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Oshkosh Northwestern (WI)
Paper: Oshkosh Northwestern (WI)
Title: Flexible, 'Flexitarian' eats for mind, body health
Author: Hlee Vang, of The Northwestern
Date: January 25, 2005
It's no surprise that food, for many, is eaten for nourishment, enjoyment and satisfaction.Heidi Hansen, an Oshkosh mother of two daughters, eats for one more reason: advocacy.
Hansen is a firm believer in only eating meat that has been treated humanely.
She only gets her meat from places like Omro's Cattleana Ranch where animals are raised humanely and fed grass rather than grain and supplements.
"It's a way for me to practice nonviolence through the food I eat," Hansen said.
A part-time vegetarian, or what's called flexitarian -- people who eat a mostly vegetarian diet but are willing to eat meat or fish occasionally -- incorporating this form of protest against inhumane treatment of animals raised for human consumption comes naturally for Hansen.
"I do eat meat but very rarely," she said.
One practice that has helped shape her preference for a mostly vegetarian and humane diet is yoga.
Hansen is a yoga teacher at the Valley Academy of the Arts in Neenah. In yoga, nonviolence is a basic principle along with right conduct and lifestyle.
However, beyond the principles and beliefs of yoga that has affected her food choices, Hansen said knowing the powerful effects of yoga for her has made her a dedicated follower.
"Through yoga, I'm a lot happier and more peaceful. It's changed my perceptions," she said. "Yoga is a physical way to train your mind. It takes a lot of discipline to do the moves," she said.
Because certain foods can slow down her practice of yoga, the right food in her diet can have the opposite effect.
The recipes that Hansen made for this month's local cook highlight incorporate her preference for vegetarian ingredients.
Hlee Vang: (920) 426-6656 or hvang@thenorthwestern.com.
Copyright (c) Oshkosh Northwestern. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
Paper: Oshkosh Northwestern (WI)
Title: Planting all naturally
Author: Jeff Bollier, of The Northwestern
Date: July 25, 2004
Page: 01B
Though it was one of the first truly hot days in northeastern Wisconsin, Jaime Doemel is still hard at work in fields lined with purple, red, pink, magenta and green.Doemel has one of her first orders to fill, poppies for the tables at the New Moon Coffee House, but more than that, she simply loves growing organic flowers on her farm south of Oshkosh, Bee Dreams.
"It's not so much about being able to farm as being able to work outside with flowers and plants," Doemel said. "Not a lot of people get outside as much as they should."
Like several other natural farmers and ranchers, Doemel is finding an expanding market for the natural, chemical-free flowers, produce and animals grown on select farms in the Lake Winnebago area.
While Doemel's in her first year of organic production, Tom and Sue Wrchota are in their 11th year of raising grass-fed, steroid and hormone-free black Galloway cattle at Cattleana Ranch northwest of Omro.
Tom Wrchota said it took several years, but he's developed a healthy customer base in Appleton, Neenah and Oshkosh for his beef, which is naturally leaner than the grain-fed beef found in grocery stores.
"You have much higher levels of Vitamin E, much higher levels of beta carotene, much higher levels of essential fatty acids ... and higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid, a very strong anti-cancer acid that's found only in animals that eat grass," Wrchota said.
Besides pre-arranged appointments at the ranch, the Wrchotas also sell their product at farmers' markets in Neenah and Appleton.
"Folks that have a tendency to be a little more interested in traversing the Internet to find information about food systems and animal health are the type of clients that seek us out for that kind of product," he said. "In our particular case, almost 100 percent of our business is client-direct. We direct market our product to the local community."
Leo Sances and Michael Zink also have found a market for the organic vegetables they grow on their 60-acre Prospera Farm, located west of Berlin, at Appleton's farmers' market as well as to families in Green Lake and Chicago.
Sances said he and Zink developed a CSA, community supported agriculture, which families pay into and then receive vegetables throughout the season. He said there are 10 families in Green Lake County and 30 families in Chicago Prospera Farm provides vegetables for.
"The market is there in Chicago, but I think the demand is also there in Appleton," Sances said. "People are becoming more aware of buying organic and buying local. They're becoming conscious of the money staying here."
Doemel said she's growing 16 different types of flowers without using chemical fertilizers or pesticides, hand-weeding the crops and rotating the types of flowers grown, including plants that naturally deter insects.
"I can really tell the difference between fresh flowers and others," Doemel said. "There's just so much life and energy in them."
She said she hopes to find a regular spot at farmers' markets in Oshkosh or Appleton as well as a Sunday market outside the Festival of Foods in Oshkosh. She said she's also growing edible flowers and hopes to work with restaurants to grow types of flower that accent their menus.
"I like to keep it local and supportive of downtown and all the things we have going on there like the growing arts community and the activity in the square," she said.
In the last two years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has developed certifiable standards for farmers and corporations to adhere to in order to officially call their products organic.
Farmers must adhere to the standards if they profit more than $5,000 each year from sales, but Sances and Wrchota both said they see no need to become certified at this time, according to the FDA's Web site.
"I think we're at the stage where our customers know their farmer and know their food," Sances said. "The certification process is just setting up a huge corporate interest in organic foods. Everything is really set up for benefiting them instead of a small, family farm, which is what we are."
Jeff Bollier: (920) 426-6688 or jbollier@thenorthwestern.com
Copyright (c) Oshkosh Northwestern. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
Paper: Oshkosh Northwestern (WI)
Title: Beef takes a back seat to buffalo meat
Author: Doug Zellmer, of The Northwestern
Date: January 16, 2004
Page: 01C
A TV commercial about a few decades ago where the kindly elderly lady says "Where's the beef?" is apparently a question not all consumers are asking."Where's the buffalo?" may be more appropriate for some since a Holstein cow in the state of Washington was diagnosed with mad cow disease about a month ago.
