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GourmET nEWS oCTobEr 2016 www.gourmetnews.com nEWS & noTES 1 0 Grass-fed Beef Continued from PAGE 1 that we possibly can," Scarpace said. "When we're working with ranchers, that's what we're looking for." "Just because a grocery store's label says vegetarian fed, it does not mean that the cow ate grass its whole life," he said. Plaid Cow Society meat is trimmed to re- move all of the visible fat, so that what the customer ends up buying is just the pro- tein. "A lot of times in the grocery store, the steaks are 20 to 50 percent fat per pound, which means that the customer is paying for that fat," Scarpace said. Once it's trimmed, it's carefully pack- aged to ensure that it'll reach its pur- chaser fresh. "We don't freeze. We don't add any type of gas to preserve the meat. We don't add any type of meat glue or anything," Scarpace said. "I feel strongly about the customer not knowing the dif- ference between what they paid for and what they end up getting. What upsets me is when someone buys something and they don't know what's happened to it, and they think it's the same as something that's sitting next to it." "We're trying to open the lines of com- munication. Our packaging is very clear on what we do and what we don't," he contin- ued. "It's just little simple things like that that we're trying to do with the consumer." Meat is shipped out from the USDA-in- spected southern California processing plant in recyclable gel-packed containers that keep it cold without freezing it in time to be at the customer's home by Friday. "The product that's shipped out that day has been processed that day, so that our turnaround from farm to table is incredibly fast," Scarpace said. "The whole thing is re- cyclable top to bottom. That was huge. We wanted something that was sustainable, which was not easy." Although Plaid Cow Society is a sub- scription box, Scarpace has eliminated the subscription commitment. There are no member fees, Plaid Cow may be canceled at any time and members have the option to skip a week's delivery. Deliveries are separated into plans: one- person plan will receive 12 cuts delivered every month while the two-person plan in- cludes 12 cuts delivered every two weeks. Currently Plaid Cow Society is available to be shipped to Oregon, Washington, Ne- vada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Colorado and California with more states to be added as the brand grows. For further information, visit www.plaid cowsociety.com. GN Organic Valley Continued from PAGE 1 organic products," she said. "Retailers are re- alizing that their customers are looking for it." While all Organic Valley milk is sourced from pasture-raised cows, the farmer-owned dairy cooperative is taking that one step fur- ther for Grassmilk milk. The cows are 100 percent grass-fed and eat only fresh grasses when the pastures are green and dried for- ages, like hay, after grass season is over in the fall and winter. They do not eat supple- mental grains – no corn or soybeans. Grass- milk has been shown to offer higher levels of Omega 3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated fatty acid that is thought to have positive effects on human health, compared to milk from cows fed a conventional dairy ration that includes grain. The Grassmilk products appeal to an evolving audience of consumers who gen- erally adopt organic food products either when they have children or when either they themselves or a close family member or friend experiences a serious health issue, said Organic Valley's Director for Brand Management Tripp Hughes. In any given year, up to 25 percent of organic consumers are new within the past two years, he added. "There's constantly new people coming into the category." He noted that even those consumers who adopted the organic ethos decades ago are still evolving, becoming more skeptical about their food and looking for more au- thenticity and transparency in the food they're buying. "Authenticity and trans- parency are more critical today than they've ever been," Hughes said. As a result, Organic Valley has started or- ganizing regional farm tours so consumers can visit its farms, and bringing its retailers out to visit its farmers as well. "Those farm tours are very popular," Hughes said. "Quite often, it's the first time the retailers have ever been on a farm." David Stratton, who's been dairy farming at Stone Mill Farm in upstate New York for the past 14 years, is one of 81 dairy farmers in the northeastern U. S. who are supplying Organic Valley with the 100 percent grass-fed milk that goes into the Grassmilk products, with more expected to join the dairy cooper- ative next year. Organic Valley pays him a premium for his milk because it's organically produced and another premium because he's raising his 44 milking cows, an assortment of replacement heifer calves and five bulls on pasture and dried forage only. This is the way he dreamed of raising dairy cows when he was a child spending summers at his uncle's farm, he said. That was what he