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1.
The Roanoke
times
http://www.roanoke.com/extra/wb/140987
Breaking old
ground in Grayson
County
Sunday, November
25, 2007
By Lindsey Nair
INDEPENDENCE -- At River
Ridge Land
and Cattle Co. in Grayson
County, herding is an old
dance -- a gentle give-and-take on horseback that is punctuated by a low,
rolling whistle and the occasional "Haw!"
Ranch owner Charlotte Hanes, 57, doesn't have to let her staff herd on
horseback any more than she has to raise cattle at all. She and her husband,
Phil, have plenty of money, a historic home in Winston-Salem, N.C.,
and a multimillion-dollar art collection.
The reason Hanes runs her 1,200-acre farm the old-fashioned way is because
she sees her work as visionary. She wants to be a champion for the poor, local
farmer who is suffocating under the competitive weight of a global food system.
"Farming is a dying art," she says. "It's getting
scary."
In her opinion, high-quality, value-added local products can gain footing
against cheap, mass-produced food. And those products have to be raised with
environmental preservation in mind, she says, or there will be nothing left for
future generations.
But all-natural, local beef demands a higher price at market and costs more
for the average farmer to produce. That's why some farmers who are fond of
Hanes and appreciate her intentions believe she is on a different plane
financially.
Hanes says her farm hasn't turned a profit in 20 years, but she keeps
investing in the hopes of creating a model that can be profitable for farmers
everywhere.
"It is risky business to do different, innovative things," said
Danny Boyer, a farm consultant for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"People are more comfortable with doing what they have always done."
Working by example
When Phil and Charlotte Hanes bought their Grayson
County land, they were affluent
strangers from nearby Winston-Salem,
N.C., who knew nothing about
raising cattle.
She had been a traveling physical therapist when she met Phil Hanes, the
former chief executive of the Hanes Corp., in 1984.
Since his retirement, Phil Hanes, 81, has shown that his real passion is in
the arts. He helped found the National Council on the Arts and served on the
boards of the Museum of Modern Art, the National Endowment for the Arts and
the Kennedy Center.
The couple have also willed their home and art collection to Wake Forest
University, including a
$60 million John Singleton Copley painting that is the most valuable in the
university's collection.
But there are no Copley paintings where Charlotte Hanes spends most of her
time, in a tiny log cabin tucked into a hollow near Independence. And when she's at the farm,
it's clear that this woman who has been photographed with Jimmy Carter and
Gregory Peck is far more comfortable in worn work boots, leading visitors on
wild mushroom-hunting excursions.
She is matter-of-fact and dry-witted. When she pulls up, it's not her Subaru
station wagon that grabs attention but the two large, friendly Rottweilers,
Porter and Zoe, gulping wind from the back windows.
Because their land had already been a farm for decades, the Haneses set out
to turn it into an operation that would be an example for other farmers.
Their goal was to produce "value-added" beef, or meat that will
satisfy customers concerned about everything from environmental stewardship to
animal welfare to nutrition and flavor.
Those are also the customers who have driven even the large meat producers
to offer all-natural products. It is no longer unusual to find hormone- and
antibiotic-free foods on grocery store shelves.
For Charlotte Hanes, though, it's about more than avoiding chemicals. It's
about teaching farmers a way to save their family land and burn less fuel
transporting the product.
That's why, when Hanes isn't mending fences or checking cattle, she is
working as a board member for Grayson LandCare, a group of farmers and
landowners who want to improve economic and environmental conditions in Grayson County and beyond.
Through the land care, Hanes has encouraged conservation easements on
neighbors' land and donated hundreds of thousands in easements on her own
property to preserve the rivershed, said Elizabeth Obenshain, executive
director of New River Land Trust.
"They truly do put their money where their mouth is and they are
passionate about their farm," Obenshain said, "but also sustaining
the rural landscape and the farming economy in that beautiful part of the New
River Valley."
Hanes and five other nearby ranchers, including Boyer, have also partnered
to raise pasture-fed beef for a company they call Grayson Natural Food. Their
goal is to become pioneers in a new Virginia
beef industry.
"What we have to do is sell locally if these guys are going to
survive," said Jerry Moles, director of land stewardship for the New River
Valley Land Trust. "And to do well, they are going to have to do a
superior product."
Gary Mitchell, a part-time farmer with 50 head of cattle who just joined
Grayson Natural, knows all about the risk. But he hopes that by producing that
superior product, he will someday be able to afford to leave his factory job.
"The problem with doing this is it's different and you've got to be a
little bit of a dreamer," he said. "You've got to have a little
vision and a little faith."
A costly endeavor
When Hanes serves up juicy hamburgers for lunch, she knows that meat came
from cows that lived their whole lives on a lush Grayson
County pasture along the meandering New River.
