Cow Pasture Quotes

Look, Mother, I am never going to be thin. I'm Norwegian. If you wanted a thin daughter, you should not have married a man whose female ancestors carried cows home from the pasture

Love is a green sky on a blue pasture, and I am the flying cow eating it all up.

It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture into Terabithia and turned him into a king. He had thought that was it. Wasn't king the best you could be? Now it occurred to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed for a while and grew strong you had to move on. For hadn't Leslie, even in Terabithia, tried to push back the walls of his mind and make him see beyond to the shining world—huge and terrible and beautiful and very fragile? (Handle with care—everything—even the predators.) Now it was time for him to move out. She wasn't there, so he must go for both of them. It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength. As for the terrors ahead—for he did not fool himself that they were all behind him—well, you just have to stand up to your fear and not let it squeeze you white. Right, Leslie? Right.

These weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.

Fuck golf anyway. Stupid goddamn game, chasing a ball around a perfectly good cow pasture.

What he never counted on was me and the degree to which your mother’s purity would affect you. (Menyara) You’re so full of shit, Menyara, you ought to be a cow pasture. (Nick)

Many of the presidents have sworn themselves in to similarly foolish titles: Governor of Cow Pastures, Commanding General of Standing Chickens.

After the boy at the supermarket had called her those names, Evelyn Couch had felt violated. Raped by words. Stripped of everything. She had always tried to keep this from happening to her, always been terrified of displeasing men, terrified of the names she would be called if she did. She had spent her life tiptoeing around them like something lifting her skirt stepping through a cow pasture. She had always suspected that if provoked, those names were always close to the surface, ready to lash out and destroy her.

She just knew that she felt weird – but literally every teenager feels weird. Who doesn't feel weird? All the music she listened to was about feeling weird. All the books she read were about feeling weird. So when she was seventeen it didn't seem strange to hang out with, like, a kid who was really into racism and another, a future truck stop mechanic, in a tent, with a ton of flannel and a bottle of Everclear or a dozen hits of acid. In a cow pasture. That was just, like, what you did. On one level you just went along with what was going on but on another you mythologized what a cool outlier you were and so you internalized a sense of your own weirdness as a badge of pride even as you emotionally dissociated yourself from it. Everybody cool is weird. This is how she mythologized her sense of being trans without understanding that she was trans.

To be honest, I had been restless...The sensation would rise suddenly like freight from the ocean floor--the unexpected discontent of cows in their pasture. The constant chewing of all that cud.

Just looking at them I grow greedy, as if they were freshly baked loaves waiting on their shelves to be broken open--that one and that--and I make my choice in a mood of exalted luck, browsing among them like a cow in sweetest pasture. For life is continuous as long as they wait to be read--these inked paths opening into the future, page after page, every book its own receding horizon. And I hold them, one in each hand, a curious ballast weighing me here to earth.

‎I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights — any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor; as when my neighbor's cow breaks out of her pasture early in the Spring and boldly swims the river, a cold grey tide, twenty-five or thirty rods wide, swollen by the melted snow. It is the Buffalo crossing the Mississippi.

An old lady had an Alderney cow, which she looked upon as a daughter. ....The whole town knew and kindly regarded Miss Betsy Barker's Alderney, therefore great was the sympathy and regret when, in an unguarded moment, the poor cow fell into a lime-pit. She moaned so loudly that she was soon heard and rescued; but meanwhile the poor beast had lost most of her hair and came out looking naked, cold and miserable, in a bare skin. Everybody pitied the animal, though a few could not restrain their smiles at her droll appearance. Miss Betsy Barker absolutely cried with sorrow and dismay; and it was said she thought of trying a bath of oil. This remedy, perhaps, was recommended by some one of the number whose advice she asked; but the proposal, if ever it was made, was knocked on the head by Captain Brown's decided "Get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel drawers, ma'am, if you wish to keep her alive, But my advice is, kill the poor creature at once." Miss Betsy Barker dried her eyes, and thanked the Captain heartily; she set to work, and by-and-by all the town turned out to see the Alderney meekly going to her pasture, clad in dark grey flannel.I have watched her myself many a time. Do you ever see cows dressed in grey flannel in London?

Whether they are part of a home or home is a part of them is not a question children are prepared to answer. Having taken away the dog, take away the kitchen–the smell of something good in the oven for dinner. Also the smell of washing day, of wool drying in the wooden rack. Of ashes. Of soup simmering on the stove. Take away the patient old horse waiting by the pasture fence. Take away the chores that kept him busy from the time he got home from school until they sat down to supper. Take away the early-morning mist, the sound of crows quarreling in the treetops. His work clothes are still hanging on a nail beside the door of his room, but nobody puts them on or takes them off. Nobody sleeps in his bed. Or reads the broken-back copy of Tom Swift and His Flying Machine. Take that away too, while you are at it. Take away the pitcher and bowl, both of them dry and dusty. Take away the cow barn where the cats, sitting all in a row, wait with their mouths wide open for somebody to squirt milk down their throats. Take away the horse barn too–the smell of hay and dust and horse piss and old sweat-stained leather, and the rain beating down on the plowed field beyond the door. Take all this away and what have you done to him? In the face of a deprivation so great, what is the use of asking him to go on being the boy he was. He might as well start life over again as some other boy instead.

Progress is a wonderful thing of course, and I can appreciate the lactiferins that are sprinkled on the pasture to turn the grass to cheese. And yet this lack of cows, however rational it may be, gives one the feeling that the fields and meadows, deprived of their phlegmatic, bemusedly ruminating presence, are pitifully empty.

She wanted to talk about it, to tell the peasants in the fields and the nobles in their palashos—the cows in the pastures, the very birds in the air— that everything was nothing. It was a delightful thought because it meant (to Tess) that one was free to choose, or decline to choose, without shame or coercion. For someone who was nothing, anything was possible.

I find books in used-book stores, chain and independent stores, on friends’ shelves and being read by some woman sitting opposite me on the subway. I find books the way a cow finds a new pasture, by looking to see where the other cows are headed.

And because I had the latest advanced mathematical training, I was given the job of analyzing the retractable landing gear for Jimmy Doolittle’s Lockheed Orion 9-D, a modification of the basic Orion. That was my first contact with any of the famous early aviators who would frequent the Lockheed plant. Others included Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, and Roscoe Turner. Doolittle, of course, was an early record-setting pilot, both military and civilian, with a master’s degree and doctorate in science from M.I.T. Then he was flying for Shell Oil Company, landing in out-of-the-way fields, cow pastures, and other unprepared strips.