Mad cow disease eats holes in the brains of cattle. Humans can develop a similar fatal brain-wasting illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, by eating contaminated beef products. Government and industry experts say the likelihood that an American consumer might contract the disease is minuscule.
Mark Schultz, owner of Glacier Ridge Bison south of Oshkosh, said since mad cow hit he's been getting more calls from people inquiring about buffalo meat.
He's also selling more one-third pound buffalo patties to restaurants.
Schultz said the buffalo he raises are grass-fed and the animals receive no supplemental commercial feeds. Agriculture officials believe contaminated feed containing protein or bone meal from infected cows or sheep is the most likely source of infection with mad cow disease.
"The real natural way to raise buffalo is by using grass only," Schultz said.
"It's possible for buffalo to get mad cow, but the chances are very, very slim that it's pretty much nonexistent."
A rural Omro couple raises grass-fed animals.
They also are receiving more inquiries since the mad cow scare.
"We've had an increase in calls probably a couple of dozen in the past month," said Tom Wrchota, who operates Cattleana Ranch with his wife, Sue. "Truthfully, the calls have been coming from a lot of folks who have already inquired about our products in the past and how we raise the animals. They've been calling to set up appointments."
Wrchota said even though the beef industry has come under scrutiny, his business has been steadily selling more grass-fed beef products.
"We've been increasing our beef sales all along for the past five years by 20 to 25 percent each year," he said.
The Wrchota's operate a sustainable farming operation with 100 percent grass-fed beef, but it's not certified as organic, which has a tiny but growing share of the beef industry in the United States. To be certified organic, Wrchota said operations have to follow certain feed and management protocol, which is required to be certified.
"With certified organic beef consumers can be assured that there's no added hormones, steroids and antibiotics in the meat," Wrchota said. "The vast majority of producers who have certified organic beef feed the animals grain."
Doug Zellmer: (920) 426-6667 or dzellmer@thenorthwestern.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Copyright (c) Oshkosh Northwestern. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
Paper: Oshkosh Northwestern (WI)
Title: Grassroots farm thrives
Author: Doug Zellmer, of The Northwestern
Date: September 23, 2003
Page: 01A
Tom Wrchota grinned as he watched his herd of contented cattle munch grass on a sun-splashed morning.Recent rains have replenished parched fields and pastures and it couldn't have come at a better time for Wrchota and his wife, Sue, rural Omro farmers specializing in organic and sustainable agriculture practices for their grass-fed animals.
"With the dry weather we had to take some of our beef cattle off pasture," Tom Wrchota said. "To manage the grasses you can't over graze, so the rain we had was like a million dollars."
Lush green pastures are the lifeblood for the Wrchotas farm.
They are among 300 or so farmers in the United States who actively raise pasture fed animals that are void of chemical injections such as hormones and steroids. The Wrchota's provide a niche market for consumers preferring meat from grass-fed animals.
Studies have found grass-fed livestock are lower in fat and cholesterol than animals raised on grain.
No corn bins. No silos. No problem for the Wrchotas, who also raise grass-fed chickens on their 73-acre Cattleana Ranch on O'Reilly Road in the town of Poygan.
"When we started this in 1994 people thought we were crazy," Tom Wrchota said. "We had to educate and develop each client one at a time. At this stage, we have many hundreds of clients."
The Wrchota's operate a small retail market at their farm, where consumers can purchase grass-fed beef and chicken. The couple's grass-fed products are also available at Red Radish Natural Foods in Neenah.
In addition, the Wrchota's sell fruit and vegetables grown without chemicals and also grass-fed pork and cheese produced by other farmers from the Fox Valley and beyond.
"Our customers can see where the beef is coming from and how it is raised, and they're buying it direct from a local farmer," Sue Wrchota said.
The Wrchota's raise about 1,000 grass-fed chickens for slaughter each year and about two dozen pasture finished Black Galloway cattle.
The animals they raise have fewer calories and fat than their grain fed counterparts, according to a 1998 meat analysis by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For example, the analysis revealed the fat content of pasture finished Galloway beef was 3.5 to 4 grams per three-ounce serving, compared to 11.6 grams for a USDA prime cut. Calories were also lower with 129 for Galloway beef and 201 for the prime cut.
Although there are health benefits, farmers raising grass-fed animals are in the distinct minority. Tom Wrchota said more than 95 percent of all meat in the country are the traditional grain fed variety.
There is a downside to grass-fed animals. It takes longer for them to mature to market weight. Beef raised on the Wrchota farm takes 22 to 24 months, compared to about 14 months for grain fed animals.
It takes longer, but the Wrchotas said they work on their ranch full time to produce quality meat with health benefits.
"The people who are our customers are more health conscious and are willing to drive a little farther and pay a little more," Sue Wrchota said.
John Pavelski, an Amherst Junction farmer raising certified organic chickens, said he got into the business three years ago to offer consumers a quality product.
Pavelski said about 2,000 chickens are raised for meat on his farm annually and are fed a ration that includes organic corn and soybeans grown without chemicals and commercial fertilizers traditionally used for grain crops.
"I really believe this country puts out tremendous quantities of low-quality foods and in my estimation it's quality that sells," Pavelski said. "The average American diet has way too much sugar, salt and the wrong kind of fat. The best fat is Omega-3 oil fat, which is natural fat (a fat found in grass-fed animals that reduces cholesterol)."
Doug Zellmer: (920) 426-6667 or dzellmer@thenorthwestern.com.
Copyright (c) Oshkosh Northwestern. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
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