The Farce
What a blizzard! It’s funny that we haven’t been below freezing barely all winter and now in the span of days we’re getting all the snow and temperatures we’d been missing out on.
The weather always wins. The single digit temperatures do make things interesting on the farm though, it puts the pressure on us to make sure everything is buttoned up because extreme colds and heavy snows will always bring up issues we don’t expect. As it stands, the herds are tucked away with water and plenty of hay to make it through.
I was observing (and by observing I mean instigating) a conversation on social media last week about why Costco organic eggs had darker yolks than local pasture raised eggs… I was explaining how egg quality works and WHY Costco eggs looked better but actually weren’t. I am aware of how much marketing we face everyday in the grocery store aisle. It’s really overwhelming.
By the way, the answer is that the color of the yolk is actually NOT an indicator of egg quality anymore. Chickens are usually fed marigold or cayenne powder to darken yolks… I actually have no issue with the practice, but it does come down to the marketing of it. Industrial farms are doing it to present a non-pasture raised egg as actually pastured raised as opposed to simply being transparent.
It’s a much bigger issue of lying with marketing that goes on so that these brands can present themselves as wholesome.
Case in point. In Nov of last year, a well-known “pastured” poultry brand named Cooks Venture declared bankruptcy and closed down all operations effective immediately. They were never raising birds on pastures, just large chicken houses with outdoor access yards. You might ask why is that an issue, after all, birds get to run around outside right? Isn’t that the end goal? Animals being raised outside? This is where the term “pasture-raised” becomes important. When a chicken or cow or pig is given unlimited access to the same area for days and weeks a time then they very quickly strip any vegetation from that area. It's only pasture raised for the first couple days before there’s no forage left. The distinction has to be that the animals are given access to true PASTURE and fresh GRASS.
The real farce is how Cooks Venture handled the end to their business though. They had millions of birds in the process of being raised by farmers and their only solution was to tell their famers to go kill their flocks off and compost the birds because they would no longer buy them.
Sounds pretty wholesome doesn’t it?
Our practices at Alden Hills are moving animals daily (or for pigs every 3 days) so that we know they’re getting fresh forages and getting out of yesterday's manure.
We actually care about the animals that are raised on our farm and what kind of life (and ending) that they get.
It’s that simple… there’s no farce with us.