Hamburger

Hamburger

Nancy and I have 40 acres (about 18 hectares – a much more useful measure than acres) here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Perhaps 6 of those acres are woodland, an acre and a half are wine grapes, the remainder is grass. This year the rains have been sufficient to make that grass very lush. Mostly the pasture is fescue and bluegrass with some orchard grass mixed in. Some years there is large amounts of white clover, but not this year. In the spring the pastures are yellow with the buttercups. In the fall and winter broom sedge wants to take over.

I am proud of my pasture. I mow twice or thrice a year and let the cut grass lay and rot down into the soil. The only additive is one year a load of lime was spread to adjust the ph and another year a load of poultry manure for added nitrogen. My horses are constantly turning a small portion of the grass into instant compost that adds structure to the soil and I occasionally take my antique weed wacker and chop up the stray thistles the have dared to invade.

For us humans grass is an unpalatable, indigestible plant. My neighbor and I are undertaking the slow process of changing indigestible into succulent. We do that by grazing cattle through the summer and fall on the pasture, turning grass to beef. This year the cattle are eleven young Red Angus heifers and one steer that goes by the name of Hamburger. By late fall the heifers will return to the neighbor’s fields; Hamburger will stick around eating winter forage. Eventually, after a sheltered life, when he’s reached maturity, he’ll be turned into steaks, pot roasts and hamburger patties. The heifers will probably go into the baby producing business creating more steers to turn grass to protein.

It might seem cruel to turn a pet into dinner, even if it is the most efficient method of altering the pasture into usable food. In a way, it is cruel. It is though, farming. It is what farmers do. I, in my part time way, pretend to be a farmer. I also enjoy a good steak on the grill and a cheeseburger with mustard and tomato. There is an advantage to knowing the beef personally, and knowing both what and what not it had been fed.

In the past the first meal from a steer raised here on the farm always included a ‘grace’ said for the animal. We acknowledged the contribution and the sacrifice the animal made. We also judged whether the tenderness and taste of the meat had been any way reflected by the personality of the fellow. Most times it seems that the juiciest, most tender cuts came from the meanest, unresponsive beasts. (There really has been only one of those guys, but he did taste the best.) At this point in his lifespan little Hamburger is shy, dominated by the eleven bigger women that share his field.

We landowners are stewards of the land. We ‘own’ it for a temporary time and then turn it over to some one else’s care. While thiese18 hectares are in my care, I’ll try and maintain a balance between natural and productive. My pasture will not be overgrazed, hopefully not neglected – although the woodland is a bit of that – but also not turned into a factory of food production. The grass nourishes not only the cattle and the horses, but also the rabbits and other wildlife. It shelters the meadowlarks and provides seeds for a thousand other birds.

The Horse that Never Learned to Love Carrots

In these days of foreign wars, of cyclones and earthquakes, of disasters natural and unnatural, it is frivolous to write with feeling about the death of a pet. Real people have lost their children, their homes and their base of contentment. I have only lost a friend of the four footed variety, but still, it is worth a few words to say good-bye.

Hai was a yearling. It was his face next to mine but a few blog postings back. After six days of effort by the best of medical staffs, the decision was made this afternoon, to let him rest from his struggles. As of this writing it remains a mystery exactly what happened to him. Whether it was some unusual disease or some trauma will only be revealed after an autopsy. Although the reason of his demise is unclear, the fact is that only a few weeks ago he was the potential of my dreams.

He was a strange horse, a chestnut that came to the farm the first day of September 2007. He was a little over four months old then, and newly weaned from his mother. He was shy of the two old mares in the field and much preferred the company of humans to horses. It took him a long time to feel comfortable enough to run. He’d lag behind, content to mosey along toward dinner, which by the time he arrivied, was nearly gobbled up by those same old mares.

Eventually he did learn to run, and when he did, the ripple of his muscles and the flow of his legs gave me hope that perhaps ‘this one’ was a horse that would lead me on happy adventures. He also learned to be first to the feed bucket and he grew to be a strong and well-conformed yearling. The first sign of his distress was the morning when he wasn’t first to that feed bucket.

Hai, whose official name, Haidetz Acasa, meant ‘come on home’ in Romanian, enjoyed the curry brush and the attention but I never could get him to eat a carrot. I’ve never known a horse to prefer the company of humans to other horses, and I’ve never known a horse that wouldn’t learn to savor the taste of a fresh garden carrot. I’d mix small chunks in his grain and I’d hold out pieces for him to gather out of my hand. He watched the ladies greedily snap up more than their share but he never figured out that the funny orange thing really did taste good.

I say good-bye now to him with an uneaten carrot in my hand.