Where Does Quality Come From?
Where the heck does quality come from, anyway? One thing that messes up farmers when they're just starting out is that they learned everything they know from advertising campaigns. They think that the secret is to have 100% natural, organically certified, union-made, grass-fed, hand-picked, fat-free, vitamin-fortified, UL-approved, celebrity-endorsed, grade A food made with post-consumer ingredients -- as seen on TV.
In short, everybody and his brother is bombarding consumers with dumbed-down and largely untrue messages about where quality comes from. When you start out as a producer, you have to be careful. Everyone around you is very confident that they know the answers, but they usually don't. You have to try things one after the other and see what works (or learn from those who have done it before you - David).
Karen and I had the good luck to move back to the country just as the" Emu Bubble" of the 1990s was bursting. This example of well-publicized, confident predictions being based on nothing but self-delusion was an eye-opener for us, and made us a lot more skeptical of a lot of the other stuff we were hearing.
(Reminds me of today's economical and political climate - David)
We stumbled onto the secret of quality in eggs more or less by accident.
We knew we liked the idea of free range. But, at the time, there was little information on the topic, and most of it was by enthusiastic newbies a la the "emu dudes."
Fortunately, we have excellent library skills and knew that free-range had been the norm way back when. So we spent a lot of time in Oregon State University's library and researched the methods of way back when.
This taught us how to do free range properly -- with portable houses that you move when the hens destroy the nearby grass. This is essential. Permanently sited houses are totally impractical for grass-fed eggs.
What our reading didn't tell us was that grass-fed eggs tasted a lot better than other eggs. In fact, our reading sort of implied that it was the other way around. A hundred years ago, "real farm eggs" meant the same thing as "stale, possibly rotten eggs shipped by slow, unrefrigerated freight."
Quality eggs were raised close to town to reduce shipping time, by hens in confinement or barren yards. So in the old days, because of the lack of refrigeration, confinement eggs were considered good and farm eggs were bad.
(There were some notable exceptions, of course, but it serves to illustrate the point. - David)
Well, we've got refrigerators now, and things are back the way you'd expect. Grass-fed hens get a lot of value out of forage, just like grass-fed beef, and it shows up in the flavor and nutrition of the eggs. This is not too surprising, since up until around 1960 our general knowledge of poultry nutrition was sufficiently poor that many commercial breeders kept their breeder flocks on grass pasture. The superior nutrition resulted in higher hatchability and healthier chicks. But the link to superior flavor wasn't obvious until we started getting grass-fed eggs of our own.
And that's where quality comes from. It comes from keeping your eyes open, trying things one after the other, doing side-by-side tests, and always staying open to the possibility that everyone is nuts but you. Or possibly the other way around.
Keep on trying, keep on testing, and eventually you'll stumble onto something good. If you stay in the biz long enough (any biz), this will happen over and over again, and everyone will think you're a genius. They'll be right, too.
- - Bob Plamondon
Visit our man Bob, "the Genius," Plamondon at www.plamondon.com
Where the heck does quality come from, anyway? One thing that messes up farmers when they're just starting out is that they learned everything they know from advertising campaigns. They think that the secret is to have 100% natural, organically certified, union-made, grass-fed, hand-picked, fat-free, vitamin-fortified, UL-approved, celebrity-endorsed, grade A food made with post-consumer ingredients -- as seen on TV.
In short, everybody and his brother is bombarding consumers with dumbed-down and largely untrue messages about where quality comes from. When you start out as a producer, you have to be careful. Everyone around you is very confident that they know the answers, but they usually don't. You have to try things one after the other and see what works (or learn from those who have done it before you - David).
Karen and I had the good luck to move back to the country just as the" Emu Bubble" of the 1990s was bursting. This example of well-publicized, confident predictions being based on nothing but self-delusion was an eye-opener for us, and made us a lot more skeptical of a lot of the other stuff we were hearing.
(Reminds me of today's economical and political climate - David)
We stumbled onto the secret of quality in eggs more or less by accident.
We knew we liked the idea of free range. But, at the time, there was little information on the topic, and most of it was by enthusiastic newbies a la the "emu dudes."
Fortunately, we have excellent library skills and knew that free-range had been the norm way back when. So we spent a lot of time in Oregon State University's library and researched the methods of way back when.
This taught us how to do free range properly -- with portable houses that you move when the hens destroy the nearby grass. This is essential. Permanently sited houses are totally impractical for grass-fed eggs.
What our reading didn't tell us was that grass-fed eggs tasted a lot better than other eggs. In fact, our reading sort of implied that it was the other way around. A hundred years ago, "real farm eggs" meant the same thing as "stale, possibly rotten eggs shipped by slow, unrefrigerated freight."
Quality eggs were raised close to town to reduce shipping time, by hens in confinement or barren yards. So in the old days, because of the lack of refrigeration, confinement eggs were considered good and farm eggs were bad.
(There were some notable exceptions, of course, but it serves to illustrate the point. - David)
Well, we've got refrigerators now, and things are back the way you'd expect. Grass-fed hens get a lot of value out of forage, just like grass-fed beef, and it shows up in the flavor and nutrition of the eggs. This is not too surprising, since up until around 1960 our general knowledge of poultry nutrition was sufficiently poor that many commercial breeders kept their breeder flocks on grass pasture. The superior nutrition resulted in higher hatchability and healthier chicks. But the link to superior flavor wasn't obvious until we started getting grass-fed eggs of our own.
And that's where quality comes from. It comes from keeping your eyes open, trying things one after the other, doing side-by-side tests, and always staying open to the possibility that everyone is nuts but you. Or possibly the other way around.
Keep on trying, keep on testing, and eventually you'll stumble onto something good. If you stay in the biz long enough (any biz), this will happen over and over again, and everyone will think you're a genius. They'll be right, too.
- - Bob Plamondon
Visit our man Bob, "the Genius," Plamondon at www.plamondon.com
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