When the cow goes to pasture,” says my mother, “it forgets to say good-bye.

Look, Mother, I am never going to be thin. I’m Norwegian. If you wanted a thin daughter, you should not have married a man whose female ancestors carried cows home from the pasture.

Outside the car, the cows and pastures are drifting away; they look calm, but calm is not the truth. Despair is the truth. This is what mother and father know. All hope is lost. We must return to where it was lost if we want to find it again.

I made a mental note to write starlings in my "Southern Speak" notebook. I'd already started the second page, thanks to Faye and Bobbie. One corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. "I try. So, Churchville. Let me see the map." I followed his directions, asking questions, until he drew a big circle around the funeral home. "That's it right there, just off 42. Or Buffalo Gap Highway. But you might not see any road signs. Out there things are a little...well, less posted. People just sort of know where they are. So look for these things." He drew in some more notes and--I'm not making this up--something like bugs with stick legs. "What are those?" I asked, not intending to sound rude. "Roaches?" "Those are cows. There's a pasture here." "Oh.

One fact is beyond dispute: Homogenization prevents the consumer from realizing just how little fat is contained in modern processed milk, even "full fat" milk. Before homogenization, milk purchasers looked for milk that had lots of cream - that was the sign that the milk came from healthy cows, cows on pasture. Old-fashioned milk contained from 4 to 8 percent butterfat, which translated into lots of cream on the top. Modern milk is standardize at 3.5 percent, no more. Butterfat brings bigger profits to the dairy industry as butter or as an ingredient in ice cream than as a component of liquid milk. The consumer has been cheated, but with homogenization, he can't tell.

In this garden, the air was sweet and clean, like the cool water running in the creek. Beyond the garden was the rainforest, a damp cathedral of fragrant myrtle and sassafras, sprawling mosses and ancient lichen... There was only one road into Vanishing Falls... the road meandered through hilly green pastures where black-and-white cows grazed, past pretty weatherboard farmhouses with splendid man ferns out front, thick hedges, and rose gardens.

One day in the spring of 1894 or so, Amanda Cobb looked out her kitchen window and saw Tyrus and a bunch of Negro boys merrily hauling a cart laden with scrap metal, broken furniture, and other things they’d found in backyards and vacant lots around town. They were headed toward the junkyard to try to make a few dollars, and Mrs. Cobb knew for what. “He was always thinking up ways of earning money to buy baseball supplies,” she would tell a writer for the Springfield (Massachusetts) Sunday Union and Republican in 1928. “He was always playing when he was a child. In fact, we had a hard time getting him to go to school. I remember that the first money he earned he spent for a mitt. He couldn’t have been more than six years old when a neighbor asked him to take his cow to the pasture and gave Ty some change for doing it. Ty didn’t buy candy or ice cream. He knew what he wanted, and he got it—a baseball glove.

The few remaining men can exist out their puny days dropped out on drugs or strutting around in drag or passively watching the high-powered female in action, fulfilling themselves as spectators, vicarious liver*, or breeding in the cow pasture with the toadies, or they can go off to the nearest friendly suicide center where they will be quietly, quickly, and painlessly gassed to death. Prior to the institution of automation, to the replacement of males by machines, the male should be of use to the female, wait on her, cater to her slightest whim, obey her every command, be totally subservient to her, exist in perfect obedience to her will, as opposed to the completely warped, degenerate situation we have now of men, not only not only not existing at all, cluttering up the world with their ignominious presence, but being pandered to and groveled before by the mass of females, millions of women piously worshiping the Golden Calf, the dog leading the master on a leash, when in fact the male, short of being a drag queen, is least miserable when his dogginess is recognized – no unrealistic emotional demands are made of him and the completely together female is calling the shots. Rational men want to be squashed, stepped on, crushed and crunched, treated as the curs, the filth that they are, have their repulsiveness confirmed. The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see SCUM barreling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won’t protect them against SCUM; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants. Men who are rational, however, won’t kick or struggle or raise a distressing fuss, but will just sit back, relax, enjoy the show and ride the waves to their demise.

But the great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free. it was the first thing one saw in the morning, across the rugged cow pasture studded with shaggy pines, and it ran through the days like the weather, not a thing thought about, but a part of consciousness itself. When the ice chunks came in of a winter morning, crumbly and white, throwing off gold and rose-coloured reflections from a copper-coloured sun behind grey clouds, he didn't observe the detail or know what is was that made him happy; but now, forty years later, he could recall all its aspects perfectly. They had made pictures in him when he was un-willing and unconscious, when his eyes were merely wide open.

When a fine old carpet is eaten by mice, the colors and patterns of what's left behind do not change,' wrote my neighbor and friend, the poet Jane Hirschfield, after she visited an old friend suffering from Alzheimer's disease in a nursing home. And so it was with my father. His mind did not melt evenly into undistinguishable lumps, like a dissolving sand castle. It was ravaged selectively, like Tintern Abbey, the Cistercian monastery in northern Wales suppressed in 1531 by King Henry VIII in his split with the Church of Rome. Tintern was turned over to a nobleman, its stained-glass windows smashed, its roof tiles taken up and relaid in village houses. Holy artifacts were sold to passing tourists. Religious statues turned up in nearby gardens. At least one interior wall was dismantled to build a pigsty. I've seen photographs of the remains that inspired Wordsworth: a Gothic skeleton, soaring and roofless, in a green hilly landscape. Grass grows in the transept. The vanished roof lets in light. The delicate stone tracery of its slim, arched quatrefoil windows opens onto green pastures where black-and-white cows graze. Its shape is beautiful, formal, and mysterious. After he developed dementia, my father was no longer useful to anybody. But in the shelter of his broken walls, my mother learned to balance her checkbook, and my heart melted and opened. Never would I wish upon my father the misery of his final years. But he was sacred in his ruin, and I took from it the shards that still sustain me.

