This is probably only interesting for those of you out there living in southern Ontario, but I was emailing recently with Harry Stoddart of the Stoddart Family Farm about some seeds. Our email exchange together with his website, gave me a really good impression of the kind of person he is and the sort of farm he has. I thought I would mention him here, embed his promotional video, and encourage those of you who live nearby to get in touch.
If you’re vegetarian like me, you might not find his meat interesting, but it’s still very nice to know there are people out there like him raising meat humanely in environmentally friendly ways.
In particular his mentioning animals who eat grass just don’t get sick, goes along with a discussion I had a few months ago with a local farmer who also raises his animals on grass. He referred to his cows as their own pharmacist. He said, he could watch them eat, and when they weren’t feeling well, they would eat the plants in the pasture their bodies needed, in the right amounts. He said he could just sit on the fence, watch them, and could tell all kinds of things about them by what they were eating at any given moment.
Thank you for the kind words. We’re still learning but we’re trying to do the best we can.
I am constantly amazed by reading your blog, Patrick. Here in Tasmania, I live next to a paddock of cows, which extends way up into the hills behind me. The cows eat only grass. The abattoir is 5kms away. I can buy the meat and the milk at the butcher’s shop about .5 km from me and the butcher lives next to the farmer. Its just how life is meant to be and, luckily, still is, here.
Kate – I think you live in a pretty special and unusual place!