Snow Community News • By Shirley Taylor

With the weather feeling like living in the artic. None of us (us and our neighbors) have seen the light of day outside the front door. The slippery steps and porch can be extremely dangerous. Be careful going in and out of your house when it is icey.

Then there are some of us folks who religiously are up and about feeding the animals and watering them. We see Todd Joslin and his feed truck go by everyday on his way to feed his cattle. The term grass fed can sometimes be confusing. Traditionally, all beef was grassfed beef, but we’ve turned that completely upside down.

Now, thanks to our misguided policies, our beef supply is almost all feedlot beef. Thanks to government subsidies, it’s cheaper, and it’s also faster. Seventy-five years ago, steers were slaughtered at the age of four- or five-years-old. Today’s steers, however, grow so fast on the grain they are fed that they can be butchered much younger, typically when they are only 14 or 16 months.

All beef cattle spend the first few months of their lives on pasture or rangeland, where they graze on forage crops such as grass or alfalfa. But then nearly all are fattened, or as the industry likes to call it “finished,” in feedlots where they eat grain.

You can’t take a beef calf from a birth weight of 80 pounds to 1,200 pounds in a little more than a year on grass. That kind of unnaturally fast weight gain takes enormous quantities of corn, soy-based protein supplements, antibiotics and other drugs, including growth hormones.

Under current farm policies, switching a cow from grass to corn makes economic sense, but it is still profoundly disturbing to the animal’s digestive system. It can actually kill a steer if not done gradually and if the animal is not continually fed antibiotics. A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.”

Putting beef cattle in feedlots and giving them corn is not only unnatural and dangerous for the cows. It also has profound medical consequences for us, and this is true whether or not we eat their flesh.

Feedlot beef as we 2.40-2.92 2.37-2.41 1.51-2.25 1.48-2.22 1.35-1.91 $1250-1625 $750-1150 .85-$1.00 .40-.84 .85-$1.15 0 $125-300 know it today would be impossible if it weren’t for the routine and continual feeding of antibiotics to these animals. This leads directly and inexorably to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These new “superbugs” are increasingly rendering our antibiotics ineffective for treating disease in humans.

Further, it is the commercial meat industry’s practice of keeping cattle in feedlots and feeding them grain that is responsible for the heightened prevalence of deadly E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria. When cattle are grain fed, their intestinal tracts become far more acidic, which favors the growth of pathogenic E. coli bacteria that can kill people who eat undercooked hamburger. So feeding your cattle proper feed is not just throwing out a bale of hay.

Another neighbor of ours was talking to her granddaughter and explaining how many people back in the day didn’t have a washing machine to just throw their clothes in and go set down in from of the TV. She shared with me her grandmothers wash day. To wash your clothes, build a fire in backyard to heat kettle of rain water. Be sure to get far away from the house. Set tubs so smoke won’t blow in eyes if wind in high. Shave one whole cake of lye soap in boiling water. Sort things, make 3 piles. One pile white, one pile colored and one pile work pants and rags. To make starch, stir flour in cool water to smooth, then thin down with boiling water. Take white things, rub dirty spots on your washing board, scrub hard and boil, then rub colored don’t boil just rinse and starch. Take things out of kettle with broom stick handle, then rinse and starch. Hang old rags on fence. Spread tea towels on grass. Pour rinse water in flower bed. Scrub porch with hot soapy water. Turn tubs upside down, Go put on clean dress smooth hair with hair combs. Brew cup of tea, sit and rock a spell and count your blessings. After you have rested just a little then it’s time to go start dinner before the stove gets completely cooled down from breakfast.

A temporary halt is being put on the recycled cans. The location in Antlers has shut down their facilities where we took the cans. Until we can find a location close, we are stopping collecting cans. Sorry for the inconvenient. I will let everyone know when we can resume recycling.

Please keep your loved ones in your prayers always. Time is just a fleeting thing. Thanks to everyone that has been helping keep the land around the community building nice and clean.

Also, the Finley Community normally has a lunch on each Friday at noon. Days Finley are not open or only doing take outs will be posted on their Facebook page.

Anyone wanting to add to the article please turn them in before Friday at 5 p.m. Additions can be emailed to me at: freylake123@yahoo.com or call me at 580-208-0870, Have a blessed week.