Grass fed and fearless

Hello everyone!

What do you know about “grass-fed” beef?

These are my Angus beef cows.

They are mostly black with some red mixed in.

My cows are fed grass and hay (in winter) free of herbicides.

We give them small amounts of organic grain to keep them bunk trained (the bunk is the feeder).

When you’re a small farmstead you don’t have elaborate fencing and ranch staff to help keep cows in so when you need to move them or coax them back after escape you need them to be bribable.

Therefore a prior relationship with a feed bucket of some sort is a must.

“Grass fed and finished” can means lots of things.

Often the grass and the hay (also grass) are treated with herbicides to keep weeds out of the pasture.

Farmers need to spray weeds in their fields for a number of reasons.

One reason is that they have too many cows per the area of grass so cows have a lot of pressure on them to eat what is there, even if it’s not their preference.

This is how cows eat things they aren’t supposed to in a merge enough quantity to cause illness.

Just because a “weed” is in a field doesn’t mean the cow will eat it UNLESS there aren’t other alternatives.

Spraying weeds becomes essential when your pastures aren’t healthy and you have a high stocking rate.

The other thing to consider is that animals instinctively know what is and isn’t harmful to them when:

A. They are familiar with the eco system

B. Their brain and senses are intact.

Vaccines, medicines, poor breeding practices and mineral deficiencies can all alter any animal’s instinctive wisdom.

By keeping our herd small we are able to prioritize the health of our fields, use minimal medical interventions (I use cell salts and homeopathy with some herbs, primarily and loads of prayer) and allow animals to choose what they want to eat, when and how much of the abundant nutrition at their disposal.

By having a small number of animals I feel comfortable intervening less and energetically relating to them a sense of empowerment.

I care for them, but they are independent beings making choices and decisions and given the freedom and space to do so.

It may sound silly, but when you imagine the opposite, animals in confinement on chemical-treated grass routinely injected and medicated, you see that I’m actually not that crazy for respecting and wishing to cultivate my cows’ sovereignty and wisdom.

What’s crazy is that we even have to talk about it, because it should just be happening naturally…but as I’ve said before, such things don’t scale well and that’s how we end up operating in fear, by being too big.

Like Pharma meds, Agro-chemicals’ role on the farm are largely based and rooted in fear.

Fear that an animal may eat something wrong and die.

Fear that too small a herd won’t bring in enough money.

Fear that left alone without chemicals, the fields won’t produce enough food.

Fear that animals are too stupid to avoid poison.

Fear that one won’t be competitive in the market.

Fear that nature isn’t wise and capable.

I’m not a large scale farmer with a tremendous amount of pressure to make a business work so truthfully, I am not operating under the same potential fears that many farmers justifiably contend with.

I have the freedom to experiment fearlessly because the stakes are less high for me.

Already my wisdom and strategies I’ve learned experimenting have been useful and helpful to other farmers who were afraid their animals weren’t doing well on their pasture.

So while I can not change the system, everything we are doing here is contributing to the library of local knowledge and can be a resource to other larger farms who are tired of living under the tyranny of fear and farming chemical usage as well.

And to that I give God all the glory, because it His wisdom and strength that keeps me learning and experimenting and even feeling brave enough to speak up and share what I’ve learned with others when it’s not popular and I’m fairly new to the game.

FYI- Beef cows and sheep do excellent in the fescue (type of grass) fields of the Carolinas but dairy cows and goats typically need more nutrition than the grass can offer.

You my friend, Wise Woman who is reading this, when you are living fearlessly in any area in your life, operating with God-given wisdom you too should feel encouraged to share that humbly but confidently .

¹⁶ Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Matthew 5

In Corinthians Paul tells us that God saw it fit to make His wisdom seem like foolishness to the world while the worlds “wisdom”, rooted in foolishness seems wise.

Don’t be afraid to say the unpopular.

Don’t be afraid to share what you know and have learned even if it seems unconventional.

If God has fed you wisdom, share it, fearlessly.

xoxo,

Sarah

**Shout out to my darling friend Laura Schoenfeld who coined the phrase “fed and fearless” and has a great podcast with that title.

I’m just borrowing it for this one article, Lau.

🤎