A diet rich in readily available nutrients allows the bones to mineralize properly, particularly during gestation and early development, and gives the teeth immunity to decay throughout the stresses of life. Not surprisingly, he found that the native diets that conferred such good health on healthy, so-called primitive groups were rich in minerals, particularly calcium and phosphorus, necessary for healthy bones and teeth. What is surprising about the work of Weston Price is his discovery that these healthy diets always contained a good source of what he called "fat-soluble activators," nutrients like vitamin A and vitamin D, and another vitamin he discovered called Activator X or the Price Factor. These nutrients are found only in certain animal fats. Foods that provided these nutrients were considered sacred by the healthy groups he studied. These foods included liver and other organ meats from grazing animals; fish eggs; fish liver oils; fish and shellfish; and butter from cows eating rapidly growing green grass from well-mineralized pastures. Price concluded that without a rich supply of these fat-soluble nutrients, the body cannot properly use the minerals in food. These fat-soluble nutrients also nourish the glands and organs to give healthy indigenous peoples plenty of immunity during times of stress.

When we came out of the cookhouse, we found the boy's father, the Indian man who had been grazing the horses in the pasture, waiting for us. He wanted someone to tell his troubles to. He looked about guardedly, afraid that the Señora might overhear him. 'Take a look at me' he said. I don't even know how old I am. When I was young, the Señor brought me here. He promised to pay me and give me a plot of my own. 'Look at my clothes' he said, pointing to the patches covering his body. 'I can't remember how many years I've been wearing them. I have no others. I live in a mud hut with my wife and sons. They all work for the Señor like me. They don't go to school. They don't know how to read or write; they don't even speak Spanish. We work for the master, raise his cattle and work his fields. We only get rice and plantains to eat. Nobody takes care of us when we are sick. The women here have their babies in these filthy huts.' 'Why don't you eat meat or at least milk the cows?' I asked. 'We aren't allowed to slaughter a cow. And the milk goes to the calves. We can't even have chicken or pork - only if an animal gets sick and dies. Once I raised a pig in my yard' he went on. 'She had a litter of three. When the Señor came back he told the foreman to shoot them. That's the only time we ever had good meat.' 'I don't mind working for the Señor but I want him to keep his promise. I want a piece of land of my own so I can grow rice and yucca and raise a few chickens and pigs. That's all.' 'Doesn't he pay you anything?' Kevin asked. 'He says he pays us but he uses our money to buy our food. We never get any cash. Kind sirs, maybe you can help me to persuade the master . Just one little plot is all I want. The master has land, much land.' We were shocked by his tale. Marcus took out a notebook and pen. 'What's his name?'. He wrote down the name. The man didn't know the address. He only knew that the Señor lived in La Paz. Marcus was infuriated. 'When I find the owner of the ranch, I'll spit right in his eye. What a lousy bastard! I mean, it's really incredible'. 'That's just the way things are,' Karl said. 'It's sad but there's nothing we can do about it.

I didn’t answer right away; I was too busy savoring the moment. The delicious night air, the music of mama cows in a distant pasture, the trillions of stars overhead, the feeling of his fingers entwined in mine. The night couldn’t have gone any more perfectly. I’m not sure anything, even going home with him, could possibly make it any better. I started to open my mouth, but Marlboro Man beat me to it. Standing up and lifting me off the tailgate of his pickup, he carried me, Rhett Butler-style, toward the passenger door. Setting me down and opening my door, he said, “On second thought…I think I’d better take you home.” I smiled, convinced he must have read my mind. Whether he had or not, the fact was that instantly and noticeably the whole vibe between us had changed. Before I’d dumped my Chicago apartment and told him my plans to stay, the passion between us had sometimes felt urgent, rushed, almost as if some imaginary force was compelling us to get it all out right here, right now, because before too long we wouldn’t have the chance. There’d been a quiet desperation in our romance up until that point, feelings of excitement and lust mixed with an uncomfortable hint of doom and dread. But now that my move had all but been eliminated from the equation, the doom and dread had been replaced with a beautiful sense of comfort. In the blink of an eye, Marlboro Man and I, while madly and insanely in love, were no longer in any hurry. “Yeah,” I said, nodding my head. “I agree.” Man, did I ever have a way with words.

Tim bid us good-bye after helping us carry in my three-hundred-pound suitcase, and Marlboro Man and I looked around our quiet house, which was spick-and-span and smelled of fresh paint and leather cowboy boots, which lined the wall near the front door. The entry glowed with the light of the setting sun coming in the window, and I reached down to grab one of my bags so I could carry it to the bedroom. But before my hand made it to the handle, Marlboro Man grabbed me tightly around the waist and carried me over to the leather sofa, where we fell together in a tired heap of jet lag, emotional exhaustion, and--ironically, given the week we’d just endured--a sudden burst of lust. “Welcome home,” he said, nuzzling his face into my neck. Mmmm. This was a familiar feeling. “Thank you,” I said, closing my eyes and savoring every second. As his lips made their way across my neck, I could hear the sweet and reassuring sound of cows in the pasture east of our house. We were home. “You feel so good,” he said, moving his hands to the zipper of my casual black jacket. “You do, too,” I said, stroking the back of his closely cut hair as his arms wrapped more and more tightly around my waist. “But…uh…” I paused. My black jacket was by now on the floor. “I…uh…,” I continued. “I think I need to take a shower.” And I did. I couldn’t do the precise calculation of what it had meant for my hygiene to cross back over the international date line, but as far as I was concerned, I hadn’t showered in a decade. I couldn’t imagine christening our house in such a state. I needed to smell like lilac and lavender and Dove soap on the first night in our little house together. Not airline fuel. Not airports. Not clothes I’d worn for two days straight. Marlboro Man chuckled--the first one I’d heard in many days--and as he’d done so many times during our months of courtship, he touched his forehead to mine. “I need one, too,” he said, a hint of mischief in his voice. And with that, we accompanied each other to the shower, where, with a mix of herbal potions, rural water, and determination, we washed our honeymoon down the drain.

