not quite sure where a slow leak actually lies, which is frustrating, so you end up fixing everything. The suspicion was the leak was in the fitting coming up from the waterline, into which the hose plugs that runs to the bottom of the watertank. So, the fitting was removed, cleaned, and reinstalled. This required lying down on the wet and muddy concrete pad, and putting my torso head-first into a 55 gallon cylinder, with pipe-wrench in hand. At the bottom of the cylinder, three feet down, sits the complicated elbow-fitting, which seemed to have come loose in part. The process of testing, removing, cleaning, reinstalling, and testing again takes a number of hours, so one has plenty of opportunity to get dirty and wet, diving into that 55 gallon drum repeatedly. It is not much fun to do this in cold weather, but the recent warm spell invited the task, so it wasn't so bad. One does whatever it takes to keep the pipeline of grassfed foods full and moving.

While testing the repair and then refilling the 300-gallon water-tub, there was time to kill. So, Bo and I engaged in some recreational shepherding with nearby yearling lambs.

Max, the guard dog, enjoyed the exercise as well.

This December we sent a shipment of prepared foods to a friend in Massachusetts, who was a college professor when I was a student there, many, many moons ago. He grew up in an Italian household, as his parents came off the boat. He thus knows of what he speaks when he assesses pasta and Bolognese Sauce, reserved for the Christmas table. His comments follow:

Just recovering from the Christmas festivities. The first course at Christmas dinner was pasta a la bolognese. The pasta was penne rigate. You want something that will catch the sauce, not let it slide off. The penne are tubular and so the bolognese gets inside, and they’re furrowed so the sauce also gets caught in the furrows. (Rigatoni would have been good, too.) The guests raved. I would have like to blush modestly and say, Oh, it was nothing, a bit of this, a dash of that, you know, just a few hours labor. But I came clean and told the story of Drausin the English major/agro-economist turned farmer and Susan the lawyer/judge turned chef. The guests said: Lucky you! They said the bolognese was five-star stuff. I proposed a toast, and we drank to Susan’s health and happiness. Lemme tell ya, it was a hard act to follow. In such cases, the best strategy is to pretend that the second course will be a couple of minutes late. That way you get to keep filling the guests’ glasses. By the time the second course gets set down on the table, the guests are no longer too discerning, et voila!, the danger is averted. I hope your Christmas was equally delightful. Happy New Year!

We think the Bolognese is one of our best prepared foods - half beef, half lamb, a lot of time, and a lot of love!

Below is a fisherman on Long Island Sound, wearing a Grassroots hat. We are kindred spirits with him, in that we both cherish our environment while pursuing the food of gods.