2 miles and Real Food Choices

Just what I needed after a long day at the office. I had a lot of reading to catch up on and not a lot of time. Plus it was a bit of a stressful day, so I really enjoyed that my training plan just called for 2 miles in today's run. I hit the first mile in 6:58 and definitely slowed down to enjoy the pace back to the house on the return. It's amazing what an injury and month off will do to conditioning.

My physical therapy sessions usually include a good piece of conversation while the ultrasound does its magic on my neck and back (crossing my fingers that these muscles repair themselves soon!). In earlier sessions we have discussed how growing up on a farm/ranch usually leads to a stronger immune system. Today, that conversation turned into the burden we feel to eat "real" food. I'm always puzzled by how people define "real" food, so I asked. The answer is always different.

That turned the conversation into a discussion on the use and relative concentrations of hormones/antibiotics in cattle ranching today, how eating fewer processed food makes us "feel better" and whether or not cattle are supposed to eat corn.

By the way...

• Hormones are in very small proportions in meats, even compared to other "natural" foods
• You'd have to eat a ton of beef to feel the effects of different fatty acid profiles, you'd be better off eating fish to change that
• And no, feeding corn to cattle does not kill or harm them, they're perfectly capable of digesting grains.
• And yes, I'm all for eating smarter, depending on fewer labels/buzzwords, including fewer processed foods, and less junk (empty calories) in the diet, but that doesn't mean you can't treat yourself to a Reese's cup and mt dew every once in a while

So that got me to thinking, every health and fitness site I go onto these days has a different methodology for eating healthy and eating for a better lifestyle. It makes sense that athletes and active people are concerned about our food supply and individual choices. I'd love to hear more on these decisions and personal choices. 70 days until Ragnar Relay.

Made in USA

By Stewart Truelsen

“Made in USA” are three words you won’t see very often on items sold by major retailers. It’s so true of consumer goods that a store in upstate New York is making a name for itself by selling only items made in the United States.

The Made in America store has been so popular that buses on the way to Niagara Falls are stopping at Elma, N.Y., so tourists can visit. The owner proudly tells shoppers that he has carefully researched everything he sells and all items are 100 percent made-in-America products.

The fact of the matter is that if you want to buy products made in this country you don’t have to drive to New York. Your best bet is to shop at a supermarket or farmers’ market. According to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Americans spend 91 percent of their food dollars on food produced here. The report doesn’t itemize, but it’s a good bet that coffee, tea, tropical fruit and seafood account for a large measure of imported food.

If you shop at one of the major discount retailers for consumer goods, the numbers tell a much different story. Nearly 36 percent of personal expenditures for clothing and shoes are for products labeled “Made in China.” American-made clothing and shoes account for just 25 percent of all purchases. A separate report by the Toy Industry Association found that 90 percent of children’s toys are made in China.

On a recent trip to a major discount retailer, we found clothing made in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and a country we weren’t familiar with at all—Lesotho.
It turns out that Lesotho is an impoverished African nation where several major clothing companies have set up assembly operations because labor is so cheap.

Globalization and technology have caused the loss of many factory jobs in the United States. Things we used to buy that were made with American hands are now made by foreign hands or aren’t made with human hands at all, but robots. Some call this progress, others call it unfair and few think it will change.

As Americans we sometimes take food for granted. We’ve never had a major food shortage, and we can choose from an infinite variety of safe, affordable food. But, it is not just that we take food for granted. It’s that we take American food for granted.

We may accept buying a pair of jeans stitched in Lesotho, but would we feel the same about purchasing food from there? It’s doubtful we would. The locavores who insist on locally produced food would have an even bigger problem accepting it.

At a time when so many consumer goods are imported and some Americans are even leaving the country to save money on dental work, surgery or prescription drugs, we need to be thankful for American agriculture and support the efforts of farmers and ranchers. Our homegrown food supply is an important economic strength and an envy of the rest of the world.

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Stewart Truelsen is a regular contributor to the Focus on Agriculture series and is the author of a book marking the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 90th anniversary, Forward Farm Bureau.

Beef and Bean Tacos on the Fly

Tonight I had a pound of ground beef sitting on the counter and I really didn't know what to do with it... Someone suggested burgers. What a waste of good potential. Plus I do not have any bread. Someone suggested tacos. Now there's an idea! So this is what I cam up with. Pardon this not being anything fancy, but you have to remember, I just cook with what ever I have on hand.