One day Marlboro Man invited my sister, Betsy, and me to the ranch to work cattle. She was home from college and bored, and Marlboro Man wanted Tim to meet another member of my family. “Working cattle” is the term used to describe the process of pushing cattle, one by one, through a working chute, during which time they are branded, dehorned, ear tagged, and “doctored” (temperature taken, injections given). The idea is to get all the trauma and mess over with in one fell swoop so the animals can spend their days grazing peacefully in the pasture. When Betsy and I pulled up and parked, Tim greeted us at the chute and immediately assigned us our duties. He handed my sister a hot shot, which is used to gently zap the animal’s behind to get it to move through the chute. It’s considered the easy job. “You’ll be pushing ’em through,” Tim told Betsy. She dutifully took the hot shot, studying the oddly shaped object in her hands. Next, Tim handed me an eight-inch-long, thick-gauge probe with some kind of electronic device attached. “You’ll be taking their temperature,” Tim informed me. Easy enough, I thought. But how does this thing fit into its ear? Or does it slide under its arm somehow? Perhaps I insert it under the tongue? Will the cows be okay with this? Tim showed me to my location--at the hind end of the chute. “You just wait till the steer gets locked in the chute,” Tim directed. “Then you push the stick all the way in and wait till I tell you to take it out.” Come again? The bottom fell out of my stomach as my sister shot me a worried look, and I suddenly wished I’d eaten something before we came. I felt weak. I didn’t dare question the brother of the man who made my heart go pitter-pat, but…in the bottom? Up the bottom? Seriously? Before I knew it, the first animal had entered the chute. Various cowboys were at different positions around the animal and began carrying out their respective duties. Tim looked at me and yelled, “Stick it in!” With utter trepidation, I slid the wand deep into the steer’s rectum. This wasn’t natural. This wasn’t normal. At least it wasn’t for me. This was definitely against God’s plan.

This Compost" Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd, I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards, The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

Allan Savory’s belief that drought and floods are man-made and therefore not inevitable opens the way for a different response. With this principle in mind, Grasslands, LLC, seeks to apply Holistic Management to thousands of acres of land, creating islands of ecological resilience with regard to the water cycle. So that perhaps when, say, an inordinately heavy rain comes in the spring, the pasture can absorb the water and there’s little runoff.

using Holistic Management (with cattle, sheep, goats, horses) or other restorative models (agroforestry, pasture cropping, natural sequence farming), and those islands of resilience expand and connect and, in time, are no longer islands but rather large intact areas of revived ecology. Floods happen less frequently and droughts aren’t as severe.

Broadacre farming, which removes existing ground cover so that crops are sown on cleared fields, damages soil structure, interrupts fungal and microbial associations, and releases stored carbon. Pasture cropping, by contrast, leaves soil dynamics intact. It also supports a variety of plants, in particular many deep-rooted grasses engaged in carbon–mineral–water exchanges underground.

Meat from grass-fed and pasture-raised animals tends to be more nutrient-dense than conventional meat. Although the exact nutrient content will vary from species to species and from farm to farm (and by time of year and the quality of supplemental feed, if any), grass-fed and pasture-raised meat tends to be higher (sometimes much higher) in many minerals and vitamins while also having a better omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio. For example, grass-fed beef contains up to ten times more beta-carotene (a carotenoid—that is, an antioxidant and precursor of vitamin A; see here) as grain-fed beef and up to four times more vitamin E (see here). Grass-fed beef is also higher in B vitamins, zinc, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. And because pasture-raised animals hang out in the sun, their fat is a source of vitamin D (which is practically nonexistent in factory-farmed animals). Free-range chickens also have more vitamin E content and iron than conventional chickens. Grass-fed and pasture-raised meat tends to have a much lower water content than conventional meat and is much leaner overall (which means it has more protein!). Plus, its fats are much healthier. Grass-fed meat contains approximately four times more omega-3 fatty acids (in the very useful DHA and EPA forms; see here) as compared with grain-fed meat. It also contains far fewer omega-6 fatty acids, so the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in grass-fed meat is typically within the optimal range at 3:1 (but can be as low as 4:1 and as high as 20:1 in grain-fed meat, varying by the exact diet of the cow but also the cut of meat). Meat (and dairy) from grass-fed cows is the best-known source of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA; see here). Grass-fed and pasture-raised meat also tends to be higher in oleic acid (see here). What About Bacon?

American Heart Association has reported that 75 per cent of heart involvements begin before ten years of age. My studies have shown that in about 95 per cent of these cases there is active tooth decay. The important change that I made in this boy's dietary program was the removal of the white flour products and in their stead the use of freshly cracked or ground wheat and oats used with whole milk to which was added a small amount of specially high vitamin butter produced by cows pasturing on green wheat. Small doses of a high-vitamin, natural cod liver oil were also added. At this time the boy was so badly crippled with arthritis, in his swollen knees, wrists, and rigid spine, that he was bedfast and cried by the hour. With the improvement in his nutrition which was the only change made in his care, his acute pain rapidly subsided, his appetite greatly improved, he slept soundly and gained rapidly in weight

The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. —Psalm 145:9 (KJV) The gray clouds hung below the mountain peaks, smothering the sun. A cold breeze brushed across my cheeks as I tossed hay in the feeder for the horses and mules. I glanced at the brown grass in the pasture rimmed by the skeletal trees. Not a sprig of life showed anywhere. The gloomies seeped into my soul. How I longed for signs of life! Lord, I need You to brighten my day. I heard a low bellow from the neighbors’ pasture a few hundred yards away. Uh-oh, it sounds like a cow’s having problems giving birth. The neighbors lived miles away and wouldn’t be back to check on the cows for a couple more hours. “C’mon, Sunrise,” I called to my golden retriever, “let’s go check it out.” As we neared the pasture, I noticed a lone black cow standing with her head down. Keeping my distance, I stood on tiptoes, craning my neck. A brand-new wet calf lay on the ground. “Isn’t this exciting? What a cute baby!” Sunrise’s nose wiggled as she caught the scent of the baby. For the next hour I sat in the pasture, watching the newborn struggle to stand on its stiltlike legs. I giggled as the calf sucked on its mom’s knees and elbows before it found the udder and slurped. Lord, when my days are glum, remind me to ask You to brighten them. —Rebecca Ondov Digging Deeper: Pss 8, 84:11

His mother tried to get him back on the straight and narrow, but the sheriff locked him up one night after they found him naked in a cow pasture screaming about mind-taps and government conspiracies

Everyone calls you ‘Pasture.’ Do you raise cows or sheep? They call me ‘Pastor’ because I’m like a shepherd for people, and I lead them to safe pasture in God’s good earth.

