We took a week long camping trip to Colorado this Summer. We went to Westcliffe and stayed in the Alvarado Campground. There were no hot showers at the campground, but we had everything else. Including a bear that walked right into our campground on the last day. I’ve got pictures of that bear check it out right here.

From Colorado Camp…

We hauled our 4 Wheelers up there (Noah calls them fourlers). That was a lot of fun. We also hauled our canoe with us. I swear we looked like the Beverly Hillbillies on our trip up there we had so much stuff piled on the 16 foot trailer! But we ended up having a great time.

We took a train ride through the Royal Gorge one day. That was spectacular. We followed that up the next day by going river rafting down the Arkansas River. The older kids braved the Royal Gorge and the younger ones took a slightly lesser Big Horn Canyon trip. But it was thrilling for all concerned.

The nights were in the 50’s and it was so nice. We left (and returned to) temperatures in the low 100’s so we were loving the change.

Now we’re back and it’s nice to be home. Thank goodness for wonderful neighbors who made sure all the animals were taken care of. What a blessing!

If he had gotten hurt, it wouldn’t have been as funny. But since he was fine, then there’s no problem putting it up here right?

The setting is the Horn Creek trail, near the top. Eric and I have been hiking for several hours in mid June, 2008. We encounter a lot of snow obscuring the trail. We tried to make the best of it, like a couple of sea otters or something.

Check it out here!

I like this blog called The Beginning Farmer. This guy is thinking hard about what he is doing. Admittedly it really teases the brain sometimes to work out what the Right Thing is to do when it comes what you should eat and what you should avoid — for ethical reasons.

Bud Williams jumps right in here with some deep philosophical thoughts about Grass Farming vs Industrial Farming. Put another way, he is working out the economic justification for each. I guess Bud believes in the free market — he says that consumer choice is what it’s all about. Farmers must produce certified grassfed beef because consumers want to eat it. The trouble with that reasoning is it follows that people eat industrial/cornfed beef because they want to and that’s why it’s produced….

Hmmm. It’s quite a subject to get your head around. You should take a look. It gets you thinking.

He’s hilarious. He sticks out his tongue. He love’s water. His legs are so long he has to bend them to take a drink.

It started when I looked at Christine’s blog where she talked about her first experience of grassfed beef.

She tried it after receiving an inadvertent advert in favor of certified grassfed beef from the movie”King Corn”, where she learned that most corn produced in the US is fed to cattle, with detrimental effects on cattle and humans alike.

Reviewing the movie in the New York Times, Matt Zoller Seitz describes “King Corn” as a cultural and scientific history of the crop. Their film is a gentle, meandering entry in the Truth-Seeking Comic Hero genre, as practiced by Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock.” (Remember “Supersize Me?”) Read the full review here.

You need to watch the movie if you want to know what turned Christine onto certified grassfed beef. P.S. That there in the photo is Curt Ellis, one of the co-presenters of the picture, sliding down a pile of corn near Des Moines, Iowa.

There’s a funny thing happening with beef exports down in Austalia and I’m betting this is going to be good for the grass-fed beef industry worldwide. A report on JCN Network states that Australian beef exports to Japan fell overall in May. That was to be expected, what with the high cost of grains and the weak world economy. But what interested me was that while exports expensive grainfed beef to Japan decreased during that month, the exports of “cheaper grassfed beef” increased. That is fantastic news for the grassfed industry. It is getting competitive. Hey, it might even actually pay the public to eat delicious, healthy, nutritious, low-fast meat in the future. What great news!

The folk at NWHSU have published an amazing summary outlining the benefits to human health of eating grassfed beef as opposed to the mass-produced grainfed type.

The benefits of grassfed beef can be summarized as follows: Much Less Fat, Far Fewer Calories, More Omega-3 Fatty Acids, Many More Vitamins — and it is a Good Source of Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA). Read this article entitled Grain-Fed Versus Grass-Fed Animal Products here.

We are often asked about the standards that apply to Grassfed Beef. Well, you should visit the American Grassfed Association (of which we are members) and go to the Standards page. It’s all there!