Beef and Bean Tacos on the Fly
1 lb ground beef
1 small can green chiles
1 small can mushrooms (prefer fresh)
1 can of beans, your choice, I used Chili beans tonight
Jalapeno Spread
Whole Wheat Tortillas
Black olives
Shredded Cheese
Sour Cream

Jalapeno Spread
This is something I usually have prepared in the fridge, but it takes little effort to prepare with this meal. I keep fresh jalapenos in the fridge. When they become soft, instead of tossing them, I quarter them, take out the seeds, and chop them finely. Top with lime juice to store in a plastic container in the fridge. This makes a great spread to add some spice to just about any dish.

Tacos

• In a skillet, brown beef then add green chiles and beans, let simmer
• In separate skillet, saute mushrooms in butter or vegetable shortening
• With second skillet heat tortillas
• Fill each tortilla with beef and bean mix, mushroom, jalapeno spread, cheese, olives, and sour cream
• Serve with a cold drink and enjoy your quick and easy meal

This makes for a filling, healthy, quick, and budget friendly meal for the family. Or if you are like me, an easy to store and reheat meal for all you single people out there.

Don't forget to Thank A Farmer for the beef, dairy, grain, and vegetable products used in this meal!

The Super Bowl and Texas Agriculture

Ever make the connection between tomorrow's Super Bowl in snowy Dallas? From the footballs used to your favorite snacks, Texas Agriculture gives a big boost to the gridiron game plan. Thanks to the North Texas E-News for these AgFacts!

• Leather is used to make footballs and Texas leads the nation in cattle with more than 13 million head with an annual production value of about $6 billion.

• Texas produced 8 million bales of cotton in 2010, which is enough to make every person on earth a Super Bowl Championship T-shirt - and still have almost a billion shirts left over.

•  Peanuts are a favorite snack at football games, and in Texas we produce more than 700 million pounds - enough to make 7 billion peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

• Hot dogs are a traditional favorite at football games and the Texas pork industry has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $250 million.

• Hot dogs also need hot dog buns. Texas growers produce an average 90 million bushels of wheat annually, enough to make more than 25 billion hot dog buns.

• Texas is a leading dairy state and produces enough milk each year to fill the massive Cowboys Stadium more than six times.

• A football field, including the end zones, is 360 feet long-by-160 feet wide and covers 1.3 acres. The entire Cowboys Stadium site covers 140 acres. By comparison, Texas encompasses 144 million acres of agricultural and rural land, more than any other state in the nation.

• In contrast, the combined areas of the two cities competing in this year’s Super Bowl is about 63,000 acres, and you could fit more than 2,500 of them within Texas’ borders. In fact, you could fit the entire states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin inside Texas more than two-and-a-half times, and still have 9 million acres left over.

• Cornstarch can be used to make a biodegradable plastic for drink cups, utensils and more. Texas growers produced 302 million bushels of corn in 2010.

• How better to celebrate a Super Bowl Championship than with a good steak dinner? Texas produces about 8 billion pounds of beef each year. That's the equivalent of 16 billion 8-ounce steaks or enough to supply 150 steaks to every person watching the game in the United States (according to Nielson estimates, last year's Super Bowl attracted 106.5 million U.S. viewers).

 So while you are enjoying the game and commercials, remember this is just the start of how Agriculture impacts our lives. Remember to Thank A Farmer and Rancher for all the great things we have

Antibiotic Use: No Easy Solution

Bacteria are becoming resistant to Antibiotics so we need to ban ALL antibiotic use in food animals.

We have all heard those lines. But livestock producers realize there is no simple answer. ALPHARMA Animal Health has a new way of communicating the "Straight talk about antibiotic use in food animal production" called "For the Record."

This month's issue presents 6 questions that show there is no easy solution to antibiotic use and banning antibiotic use does not account for the scientific complexities involved.

