Posted on 12/30/2003 8:05:26 PM PST by steve86
Cash cows
This story was published Tuesday, December 30th, 2003
By Anna King, Herald staff writer
WALLA WALLA -- Cattle farmer Joel Huesby says he's not worried about mad cow disease. In fact, he's increasing his herd's size exponentially because of it.
This past year, Huesby's family's business, Thundering Hooves, raised and sold 40 pasture-finished beef cattle. But since the mad cow disease scare, Huesby has seen a dramatic increase in orders for 2004.
Because of that, he's decided to boost his herd to 200 to 300 head and open a processing and retail outlet in downtown Walla Walla.
"Oh boy!" Huesby said about the past few days since news broke about the case of mad cow disease in Mabton.
"We don't wish to gloat about the situation," Huesby said, speaking about Thundering Hooves' apparent good fortune because of mad cow disease. "We just want to do a good job for people, and we don't want to let the community down."
Thundering Hooves raises pasture-finished beef, meaning the animals are raised entirely on pasture. They never get grain or protein feeds, Huesby said.
"It boils down to letting animals live in a natural environment and letting them eat what they are supposed to eat, which is not other animal parts," he said.
Mad cow disease is believed to be spread by feed contaminated with protein rendered from infected animals, a practice banned in the United States since 1997.
Thundering Hooves also produces and markets pasture-raised chicken, pork, turkey, lamb and goats. It sells meat over the Internet and at farmers markets to top-end restaurants, loyal clients and first-time buyers.
"You are eliminating some of the preconditions that are leading to mad cow disease," she said.
Huesby is able to concentrate on producing naturally grown meat because the operation is small. He said he's wary of letting the business become too large.
"We don't want to get so big that we compromise quality or the ability to deliver with timeliness to our customers," he said.
Huesby said his customers know their farmer, that's why they feel good about buying his meat.
Although it is not yet certified organic by the state, the 225-acre farm is on track to be certified within three years, Huesby said.
"We are not certified organic, but our land has not had fertilizers or herbicides for 10 years," he said.
There are about 33 certified organic producers of meat, dairy or poultry in Washington, according to the Washington State Department of Agriculture's Organic Food Program.
Quality control
All the meat sold by Thundering Hooves is raised, butchered and processed by the company, and that makes a difference in quality control, Huesby said.
The animals are not loaded onto trucks and run through chutes into a killing room. Huesby said the best place for an animal to die is on the farm, because there is less stress and it's more humane.
He's also better able to keep track of each package of meat and where it came from.
"Any animal that we sell to anyone, we will be able to trace back to the animal, not just to the state or to a lot, but to the animal," Huesby explained.
"People who are hand filleting our beef know the difference," Huesby said speaking of the care used to exclude any spinal cord or nerve tissue in the company's hamburger. Tissues from the brain, spinal cord and certain portions of the intestines have been linked to transmission of mad cow to humans, say U.S. Department of Agriculture officials.
On Monday morning, Thundering Hooves signed the final papers to buy Kwik Freez, a custom meat processing facility on East Isaacs Avenue in downtown Walla Walla. With the purchase, Thundering Hooves will have a storefront and base of operations to sell its meats.
The business will begin selling chicken immediately and other types of meats as soon as three months, he said.
Despite the increased demand for pasture-raised meat, Huesby has not decided whether to raise prices. "It's too early for us to decide what to do."
Customers already have been willing to pay a premium for his meat. Last year, he said, his prices were about 10 percent more than for the same cuts of meat at regular supermarkets.
The company's Web site says a 200-lb. half of a beef costs about $912, while a 15-pound ground beef pack costs about $4 per pound. Besides the ground beef pack, the smallest portion of beef sold is an eighth of a beef.
Raising up history
Huesby said his family saved their money-losing farm when they decided to try a wild idea.
"Ten years ago I turned my back on commodity agriculture," he said. "It started with my wife and with a few dozen chickens at the market."
The chickens sold like hot cakes at the Walla Walla farmers market.
This year the Huesbys raised nearly 7,000 chickens.
Success selling meat directly to customers wasn't instant, Huesby said. It took a long time for the farm to adjust.
"Changing from chemical farming to organic farming is a journey," Huesby said. "You can't bounce back until you hit bottom."
Just like a person can be addicted to chemicals, so can land or a farmer, he said, quipping, "Hi, my name is Joel Huesby. I'm a recovering farmer."
Many of his neighbors thought he was crazy for letting his fields go, Huesby said. His land grew tall with weeds before it became rich pasture. "Things get ugly," he said.
Huesby put 36,000 tons of paper into his farm's soil to rebuild it after years of traditional chemical farming, plowing it into the soil with a team of Percheron horses that provided inspiration for the farm's name.
The horses loved to romp and play in the fields at night, Huesby explained. When the family would go to bed, the family would hear the Percherons' hooves thundering up and down the paddock.
But the horses weren't always glamorous. While tilling the fields one day, Huesby fell off the seat between the horses and blades and the discs ground him into the soil.
Pointing to long, pale scars running up the side of his face, he said he has similar scars all over his body.
He decided not to use the horses anymore, but his land was well on its way to recovery.
Many hands
As the business started to succeed, Huesby and his wife needed help. Soon Huesby's mother, father, brother, sister-in-law, sister and brother-in-law were all helping full time with the farm. And sometimes that isn't enough hands now, he said.
"Our business has more than doubled from what we did last year," he said, "and we can just barely keep up with what's going on."
Huesby said with this year's expansion, they may need to employ six to eight additional people.
Still, family members do everything they can themselves -- from hunting down new business to butchering. It keeps them busy.
Huesby said he spends an hour or two on the Internet every morning, trying to keep up. "Yet on Wednesday I am ankle-deep in turkey feathers," he said.
For more information about Thundering Hooves, call 1-866-350-9400 or visit the Web site at www.thunderinghooves.net.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.
We don't eat most of the meats he offers but I am tempted to drive over to Walla Walla and check out his chicken and turkey.
Hope they are not from canada
For me? . . . uh . . . there ain't no grass green enough to marble the kind of beef that REEEEEEEEEAly tastes good and cuts with a fork. You don't need animal parts but you DO need corn.
We used to raise, kill and cut a beef per year . . . even tried to finish like comes out of feed-lots. We gave up. It costs too much to finish one-at-a-time beef.
Is this guy some type of joke, 200 to 300 animals on 250 acres with seven thousand chickens and no fertilizer. It cannot be done. Anyway free range chicken eating cow patties really sounds good. Grass feed beef is tough as leather and has no marbling, which is what makes beef tender.
I'm not dissing this guy and would really like to try his chickens. Two years ago we tried a Willy Bird turkey from Santa Rosa but this time my wife gave it two thumbs down.
What's this paper stuff all about? Paper's have chemicals in them too.
I also question having more cattle then acres etc. I don't know what a realistic amount of acres per cow should be but a acre or less per cow doesn't sound right.
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