Other cows don't have it so well.
On a conventional cattle ranch, calves are given growth hormone injections
to bulk them up and are sent to feed lots before their first year is up. On
those crowded feed lots, cows are fattened on grain, which is not a natural
food for a ruminating animal designed to digest forages such as grass and hay,
Boyer said.
"We are essentially fooling Mother Nature with the commodity system we
have now in that we are implanting them and feeding them and making them grow
faster," Hanes said.
Because cows aren't meant to eat grain, it can make them sick, Boyer said.
To ward off illness, the animals are treated with preventive antibiotics, which
some consumers fear can be transferred to humans in the meat they eat or the
milk they drink.
But the calves at River Ridge farm eat almost all grass and receive little
in treatment besides vaccinations and bug repellent ear tags. They are only
treated with antibiotics if they are already sick, and then they are not sold
as all-natural beef.
As part of her sustainability goals, Hanes practices a system called
rotational grazing. Instead of letting cows graze a field until its resources
have been completely depleted, the animals are moved from paddock to paddock,
allowing the grass time to replenish and providing the cows with fresher fare.
Other farmers, such as Larry Bright of Bright Farm in Floyd, take rotational
grazing a step further. Bright practices managed intensive grazing, moving his
herd every day to a fresh pasture. At Meadow Creek Dairy near Galax, Rick and
Helen Feete move their cows every 12 hours.
"They know they are going to fresh grass," Bright said. "When
I come on the four-wheeler and I move the polywire, they line up and they
move."
But the switch from conventional farming to raising pasture-fed animals can
be a costly one.
Because it takes longer to fatten calves on grass, they can't be slaughtered
until they are 24 to 30 months old. Holding them over delays profits, so
farmers who want to get into a program like Grayson Natural often need grants
or loans to supplement their income.
Hanes says Grayson LandCare is working to find that financing for other
farmers.
"This is not my livelihood," she said. "But the people who
are in LandCare, that is their livelihood. I'm working for them."
Raising cattle on forages is also difficult because farmers must purchase
hay for the lean winter months or stockpile enough grass to get through. And
although the U.S. Department of Agriculture used to define a grass-fed cow as
one that has received 80 percent of its sustenance from forages, the number
recently increased to 99 percent.
For that reason, most of the ranchers in Grayson Natural are not raising
USDA-defined "grass-fed" beef. Instead, it is advertised as primarily
grass-fed, never fattened at feed lots, never fed any animal products, never
given hormones or antibiotics and being farm-verified, meaning ranchers have records
of where every cow was born and raised.
The benefit, they say, is beef with lower cholesterol, lower fat and
calories and higher doses of healthful Omega-3 fatty acids. And cattle that are
never fed animal parts have no chance of contracting mad cow disease.
"When you get down to what people are interested in," Boyer said,
"they want a safe, healthy food source, and that might be more important
to them than saying it is grass-fed by definition."
Growing the foundation
In order to taste what Hanes expends so much money and time producing,
customers now have to head to one of a handful of restaurants serving her beef.
Those include the Davis Borne Inn in Independence,
the Duck Roost Inn in Mouth of Wilson and the Foothills Brewing in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The product is also sold or distributed to family and friends of the Grayson
Natural farmers, but they will soon start selling the beef online and marketing
it to other restaurants.
With more than 60,000 head of cattle in Grayson County,
Hanes believes the foundation for big business is already there. Her dream is
to see a slaughtering facility and a tanning facility nearby so the product
they are raising locally can stay local and benefit the community.
She currently sends her cattle to North
Carolina for slaughter.
And while many farmers are still holding out to see if Hanes can make it
work, the market for high-quality, safe meat continues to expand. Throughout Southwest Virginia, farmers are raising pasture-fed
chickens, turkeys, pigs and cattle for sale at farmers markets and natural food
cooperatives and finding it difficult to meet demand.
It may seem as if the farmers of Grayson Natural are trying to break new
ground, but they say it's just the opposite.
"No, I'm trying to rejuvenate old ground," Hanes said. "We're
just getting back to the way cows were naturally raised, and it's a healthy
product if it's raised right."
Watch an audio slideshow about why Charlotte Hanes raises all-natural beef
on her Grayson County farm.
Innovative farming techniques
n Through Grayson LandCare, a group of farmers and landowners who want to
improve economic and environmental conditions in Grayson County
and beyond, Hanes has encouraged conservation easements on neighbors' land and
donated hundreds of thousands in easements on her own property to preserve the
rivershed.
n Hanes and five other nearby ranchers have also partnered to raise
pasture-fed beef for Grayson Natural Food. Their goal is to become pioneers in
a new Virginia
beef industry. The benefit, they say, is beef with lower cholesterol, lower fat
and calories and higher doses of healthful Omega-3 fatty acids.
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