And we're off!


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From Pasture to Plate: Northfield Farms Edition

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Today while at Northfield Farms, we got our first look at an on-farm butcher shop that shares their "pasture to plate" story quite well. Jan was very passionate about sharing the story of his farm with us before showing us his livestock and butcher shop. Since we toured a similar butcher shop in Minnesota, the St. Paul Meat Shop, we noticed the main concepts of selling meat at a small butcher shop wasn't too different from the United States. For starters, both butcher shop's main goal was to provide a high quality, safe and wholesome product for their consumers. The meat counters both contained numerous meat cuts that cater to various palates and customer's specific needs. Both butchers sold bacon that could be sliced to a specific thickness and quantity; however, Northfield offered dry-aged steaks that could be cut the same way. Nick Mangigian- St. Paul Meat Shop Marc Andrews- Northfield Butcher Not only does Northfield Farms ope...
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Touring Northfield Farm

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   Ar riving at Northfield Farms, we were greeted with biscuits, tea, and coffee.   Jan introduced to us the development of his farm.   He started off as a banker with an intent to start raising horses. However, the horses destroyed the grassland, so he began to look into to cattle after reading many old farm books.   He settled on Dexter cattle because of their dual purpose and high meat qualities.   His first Dexter cow was bought when he saw an advertisement in the local newspaper. He continued to purchase Dexters until his herd grew to about 250 head when the moved to their current location in 1994.   At this time, there was a large outbreak in the BSE crisis, which came from crushed sheep feed matter, but the Dexter breed was not affected due to their separation from dairy.   The business on the farm continued to be slow, but just enough revenue came in for the farm to continue until it was promoted to the public.   The public beca...
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Mooooore Dairy

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Over the past few days we have had the opportunity to visit two different conventional dairy farms. The first one was Southview Farm. Southview is owned by Charlie Hughes, it is family farm that has been in the Hughes family since 1919. Charlie took over the farm in 2008 from his father, and has made several upgrades to the farm to make it as efficient as possible. The farm currently milks 100 head of Holstein-Friesian cattle (the typical breed found in England), but is working towards increasing the herd to 120 head.   Since Charlie has three kids of his own, he wants his farm to run as efficiently as possible, which is why he has adapted several technologies on the farm that are not usually found on a farm of his size. Southview Farms uses robotic milkers, automatic lighting, automatic calf feeders, and automatic feed scrapers. The robotic milkers allow the cows to go in and milk themselves whenever they want to be milked, which Charlie says is a minimum of twice a day. Sou...
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