Word: shinns
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...Coleman and Damrosch believe that adding livestock to their farm will help the planet? Cattleman Ridge Shinn has the answer. On a wintry Saturday at his farm in Hardwick, Mass., he is out in his pastures encouraging a herd of plump Devon cows to move to a grassy new paddock. Over the course of a year, his 100 cattle will rotate across 175 acres four or five times. "Conventional cattle raising is like mining," he says. "It's unsustainable, because you're just taking without putting anything back. But when you rotate cattle on grass, you change the equation...
This math works out in part because farmers like Shinn don't use fertilizers or pesticides to maintain their pastures and need no energy to produce what their animals eat other than what they get free from the sun. Furthermore, pasturing frequently uses land that would otherwise be unproductive. "I'd like to see someone try to raise soybeans here," he says, gesturing toward the rocky, sloping fields around...
...everyone is sold on its superiority. In addition to citing grass-fed meat's higher price tag - Shinn's ground beef ends up retailing for about $7 a pound, more than twice the price of conventional beef - feedlot producers say that only through their economies of scale can the industry produce enough meat to satisfy demand, especially for a growing population. These critics note that because grass is less caloric than grain, it takes two to three years to get a pastured cow to slaughter weight, whereas a feedlot animal requires only 14 months. "Not only does it take fewer...
Residents living along the street where the first family is staying say that, all in all, having the President stay there hasn't been too disruptive. "How many people can actually say that they had the President staying on your street?" says Ember Shinn, a resident of Kailuana Place. "You get to be a minor celebrity...
Another bonus, Shinn says, is that she gets the advantage of heightened security, with Secret Service agents and two checkpoints on her street. "You do feel safer because hardly anyone can come around," she says. "But I feel sorry for the people living on the canal [that runs through the residential area] because there are gun boats revving up [there] in the mornings...