1. If bacteria freely swap the genetic material to resist antibiotics, why aren't all bacteria resistant to all antibiotics by now?
2. Where is the policy position against the use of tetracycline to clear up teen acne?
3. If it's "too risky" to allow farmers to use antibiotics, what's an acceptable risk?
4. If "no one's questioning the use of antibiotics to treat a sick animal" then why have you actively opposed?
5. If food animals consume an unacceptable fraction of all antimicrobials, then what's a fair percentage?
6. If animal suffering is a concern, why eliminate the least stressful means of medicating animals?

Many livestock producers have used antibiotics to treat animals at one point or another and it's not like we are going to use more than what is necessary because we feel like it.

Do you refuse vaccines, antibiotics, and other medications to prevent or treat sickness for yourself or your children? How many supplements do you take every day?

Consider these questions and view more of the discussion at the Antibiotic Truths website. Before you criticize livestock producers for using antibiotics, take the time to visit a producer in your area and learn why they make the management decisions when producing your food. You might find you have a distorted view on antibiotic use in livestock production.

Reverse Barbeque

Happy Labor Day everyone. To many across the country this is a long weekend to celebrate the closing of summer; where many families get together for a party, have some BBQ and enjoy some great food. But for the people who produce that food, there is no rest. Today is just another day on the ranch. True, we may get together and enjoy a cookout this weekend, but first all of the livestock must be taken care of. The rations batched, animals fed, fences checked, and problems fixed. Yes, we may not do many "extra chores" this weekend, if ever there were a thing, but the animals must be taken care of. So while you are enjoying this holiday weekend, take a moment to Thank a Farmer or Rancher who works hard every day of the year to make sure there is delicious food on the table for every occasion.

I hope you enjoy this comical account of a cowboy's holiday ventures. (I copied this note from a friend on Facebook, but found it too great not to share. Be sure to visit the link at the end for more stories like this.)

To a person with a real career, holidaysbring thoughts of time off for a little R&R with friends and family. The Fourth of July means picnics, barbecues, rodeos, and fireworks. But if you are a cowboy, the romance of your life is being married to the ranch. The Flying P hardly knew what a day off was, and holiday meant catch up on whatever you were behind on. Along with it being a care free and romantic life, there are a couple of other little known misconceptions about cowboying for a living. One of the biggest misconceptions isthat you ride only the best horses. While you might get lucky once in awhile, most of theranches Ive worked for go for the cheapesthorses they can get.I once saw an ad posted on a sale-barn bulletin board, which describes a big portion of the ranch horses I've had theopportunity and privilege to ride.

It went: Horse for sale. Will buck, strike,kick, and bite. Not for women or kids. Would make a GOOD cowboy horse. If you dont like him, the dogs will.At least you've got to give the guy points for honesty in advertising.

The other little misconception is that cowboys ride out in pairs or groups of three to do their work. There are only about two times that actually happens. The first is when there is a big works going on, such as a branding or gathering to ship. The other time is by accident.On this particular Fourth of July Holiday, I headed out to tag late calves in one pasture, followed by heading a couple miles over the hill to doctor any sick yearlings in another. My semi-trusty mount was Spaz. Now Spaz would have been a really good horse if he'd gotten over the habit of leaving you afoot,and if he had been athletic enough to walk without tripping over his own feet and falling down.

Checking all of the draws and coulees, I was beginning to think I'd be lucky and would'nt have anything to tag when I spotted  next to a plum thicket. There was'nt a cow in sight so I started making up a Q tag. Q tags simply had the date the calf was found. In yourcalving book, you recorded the calfs sex and weight so that when you figured out which cow it belonged to, the records would be straight. Because the calf wasnt moving real fast, Spazhandled the situation with ease, and I dropped a loop on the calf, took a dally, and pitched the rest of my rope out so there wouldnt be anycoils to get tangled up in.

I stepped off Spaz,jerked down a pigging string, started to tie the calf down when things suddenly went wrong. Hearing the thunder of cloven hooves, I looked up to see what appeared to be the worlds largest cow barreling towards me at twice the speed of sound, like a cow-to-cowboyguided missile. I temporarily held my ground thinking (OK, praying) that she wouldnt step over her calf. She hesitated for a second, but just long enough for me to pop her on the end of the nose with my pigging string and lunch I was.