In this garden, the air was sweet and clean, like the cool water running in the creek. Beyond the garden was the rainforest, a damp cathedrfral of fragrant myrtle and sassafras, sprawling mosses and ancient lichen... There was only one road into Vanishing Falls... the road meandered through hilly green pastures where black-and-white cows grazed, past pretty weatherboard farmhouses with splendid man ferns out front, thick hedges, and rose gardens.

country roads of Guanajuato—green pastures of browsing cows, old timber corrals and tile-roofed ranchitos, wildflowers, butterflies,

I was enchanted as soon as I stepped off the train. As were the hundreds of others who got off the train with me who were now in the process of climbing into buggies and wagons, en route to the dozens of resorts, enclaves, and tent campgrounds in the area, where they would soak up the sun, get drunk on Cabernet, swim and picnic in the druidy redwood groves while reciting Shakespeare. I climbed into a wagon and was driven off by a Mr. Lars Magnusson to view the old Olson farm. We traveled a mile or so into the hills, past oak glens, brooks, and pools of water, past manzanitas, madrones, and trees dripping with Spanish moss. Sonoma Mountain was to the west; its shadow cast everything in a soft purple light. When we finally reached the farm and I saw the luscious valley spread out in front of me, I knew this was it. Greengage. It would be a home for me and Martha at first, but I hoped it would soon be something more. A tribute to my mother and her ideals; a community in which she would have flourished, where she would have lived a good long life. Greengage.The burbling creek that ran smack down the middle of the property. The prune, apple, and almond orchards: the fields of wheat, potatoes, and melons. The pastures for cows and sheep. The chicken house and pigsty. The gentle, sloping hills, mounds that looked like God's knuckles, where I would one day plant a vineyard.

In the Alps, for example, Swiss cheese producers had for centuries relied on common ownership of a pasture for cattle grazing. If there had been no communal understanding, this could have led to disaster. The land might have been overgrazed to barrenness since it belonged to no one and everyone had a reason to want to feed their own cows more, potentially at the expense of the others. However, there was a set of clear rules for what cattle owners could and could not do on the common pasture, and those rules were followed because violators were excluded from future grazing rights. Given that, Ostrom argued, collective ownership was actually better for everyone than private property. Dividing the land into small parcels, each owned by a separate person, increases risk, since there is always the possibility of some disease hitting the grass in any given small area.

[President Franklin Roosevelt] was a great tickler of sacred cows not bred on his own pastures.

cows. I thought that any cow that has had a calf can be milked. Even she isn’t totally sure about that, but she knows that these are bred for the purpose of giving milk. Luke doesn’t care, he just enjoys getting milk to drink. Tomorrow we will finish the fence to keep the cows in that pasture, then I will work on getting water to flow into the cabin. We started that project when Levi and Moses were helping me. Now I should be able to at least get the water to flow into the house. The way the stream that they have been getting water from runs, I kind of change my mind and talk to Miss Mary about it also. Instead of digging the path for the stream to go directly into the house we both kind of think it would be better to add a small room onto the addition and run the stream through there. That way there would not be access into the main cabin through the stream. There would be a door to the small room which could be locked from inside the cabin. With that decided I get to work building the small addition to the addition. That takes me a day and a half, then I dig the streambed into the addition. It loops into the room and also continues on the normal path that it always has. Miss Mary likes it because now when they want to bathe or do anything that takes water they do not have to go outside and carry the water back to the cabin. Miss Mary and Luke are really enjoying the milk. She got so excited about it that she and Luke took a ride over to the other farms to take them some. Martha Brown has a butter churn, but hasn’t had any use for it in quite a while. She lent it to Miss Mary so now she is going to make butter for all of them. I am continuing to keep up with the weeding and making sure that the crops get water when they need it. Luckily we have had enough rain to keep everything growing great. The newest crops that we planted are catching up with the original ones and should be ready to harvest in plenty of time before winter gets here. To make sure there are no problems over the cows and the calves that I brought in, I made a branding iron to Miss Mary’s specifications and branded all of them with it. I also branded all of the horses she has so that no one can lay claim to them. Not that anyone probably will, but it is always best to avoid problems when we can. Life on a working farm always leaves something for us to be working on. Whenever I find myself with what may be considered free time, I

Twenty years ago when he was caught pasturing his cow in the Lowbridge graveyard. I always think of it when he is praying in meeting.

Wolfe snorted. "The man's a fool. It's only a cow pasture." Being a good detective, he produced his evidence by pointing to a brown circular heap near our feet.

A week before my due date, Marlboro Man had to preg-test a hundred cows. Preg-testing cows, I would learn in horror that warm June morning, does not involve the cow urinating on a test stick and waiting at least three minutes to read the result. Instead, a large animal vet inserts his entire arm into a long disposable glove, then inserts the gloved arm high into the rectum of a pregnant cow until the vet’s arm is no longer visible. Once his arm is deep inside the cow’s nether regions, the vet can feel the size and angle of the cow’s cervix and determine two things: 1. Whether or not she is pregnant. 2. How far along she is. With this information, Marlboro Man decides whether to rebreed the nonpregnant cows, and in which pasture to place the pregnant cows; cows that became bred at the same time will stay in the same pasture so that they’ll all give birth in approximately the same time frame. Of course, I understood none of this as I watched the doctor insert the entire length of his arm into a hundred different cows’ bottoms. All I knew is that he’d insert his arm, the cow would moo, he would pull out his arm, and the cow would poop. Unintentionally, each time a new cow would pass through the chute, I’d instinctively bear down. I was just as pregnant as many of the cows. My nether regions were uncomfortable enough as it was. The thought of someone inserting their… It was more than I probably should have signed up for that morning. “God help me!” I yelped as Marlboro Man and I pulled away from the working area after the last cow was tested. “What in the name of all that is holy did I just witness?” “How’d you like that?” Marlboro Man asked, smiling a satisfied smile. He loved introducing me to new ranching activities. The more shocking I found them, the better. “Seriously,” I mumbled, grasping my enormous belly as if to protect my baby from the reality of this bizarre, disturbing world. “That was just…that was like nothing I’ve ever seen before!” It made the rectal thermometer episode I’d endured many months earlier seem like a garden party. Marlboro Man laughed and rested his hand on my knee. It stayed there the rest of the drive home. At eleven that night, I woke up feeling strange. Marlboro Man and I had just drifted off to sleep, and my abdomen felt tight and weird. I stared at the ceiling, breathing deeply in an effort to will it away. But then I put two and two together: the whole trauma of what I’d seen earlier in the day must have finally caught up with me. In my sympathy for the preg-tested cows, I must have borne down a few too many times. I sat up in bed. I was definitely in labor.

