I’ve just returned from Hollister Ranch, a gorgeous place somewhere near Santa Barbara on the California coast, which is between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It’s a stunningly beautiful stretch of countryside, with rolling green hills, blue skies and rolling ocean famous for it’s great surfing waves. The land around here is rich and fertile, with vineyards and olive groves not too far away. There are wild deer, hawks in the air and rattlesnakes on the ground, and in this idyllic setting, there are free range, grass fed cows. Here are a few of them.
It’s a sad reality that these cows are living it up in a style completely out of sync with 99% of their brothers and sisters. Not too far away, there’s an enormous cow camp known as Harris Ranch that epitomizes everything bad about factory farming cattle. The plains of Harris Ranch are cow brown, because the cows are crammed in so tight, there’s simply no space in between them for any other hues to be seen.
The happy Hollister Ranch Angus cows in this photo eat and sleep out in the hills, occasionally being moved from A to B by a pair of old-fashioned cowboys and their two collie dogs. It was a wonder to watch the cowboys at work. Their skillful effectiveness was so elegant, rounding up the cows with zero invasiveness or distress to the animals.
When you buy beef, please remember these beautiful cows and if you can find it, please buy organic beef that’s grass fed.
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It makes me so sad to think of cattle farming in the US. Here in Ireland, even the conventional farming is better than some of what passes for organic cattle farming in the US.
The farm you were on wasn’t necessarily even typical of some US ‘organic’ cattle farms.
In Ireland, even the conventional animals are mostly grass fed, outdoors for most of the year and so on.
(See http://olivermoore.blogspot.com and http://www.greenme.ie for more information about Irish organic farming)
Posted by ollie on 19th April 2009 at 3:07 pm | Permalink
Yes, that’s why I was so happy to be on this ranch. Most organic beef in the UK and Ireland is also less free range and idyllic than Hollister Ranch. I know how unusual and special it is in the USA. It’s worth searching for the most free-range, grass-fed and organic beef you can find wherever you live, and in the US, even more so, as beef is far more likely to have been grain or corn fed here than in Europe.
Posted by Ysanne on 20th April 2009 at 3:24 pm | Permalink
The Irish cattle farming system is quite different to the UK – its even different to Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK and has changed over to the UKs farming systems in a number of ways).
Partly becuase it rains so much (good for grass growing) and partly because of tradition, most cattle only spend the winter indoors. In Winter, they eat a mix of hay, silage (stored moist grass) and, yes, concentrates.
The organic farming seasonality patterns are similar to this in Ireland (feed has to be certified organic obviously on the organic farms) Both organic and conventional are far more dependent upon concentrates (cereal based pellets of feed) in the UK than in Ireland.
There are some organic farmers in Ireland who do farm like the Hollister ranch you visited. One is Joe Condon – his animals are outdoors all year round, and are suited to the outdoors as they have a double coat of hair (they are galloways). His hill farm was surveyed, and found to have 64 different plant species per hectare (2 1/2 acres) – v high by modern farming standards.
He sells direct, does the packaging himself etc.
What’s also different about him I suppose is that his prices are v competitive and his customers a mix of foodies and those more into straightforward simple affordable food.
His site is here: http://www.omegabeefdirect.ie/
and an article I wrote about him is here: http://olivermoore.blogspot.com/search/label/galloway
From this, I ended up I’m also working on a project to convince other farmers to go that way in the uplands of Ireland (which is about 12% of Ireland’s farmland).
Our (V basic) blog is here: http://organicswithaltitude.blogspot.com/
Posted by ollie on 22nd April 2009 at 2:12 pm | Permalink
This is all very interesting. You’ve hit the nail on the head when you say about the rain – that’s a major difference between Ireland and Southern California. Santa Barbara, where the cows in the photo live, is midway along the coast. It’s green half the year, but by now – just a few weeks since I was there – it’s dry and parched, and the grass will be mostly yellow unlike the rolling green hills of Ireland or any neighboring isles, such as the UK. Anything further south of Santa Barbara, including the Los Angeles area, is very dry for at least 6 months of the year, or up to 11 months. Cattle farming is a whole different ball game here in the reclaimed desert. It’s great to read your blogs about farming in a country with rainfall.
Posted by Ysanne on 22nd April 2009 at 9:01 pm | Permalink
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.
Posted by Organic Spices on 1st May 2009 at 2:56 am | Permalink