/* Originally posted 12/4/2009 */

I’m strongly associated with a federal grant request to form a Nature Friendly Meat Producers Organization whose primary goal is to create a value-added labeling system for those producers who raise cattle in a wildlife friendly environment (e.g. on mixed warm season/cool season pastures – not 100% fescue ones). We will see if that grant receives funding, but it was my intention to push the organization towards utilizing breeds of cattle that flourish on mixed vegetation. Belties are on the top of my list for that. We have a packaging facility – Special D meats up in Macon that is interested in helping and several other sponsors, so its feeling like this might actually become reality.

I’m in the process of converting 30 acres of fescue to warm season grasses this winter. The fields were recently sprayed with roundup for a winter kill, and will be frost seeded in January. Alas, it is likely to take 2-3 years for this field to become completely established and productive. Once done, I’ll still have ~70 acres of mostly cool season pasture.

/* 8/22/2011 update */

The grant was refused several years ago, simply not enough money to do everything in the grant system.  Such grant proposals require a real human to sponsor them and that was me.  To this day, we continue to get calls and catalogs from food processing companies…