She felt sad, but she hadn't cried all day. She thought that crying would actually be a good thing right now. It seemed normal to react. Whoever Martin had been, he had probably been a normal person. He was probably having a normal reaction right now, and she had caused it. She felt bad for confusing him. She thought it might be fair to cry for him. But it wasn’t until she thought of the mother cows in the pasture the day after the weaning, wandering around singly in the naked sunshine, still trying to call out in their hoarse, broken voices for the young ones that were still missing, that she was finally able to make herself cry—a little bit for all of the calves, but mostly for herself.

Who’s that?” she asked Farmer Ben. Ben gave one look and muttered, “Uh-oh. It’s Ed Hooper. I’m almost afraid to ask him what he wants…” In his three-piece suit and expensive hat, Hooper came stepping across the pasture, being very careful to avoid the cow pies. When he reached the pumpkin patch, he walked right up to Farmer Ben and held out his hand. Ben made no move to shake it. “As you wish, Ben,” said Hooper, lowering his hand. “Five, four, three, two, one, zero!” “What’s that?” said Ben. “You going into the rocket-ship business?” Hooper laughed. “No, Ben,” he said. “That’s the countdown for the number of grocery stores left in Beartown. The last one just closed down for good.” “For your good, maybe,” Ben sneered. “Not for mine.

In his three-piece suit and expensive hat, Hooper came stepping across the pasture, being very careful to avoid the cow pies. When he reached the pumpkin patch, he walked right up to Farmer Ben and held out his hand. Ben made no move to shake it. “As you wish, Ben,” said Hooper, lowering his hand. “Five, four, three, two, one, zero!” “What’s that?” said Ben. “You going into the rocket-ship business?

I’ve got a broken milking machine I can’t afford to fix, and I’ve already had to fire my farm hand! My wife had to quit the farm and take a job in town! I won’t let you do this to me, Hooper! It would be an insult to all my farming ancestors if I sold my goods to you at these rotten prices! I swear I’ll sell this farm before I do it! Farmer Ben’s outburst had been so loud that some of the cubs were left holding their hands over their ears. But Ed Hooper hadn’t so much as flinched. “Well, what you do with your farm is none of my business,” said Hooper. “It darn sure isn’t!” yelled Ben. “Because your business is robbery! You’re nothin’ but an old-fashioned highway robber! You put a supermarket out on the highway and use it to rob folks!” Hooper’s smug little smile got bigger. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Ben,” he said. “But I can get my farm goods elsewhere. I’ll be on my way now. Have a nice day, Ben.” Hooper turned to leave, but happened to glance back and see Farmer Ben reaching for a pitchfork stuck in the ground. “Have a nice day?” Ben cried. “Don’t you dare tell me to have a nice day!” And with that, Farmer Ben raised his pitchfork and chased Ed Hooper into the cow pasture. Hooper dashed across the pasture toward his shiny new car. He reached the car safely, but not before stepping in three cow pies.

I’m sorry you feel that way, Ben,” he said. “But I can get my farm goods elsewhere. I’ll be on my way now. Have a nice day, Ben.” Hooper turned to leave, but happened to glance back and see Farmer Ben reaching for a pitchfork stuck in the ground. “Have a nice day?” Ben cried. “Don’t you dare tell me to have a nice day!” And with that, Farmer Ben raised his pitchfork and chased Ed Hooper into the cow pasture. Hooper dashed across the pasture toward his shiny new car. He reached the car safely, but not before stepping in three cow pies.

There’s one thing about all this I just don’t understand,” he said. “Ed Hooper could have run Farmer Ben’s Market out of business by lowering his prices. Sure, he would have lost money for a few weeks, but it would have been a lot safer than damaging Bens’ crops. Same thing with the Halloween Festival. Hooper didn’t have to ruin it. All he had to do was wait until Farmer Ben’s Market got going again, then run him out of business by lowering prices. But it seems that Hooper didn’t just want to run Ben out of business. He wanted to embarrass him. He wanted to destroy Ben’s reputation, and he wanted to be there to watch it happen. It wasn’t just business. It was personal. I wonder why.” No sooner had Brother started thinking about Papa’s question than a picture floated into his mind’s eye. It was a picture of a terrified Ed Hooper running wildly through Farmer Ben’s cow pasture, stepping in cow pies, with Ben chasing him. “No need to wonder, Papa,” said Brother with a grin. “ think I know the answer.

How much of you belongs to the Combine? If they can take your money in taxes and your sons in wars, how do you differ from the cow who is milked or the pig who is eaten? Do you breed for them like a stallion in a pasture? Is the get of your loins theirs to dispose of? Even a no-good shit afraid that Daddy will come and slice it off has some rights, doesn't he? Or does he? Is there any sacrifice you will not make? Is there any discipline you will not accept? Is there any order you will not obey? Is there any shit you will not eat?

the lab’s essential public health functions could be compromised during the move and if the lab had fewer employees. The lab, now at a former Devon Energy Corp. field office building next to a cow pasture in Stillwater, has struggled to keep its top director and other key employees. Delays to get test results for basic public health surveillance for salmonella outbreaks and sexually transmitted infections have shaken the confidence of lab partners and local public health officials. As a new coronavirus emerges going into winter, the lab ranks last in the nation for COVID-19 variant testing. Many employees, who found out about the lab’s move from an October 2020 press conference, didn’t want to relocate to Stillwater. Those who did make the move in the first few months of 2021 found expensive lab equipment in their new workplace but not enough electrical outlets for them. The lab’s internet connection was slower than expected and not part of the ultra-fast fiber network used across town by Oklahoma State University. A fridge containing reagents, among the basic supplies for any lab, had to be thrown out after a power outage. Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized a correction plan after federal inspectors, prompted by an anonymous complaint, showed up unannounced at the lab in late September. “Although some aspects of the original report were not as favorable as we would have liked, the path of correction is clear and more than attainable,” Secretary of Health and Mental Health Kevin Corbett said Tuesday in a statement about the inspection. “We are well on our way to fully implementing our plan. (The Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services) has confirmed we’ve met the requirements of being in compliance. We are looking forward to their follow-up visit.” In an earlier statement, the health department said the Stillwater lab now “has sufficient power outlets to perform testing with the new equipment, and has fiber connection that exceeds what is necessary to properly run genetic sequencing and other lab functions.” The department denied the lab had to throw out the reagents after a power outage.