describes as an "Old MacDonald type of farm" with a gar- den, cows, horses, chickens and pigs. "It was the cows I really liked," he said. When he grew up, he tried to find a way to be- come a dairy farmer through the years of his 20s, but he couldn't find a way to do it. While he looked for a farm he could afford, he became a successful cabinet maker, but he kept dreaming. "I just couldn't shake it out of my system," he said. Then, a friend referred him to a man who'd bought a dairy farm but knew nothing about farming and needed someone to manage it for him. The new owner had bought the farm to obtain a steady supply of cow ma- nure to feed into the biogas generator he was inventing – the cows themselves were merely the means to that end. Stratton gave him a call, came out for a visit and landed the job. Eleven months later, the inventor's biogas project had cleaned him out, and he abandoned the 206-acre farm. "I had to leave or buy the farm," Stratton said. "The bank took a chance on me." Stratton reseeded the pasture, which had been planted with corn and alfalfa – typical of the crops planted by many modern dairy farms, which rely on a scheme of a few plants plus supplements to make up nutritional deficits. Stratton's reseeded pastures were de- signed as a complete diet for the cows, with each plant contributing its own chemistry and fiber content. Then he opened up the barn doors and let out into the sun the cows that had been confined inside to make it eas- ier to collect their drop- pings. "I love the cows," Stratton said. "I used to daydream about having a farm where the cows could graze naturally – and make a living doing it." He met his wife, Michelle, in January of 2014 through an online dating service. She'd been living in Manhattan since graduating from college with a degree in photogra- phy, first bartending and then becoming a doula and getting her nursing degree with a view to completing an advanced degree in mid- wifery. Despite her love of the city, after 13 years, she began to feel that she was a bit of a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, so she moved back home with her mom in Syracuse, about an hour away from where David was living on Stone Mill Dairy in Lebanon. She got a nursing job at the State University of New York's Upstate Uni- versity Hospital, and at the insistence of her brother-in-law, she signed up for an ac- count on Match.com. Her first date with David Stratton sealed the deal for her, she said. "The first night his passion was so profound and so infectious. I never met anyone who loves what they do as much as him. And he was so darn cute," she said. "I felt like we both just knew. I feel like we were both looking for this.... I never fell that hard for somebody before." "She used to live in Manhattan, and now she's Mrs. Stratton," David interjected. Not long after that first date, David brought her back to visit his dairy farm, where his cows were dry for the winter, and with no milking to do, the farm chores were at their sea- sonal low point. Michelle fell in love with both David and the quiet rhythm of winter on the farm. "And then calf sea- son hit, and by then I was head over heels," Michelle said. David had plenty of time to introduce her to the history of his farm, which was deeded to its first owner, Zar Benedict, by Great Britain in 1812. His barn, the same one in which David milks his cows today, was originally built by 1814, when it first appears in the local records, and the house was likely also built in 1814. Benedict sold it to his son in 1856, and that son sold it out of the family in 1866. "I'm the 13th owner of this farm," David said. There's very little about how he farms today that those early farmers wouldn't rec- ognize, even though he's harvesting his hay with a modern baler. He's milking in the same barn, which has been updated with electric fans for ventilation and electric milk- ing equipment. The cows come into the barn twice a day to be milked, herded in from their pasture with David's quiet whistle. While they're milked, David spends time with each, assessing its health and well-being and making sure the cows are comfortable. After milking, they stroll back out to pasture again, taking time to nibble at the grasses near the fence line along the way. When the weather's hot, they shade up under the trees, chewing their cuds and swatting away flies. "They get to be cows," David said. Today, Stone Mill Dairy is profitable – not something that every American dairy farmer can say with confidence, and Michelle describes herself as a part-time nurse, still working two shifts a week at Upstate University Hospital, and a full-time farmer, a role that she says she's still grow- ing into. "The significance of the farm is still growing on me. It's a really extraordi- nary lifestyle. We live and work together 24 hours a day," she said. "That's the part we're still navigating, the 24/7 of it all. But there's so much beauty in that." "I met David, and I found that my life is so much more complete," she continued. "I feel so lucky every day." GN