Farming & Food
Grass provides the perfect diet for cattle and sheep. It is all they need to produce nutritious, healthy meat for people to cook and eat.
But grass can be tricky to manage. Its one aim in life is to grow, produce a seed head and then die. Only skilled grassland farmers can manage it to produce high quality animal food throughout the year – grazed out in the fields or given as conserved winter-feed, either dried as hay or pickled as silage.
The people I write about in these blogs are some of the best and most innovative farmers and chefs in the world. They look after their soils, their land and their animals and take great care to source and prepare the best meat possible. We should be proud of them all.
A week in my working life…
A couple of weeks ago I headed off from Cambridge on Monday morning and travelled to the far South West, making it back home on Friday. During the week I visited three fantastic farmers and attended a conference, where the discussions were all about grass!
New “talking grass” blog and shop!
Welcome to the new updated “talking grass” blog and, now for the first time a shop – a project that has been in my head for many months, even years! I first set up TalkingGrass in 2011 to share all the wonderful grassy stories I come across through my work as a grassland writer and editor.
BGS Grazing mentors
I am so pleased that British Grassland Society director Elaine Jewkes has secured money from the Prince’s Countryside Fund to train farmer mentors, so they can go out and help other farmers gain more from grazing. In the latest issue of Grass and Forage Farmer...
Techno-grazing UK style
Ten years after I visited farmer/inventor Harry Weir and his techno-grazed Friesian bulls and heifers in New Zealand, I found myself listening to James Daniel on a Cornish beef farm, talking about the techno-grazing trials he is running there.
Converting consumers to Pasture for Life meat
Certified Pasture for Life beef and lamb is at the ‘top of the tree’, as it is delicious, ethical and guilt-free, according to Daniel Nowland, head of technical for the Jamie Oliver Group. Speaking at the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association’s AGM at the Royal Agricultural University…
Doubling output without buying more land – the power of grass!
Scottish farmer Robert Fleming has learnt much from doing a Nuffield Scholarship this year, looking at efficient beef production. But he is also making major changes to his business after seeing the results of grass overseeding trials carried out back home too.