She took me to the pasture and let me milk a mammoth brown cow. She taught me how to drive a tractor. We rode horses through the woods. We smoked weed on the roof and pointed out clouds that looked like penises. We fed tiny chunks of raw chicken to her brother’s Venus flytrap. We fucked each other with fresh-picked ears of corn. We built a fire under a billion stars and told ghost stories. We took bets to see how many cigarette butts the rooster would eat. We let the goats hop on top of our backs and nibble our hair. We built an altar of stones, sticks and berries at the top of a hill, and when we hummed a family of deer came to us, licking our palms and nuzzling our cheeks. We bathed in streams and made bread from scratch. We pulled ticks and leeches off each other’s backs. We wrote rap songs about farm life and smoking meth. We stayed up a whole night watching movies about vampires and warlocks. We left clumps of hair, string and silver buttons for a family of crows. When it stormed for three days and we lost power, I rocked her gently in the dark and told her I loved her.

Humans, whether contemplating the genesis of their customs or of their species, yearn to locate “an explicit point of origin,” rather than accept that most beginnings are gradual and complex. “Creation myths,” [Stephen Jay Gould] concluded, “identify heroes and sacred places, while evolutionary stories provide no palpable, particular thing as a symbol for reverence, worship, or patriotism.” As with baseball, so, too, with America’s birth. The country’s European founding was slow and messy: a primordial slime of false starts and mutations that evolved, over generations, into English colonies and the United States. Once on its feet, the newborn American nation looked back in search of origins, and located its heroes and sacred places on the stony shore of Massachusetts. The Pilgrim Fathers of 1620 begat the Founding Fathers of 1776. Cooperstown had Doubleday’s cow pasture, Plymouth it’s hallowed Rock.

The shielings were seasonal. Every fall, the crofters moved their cattle to the richer lowland pastures near the village, and over the winter, the cattle nibbled them to nubbins. In spring, the crofters drove the skinny cows up to the shielings, the sloping mountain pastures, so that the lowland pastures could recover. It wasn't just a place. It was a way of living. All through the warmer months, families lived in simple summer bothies with just bundles of heather as beds, and they ate oatmeal and cheese and butter and milk from the cows they watched, and they sang songs and traded stories under the stars. It was the very best of a simple life, and it was very different from the very best of castle life.

Cow pastures exist because we need meat, not because of any clever social thinking on the cow’s behalf.

The French word—actually it’s a Norman word,” said Colonel Bruce, “is bocage. Ancient by any standard. Won’t trouble you with etymology. Basically it describes a terrain featuring a checkerboard of pasture, woodland, brush, hill, hedgerow, farmer’s fields plowed or unplowed, lots of cows and bumblebees,

As with baseball, so, too, with America’s birth. The country’s European founding was slow and messy: a primordial slime of false starts and mutations that evolved, over generations, into English colonies and the United States. Once on its feet, the newborn American nation looked back in search of origins, and located its heroes and sacred places on the stony shore of Massachusetts. The Pilgrim Fathers of 1620 begat the Founding Fathers of 1776. Cooperstown had Doubleday’s cow pasture, Plymouth its hallowed Rock.

The countryside was a thousand different shades of green, from the patchwork quilts of the cultivated land to the desolation of the open moors. The road dipped through dales where forests protected spotless villages and then climbed switchbacked curves to take them again up to the open land where the North Sea wind blew unforgivingly across heather and furze. Here, the only life belonged to the sheep. They wandered free and unfenced, unfettered by the ancient dry stone walls that constructed boundaries for their fellows in the dales below. There were contradictions everywhere. In the cultivated areas, life burgeoned from every cranny and hedgerow, a thick vegetation that in another season would produce the mixed beauties of cow parsley, campion, vetch, and foxglove. It was an area where transportation was delayed while two dogs expertly herded a flock of plump sheep across pasture, down hillside, and along the road for a two-mile stroll into the centre of a village,

During the time of the white man's Civil War, troubles arose between the Modocs and the settlers. If a Modoc could not find a deer to kill for his family, he would sometimes kill a rancher's cow; or if he needed a horse he would borrow one out of a settler's pasture.

A French bishop, intent upon reforming this evil of feudalism, proposed in 1023 that feudal nobles should take the following oath: “I will not take away ox nor cow nor any other beast of burden. I will not seize the peasant nor the peasant’s wife nor the merchants. I will not take their money, nor will I force them to ransom themselves. I do not want them to lose their property through a war that their lord wages, and I won’t whip them to get their nourishment away from them. From the first of March to All Saints’ Day I will seize neither horse nor mare nor colt from the pasture. I will not destroy and burn houses; I will not uproot and devastate vineyards under pretext of war; I will not destroy mills nor steal the flour.

84. I was going to tell you a cow joke… but it’s pasture bed time.

Most of us prefer to remain on our cow paths, where we know the language and we do not need maps because we know the way by heart. Some of us even stay behind our own fences because we do not want to be mistaken for interlopers in other people’s pastures

THE LIFE of David “Gabby” Earl Penning was only seconds away from turning into ashes, just like his parents’ farm– literally. He knew the days in that farm house and its large pasture with the cows, horses, chickens and pigs would end someday - just like his siblings, Joyce and Sam - but he didn’t know that day would come so soon. Not only that, but he didn’t think it would’ve been burned by someone he’d never expect: a stranger.

The very fact that a man or woman seeks a new partner is a proof that there never was any love at all. For though sex is replaceable, love is not. Sex is for pleasure; love is for a person. Cows can graze on other pastures, but a person admits of no substitution.

