By all accounts the Atlantic Provinces were blessed with a bumper year for forages both pastured and stored. By September, for some, the party was over, however. Was talking to George Fullerton over on New Brunswick’s Kingston Peninsula who said a couple of farmers were feeding out hay as pastures dried up. It had been dry there, and even hurricane Earl failed to deliver much needed rain. The hurricane, though it did bring a good wash of rain to southwest Nova Scotia, was over-blown by the media. Was it even hurricane strength when it reached our shores?
A bit of a blow doesn’t send Nova Scotia’s youth fleeing for cover. They grab a bed sheet and are off down the road, as you see in this photo taken by Brooke Gray near Broad Cove on the South Shore.
Taking hurricane Earl in (bedsheet) stride.
Prince Edward Island may have taken more of a lashing. In the aftermath, Les Halliday, beef specialist with the Prince Edward Island Department of Agriculture, came up with a recipe for growing two-foot corn. “Grow to eight feet then add a little bit of Earl.” Earlier I had asked Les about feeding green potatoes to livestock. “Green potatoes are not good for man nor beast,” he responded by email. There is a toxin, solanin, “produced on exposure to sunlight. It can be present before the green shows on the skin or on spouted potatoes. . . . If it is just skin deep you can peel them; however, if it is deep into the flesh it is best to compost.” Compost it is.
There is a level of anticipation that department of agriculture efforts toward improving the Cape John Community Pasture (a slow, slow process indeed) will evolve into a long-term commitment to all those pastures the government once maintained. One Nova Scotia Department employee who we can fairly safely guess would have been in support of such a move was Brian Smith who retired just last year from his position as Executive Director of Agricultural Services, and died Sept. 2 in Truro after battling cancer.
“So very sad,” wrote one person who worked closely with the beef industry for years. “He was one of the good guys.” John Tilley, Nova Scotia Cattle Producer chair, echoed the sentiment, adding that when there was a meeting scheduled and it was made known that Brian would be attending, “there would be a sigh of relief.” Why? Because “he knew how to build trust.”
Tilley spoke of Brian’s “Whole style,” describing is as “low key. He knew how to listen, and how to respond to what was being said.” As students return to colleges, universities, and schools in the region so, too, we hope and in fact fully expect, will pressure for these institutions to step up to the (dinner) plate with local foods for cafeterias.
We frequently rail against the big supermarket chains for failing to engage with our farming community by purchasing truly local (not 24 hours by air, land, or sea transport) foods. Considering how much food is consumed in institutions of one kind or another from schools to hospitals to prisons, it would pay to re-direct some of that pressure. National and even international corporations are feeding our kids. They are so big they likely cut contracts with only the largest suppliers – unless forced or embarrassed to do otherwise. As an example of size, multi-national Sodexo, Inc., which has been contracting with Dalhousie University to provide much if not all of its food, claims on its website to be, “the leading provider of comprehensive service solutions in North America serving 10 million customers in 6,000 locations every day.”
If just one of these big meal providers would look to Atlantic Beef Products for its beef the abattoir could just about disband its marketing and sales arm. It might even be able to chew its way to shorter wait times that have in recent months been forcing those who can to ship finished cattle to Ontario or Quebec.
Saving the best for last, by coincidence desserts figure in two articles in this issue of Atlantic Beef, one in John Duynisveld’s Pasture Notes, and the other in Hugh Harmon’s New Brunswick Cattle Producer report. Even a cow that’s eaten its fill will find room for another mouthful of lush green grass, Duynisveld writes, comparing that phenomenon to the way we can always seem to find room even after a big meal for a slice of pie.
Happy Thanksgiving and pie eating to our readers in the U.S. DvL