My only hope of avoiding being ground into Bob-burger was to get something between Robo Cow and me. It was going to have to be something fairly narrow as there was only an arms length separating us (carefully measured by my finger tips on her forehead). As luck would have it, Spaz had'nt clued into the situation and was still standing there. I discovered this as I ran into his butt and rolled around him.

Luckily, the old witch felt sorry for me and decided to pick on something a little closer to her own size. Looking over my shoulder to get my bearings on the situation, I saw Spaz trying to get up enough speed to get the cow out from underneath him. After fifty or so yards, she decided to drop Spaz and go back to her calf. Being the homing pigeon he was, he kept right on going, trying to make a new record for the three-mile gate dash.


After a three-mile hike under the hot July sky, my cheerful holiday spirits were further raised by the fact that I always carry extra pigging strings. At least I had somethingto use for a new set of reins to replace the ones I no longer had. Now, before I could get anything else done, I had to figure out how to get the calf tagged, or at least how to get my rope back. Riding back across the pasture, I found the calf, this time closely guarded by its mother.

The fence was only a few hundredyards away so I figured that if I could get thecalf close to the fence, I could get the end ofthe rope, climb through the fence and pullthe calf to me to get the rope off. Knowing that Spaz was probably going to run off again, he was going to have to be hobbled,which would give the calf time to get away from the fence. My first step was going to be regaining control of my rope.

Because the cow had already started moving the calf, I needed to ride down the rope far enough togive me time to jump off Spaz, grab the rope,and re-mount before the cow shoved me down a prairie dog hole.When I was about thirty feet from the calf, the cow turned around and charged. Spaz sounded the retreat and headed for home. Now this is one of several reasons why I pack sixtyfeet of poly.

Getting Spaz back on course, I came to within about forty feet of the calf. The mother turned around and started pawing the ground, and the calf stopped. Keeping Spaz between the old witch and me. I stepped offand got my rope. In a few short minutes I was at the fence.

Hobbling Spaz, I crawled through the fence and worked my way towards the calf, coiling my rope as I went. Sure enough, when Iwas within thirty-five feet of the calf, the cow came like a freight train. Luckily she stopped when she hit the fence and went back to her calf. I kept pulling the calf towards me with the cow bellerin, pawing, blowing snot, and running back and forth between the fence and the calf. Once I had the calf up to the fence, it was a simple task of removing the rope through a barbed wire fence while the cow was standing over it trying to get me through the fence. She almost succeeded too. The t post was bent and two wires broken by the time I released the calf. I had had enough holiday celebration for one day, and I decidedto come back out the next day on my personal horse so I could tie down the cow in order to tag the calf.

I located the old witch early the next morning, and true to form, she charged when I was within thirty feet of her. After her first charge, I backed off to thirty-five feet. As she was standing there pawing and bellerin, I built up a large loop and threw a hoolihand at her.The plan was to catch her head and a front foot so that I'd have a little better leverage on her as she out weighed old Whistledink by several hundred pounds.

Its great when a plan works,but this time it didnt. I had her caught, but bythe body. But at least I had her caught. Loping circles around her I managed to get her back legs tangled up, pitched some slack over he rhead and ever so slowly managed to get herdown. Taking one pigging string I tied her front feet over her head, then took a second string and tied her back feet together. Then I got myrope off her and tagged her calf.

Then it was time to put my rope on her back feet, stretc hher out and take off the pigging strings, hopingthat Whistledink would be able to hold her long enough for me to get mounted. The front end worked out pretty good, but when I started working on the back end, she gave a big flop and was up charging at my horse. Whistledink may be dumb, but he's not stupid, and he also hates cows. He struck herin the head right before he wheeled aroundand let her have it with both barrels. She turned off, and he wheeled around and bit her for good measure.

She didnt want to have much to do with him after that so it wasnt hard to get up to her, heel her and have her down again. This time she stayed down long enough for me to get my pigging string off. The Flying P weighed and frame-scored all of the cows when they preg checked inthe fall. As I said, this was a big cow, and I wanted to know just how big, so I checked the records. She probably wasn't the worlds biggest cow, but she did tip the scales at eighteen hundred and eighty pounds. That is a lot of beef trying to make lunch out of a guy on a holiday.

If you like this story and want the book it is available from Buckaroo Leather at
http://www.buckarooleather.com/books/details/577/2/books---educational/a-million-to-one-odds.html