You know the story of the Harvard graduate comes to Texas a while back and says to his rancher uncle, ‘Uncle Will, how come you can get heavier punishment here for stealing a cow than for killing a man?’ Uncle Will says, ‘Look out the window. See those cows out to pasture? See any of them look like they need stealing?’ " Warren

After the industrial revolution in Europe when the masses were plunged into poverty, Europeans set out to ‘discover’ the world seeking greener pastures. They plundered Africa and Asia and exported the valuable resources of these continents. The civilized and gentle folks of Africa and Asia were unlike the Vikings and Cavemen of Europe.. They treated the European invasion as a temporary set back ae we do with thieves, robbers and criminals of today. However, with the power of their ammunition and weapons the Europeans divided the world into artificial areas, and conquered humanity. We are still brain-washed by their values under the guise of ‘Capitalism” – ie: new-colonialism. After 60+ years of independence, two generations of Africans and Asians still believe that they MUST copy and follow the lifestyle of these European settlers around the world. So neo- colonialism and capitalism thrive. There’s no end to the ‘dependence’ of Africa and some Asian countries on their past colonisers.. Brain-washed, they continue to be cow-towed by the economical and political campaigns of the west. SET Yourselves FREE and live FREE as your ancestors did 500 years ago! Work on your land and produce all your needs is the philosophy of Gandhii which encouraged Indians to gain freedom in 1947. Do not let squanderers and greedy wanderers PLUNDER the rich resources of your land including humans; be vigilant and join forces with trustworthy others to combat greed and capitalism. China is the leading country in the world today as she was at one time, because her citizens worked hard -- toiling their land and adopting innovative ways to mass produce and export goods at low cost. China’s people were willing to sacrifice themselves for their long-term future. Kudos to China!! She is vigilant in protecting her interests from her enemies.

This is my version. It's from the Psalm of David. The lord is my shepherd. He doesn't mean a dog. He makes me lie down in green pastures. No cow patties, please. Thy rod and thy staff comfort me. Not if they're used to give a little kid a spanking. Thou preparest a table before me...hotdogs with ketchup, that's what I like best. .. And the part about the presence of my enemies - that takes care of Lindsey. Now the end. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. ..Breastless!

If ecology was one of my measures of merit when it came to food, wouldn’t it make more sense to eat meat from a locally pastured beef cow than to buy salmon shipped in from Alaska or processed blocks of tofu made from soybeans grown a thousand miles away on industrially farmed land where diverse prairie habitat once thrived? If humaneness was another of my measures, wouldn’t it make more sense to shoot a deer who had lived a truly free life than to buy even the happiest, most local, backyard chicken? What meat could be more ethical than fifty or more pounds of venison resulting from a single, quick death?

Of the entire terrestrial vertebrate biomass on earth, wild animals constitute only about three percent, humans one-quarter, and livestock almost three-quarters! On old-fashioned farms, animals had names, pastures to graze in, mud to wallow in, or sand to dust-bathe in. Life was far from idyllic, but it was appreciably better than it is nowadays when we lock up calves and pigs in narrow crates of stainless steel, cram chickens by the thousands into sunless sheds, and don’t even let cows graze outside anymore. Instead, we keep them standing in their own waste. Since these animals are mostly kept out of sight, people rarely get to see their miserable conditions. All we see is cuts of meat without feet, heads, or tails attached. This way we don’t need to ponder the meat’s existence prior to packaging. And here I am not even talking about the fact that we eat animals, only about how we treat them, which is my main concern. I am too much of a biologist to question the natural circle of life. Every animal plays its role by eating or being eaten, and we are involved at both ends of the equation. Our ancestors were part of a vast ecosystem of carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, ingesting other organisms and also serving as meals for predators. Even if nowadays we rarely fall prey anymore, we still let hordes of critters devour our rotting corpses. It’s all dust to dust.

Golf Like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture.

He turned away from them and looked back, back to the pasture, where a— something had wandered right into the middle of the field since last he’d looked. “Is that—” He squinted. “Is there a fucking cow in the middle of my fucking ritual?” “No,” said the farmer in a southern accent, “but there’s one in the middle of my goddamned cow pasture, you Yankee jackass!

In the wake of British atrocities, both real and imagined, the ambient rhetoric heated up. Jonas Clark, pastor of the First Parish Church of Lexington, Massachusetts, was a fair representative of New England’s patriotic Church Militant. For some time he had been delivering sermons on such matters as “The Importance of Military Skill, Measures for Defense, and a Martial Spirit in a Time of Peace.” In commemoration of the killing on Lexington Green, he now thundered out a homily about “The Fate of Blood Thirsty Oppressors and God’s Tender Care of His Distressed People” with such resonant authority that cows were said to have been “startled into attendance” in pastures nearby.

Every acre of agricultural land I had ever seen—every cow or sheep pasture, every wheat or soybean or vegetable field—was once forest, wetland, prairie: another kind of land. Regardless of whether the farming was done well or poorly, its initial establishment in all those places had required conquest, eviction of the creatures that lived there before, and conversion of the land to a new use. And maintaining it required constant defense against nature’s efforts at reclamation.

NOURISHING TRADITIONAL FOODS Proteins: Fresh, pasture-raised meat including beef, lamb, game, chicken, turkey, duck and other fowl; organ meats from pastured animals; seafood of all types from deep sea waters; fresh shellfish in season; fish eggs; fresh eggs from pastured poultry; organic fermented soy products in small amounts. Fats: Fresh butter and cream from pasture-fed cows, preferably raw and cultured; lard and beef, lamb, goose and duck fat from pastured animals; extra virgin olive oil; unrefined flax seed oil in small amounts; coconut oil and palm oil. Dairy: Raw, whole milk and cultured dairy products, such as yoghurt, piima milk, kefir and raw cheese, from traditional breeds of pasture-fed cows and goats. Carbohydrates: Organic whole grain products properly treated for the removal of phytates, such as sourdough and sprouted grain bread and soaked or sprouted cereal grains; soaked and fermented legumes including lentils, beans, and chickpeas; sprouted or soaked seeds and nuts; fresh fruits and vegetables, both raw and cooked; fermented vegetables. Beverages: Filtered, high-mineral water; lacto-fermented drinks made from grain or fruit; meat stocks and vegetable broths. Condiments: Unrefined sea salt; raw vinegar; spices in moderation; fresh herbs; naturally fermented soy sauce and fish sauce.

conform to the desires of human commodity markets, so the rumen’s balance is the bane of industrial agriculture. When cows are taken from pasture and suddenly confined to feedlots to be fattened on corn, they must be medicated to pacify the rumen community. Only by stamping down the microbial helpers can we try to impose our will on the cow’s flesh. Fifty-five million years of rumen design versus fifty years of industrial agriculture: we face questionable odds.

I am never so conscious of living on a planet and journeying through the universe as when walking on that familiar path which leads from my front porch out past the cow barn, through the gate into the pasture, and down to the pond.