Home, home on the pasture
Toolbox
By HOLLY JENNINGS Herald Correspondent - Published: February 20, 2007
The first time I visited Hinterland Organic Farm it was a sunny and unusually warm January day, around 50 degrees.
"Beautiful day," I commented to Boris Pilsmaker, owner of the farm with his wife, Sheila.
"No, it's not right for this time of year," he replied. "And if we don't have a long and hard enough freeze in the winter months, pests are doubly hard to combat in the warm months."
Here is a practical man who is tied to the natural rhythm of the seasons. Pilsmaker grows food, plain and simple.
But this was not always so. Having grown up in the streets of Boston, he is a self-made and self-taught farmer. With a still-detectable Boston accent, Pilsmaker said after moving to Vermont in 1973, he thought, "If I'm going to live here, I might as well learn how Vermonters live and embrace the Vermont lifestyle. And to me, part of living in Vermont is growing and raising my own food."
He started with a hog and then one or two steers in his backyard, and learned as he went, selling a side of beef to a neighbor at first.
Speeding along Route 4 in Killington, it's easy to miss the handmade sign for the farm, and the cattle that amble about in a pressure-free environment on the sloping face of the farm's hillside. Wait a minute — a farm with a pressure-free environment? Isn't that a given? But that is exactly how Pilsmaker described the lives of the animal he raises.
"The animals," he said, "roam around at their own pace. It's relaxing. They don't have the stress of being herded into a small confined area and standing around in their own waste."
Comparing Hinterland Farm to the industrialized feedlots in the West, where the majority of cattle spend the last three to six months of their lives, you can see his point. Pilsmaker's current half-dozen steers — on average he butchers 10 head a year — have about 10 acres at their disposal. In a feedlot, 1,000 cattle would be crammed into the same space.
The beef cows at Hinterland Farm eat at a more leisurely pace, too. The large feedlots, Pilsmaker said, fatten their cattle for slaughter at 18 months, or maybe even 16 months. It takes his steers 24 months to get up to weight.
Why the difference? Pilsmaker doesn't shoot his steers up with growth hormones, which cause them to grow faster and eat more voraciously, gives them room to move about and doesn't feed them a diet heavy in corn, which fattens them more quickly.
There's a problem with feeding cattle a lot of corn. Because cows are designed to eat a balanced diet, mostly of grass, heavily corn-fed cattle, if not regularly treated with antibiotics, will become sick and die. And because the cattle are so tightly packed in a feedlot, disease can spread quickly, another reason for the regular use of antibiotics. The major concern regarding the excessive use of antibiotics in agriculture is that new strains of drug-resistant bacteria will be created, cross over to humans and be untreatable.
Pilsmaker's beef cows — black and red Angus and one Charolais — enjoy a balanced diet and fresh air, and they are healthier for it. In fact, he proudly told me that he doesn't even know a vet.
"I've never had to deal with a vet," he said. "Never. The animals just don't get sick."
Pilsmaker raises steers, pigs and turkeys for meat and chickens for eggs — over the years he's also raised chickens, geese and ducks for meat — and grows 100 percent organic produce.
There is no waste. The animals' manure provides the basis for the organic compost in the garden. Whether planting seeds in his gardens or tending to young steers, he views everything on his farm as part of the same process of nurturing something into a finished product that he feels proud of.
"My food is healthy," he said. "Anyone who is producing food like me in Vermont, and there are plenty of us, is giving the consumer a better product."
Pilsmaker unapologetically admits that his meat is not fully organic. It is natural. Why would a farmer choose not to be a certified as an organic farm, and thus not avail himself of a growing market? It's because the certification process is expensive and lengthy. For farmers raising animals, it is not only expensive, but cost-prohibitive.
He feeds his cows a mixture of hay and good quality conventional feed without animal by-products from Poulin Grain, a family-run Vermont business. Organic feed is twice the cost of conventional feed. If he were to use organic feed, Pilsmaker said his prices would go through the roof.
"The sad fact is you can always out-produce what you can sell," he said. "That's because the population in Vermont is low and because many Vermonters can't afford to pay the price I have to charge to cover my costs and do more than break even. This is not a cheap way to farm. Unfortunately, the people who feel they must buy cheap feedlot meat from grocery stores are not getting a healthy or even good-tasting product. The general public has to make a choice about what it can afford to purchase."
What is natural beef? Aren't all animals inherently natural?
Well, they are, but some of the practices followed at factory farms are unnatural. According to Chip Morgan, treasurer of the Vermont Beef Producers Association, the exact definition of natural can vary from farm to farm, yet all those who raise natural beef agree that it means no added hormones and no medicated feed, meaning, no antibiotics in the feed.
If antibiotics are used — some farmers argue that they should never be used — they should be used judiciously, only when an animal has fallen ill and is in danger of dying. By default, naturally raised beef cows have much more room to move about and a more balanced diet than feedlot animals. It is precisely why they don't need regular doses of antibiotics.
When I asked Pilsmaker what he saw as the biggest challenge to small farmers, he said unequivocally it is the difficulty of getting animals slaughtered and processed. There are simply too few slaughterhouses in the state.
"The way things are right now, the lack of slaughterhouses has the potential to put an end to this industry, and then all we'll have left is industrially-produced meat from cows shot up with hormones and antibiotics," he said.
He sees this as even more immediate problem than the ongoing challenge of finding a market for his meat. If the animals can't be slaughtered and butchered, there is nothing to sell.
As I drove out to Hinterland Farm a second time in early February, I felt lucky to be able to arrive at a farm just a short drive away. The issue of organic certification feels superfluous when you can visit a farm and speak directly to a farmer.
By this time, things had righted themselves. The ground was covered with snow. I picked up a beautiful chuck roast to try Sheila Pilsmaker's pot roast recipe. The trust you can feel in knowing your local farmer goes both ways; in their farm store next to the defrosting chuck roast there was a mason jar for me to leave my payment.
Consumer news
Where can you buy Hinterland Farm products?
A selection of Hinterland Farm meats and sausages is sold at the Rutland Natural Food Market, 77 Wales St., in downtown Rutland. For information, call 773-0737.
A full selection is available, with 24 hours notice, at Hinterland Farm, which is located in Killington on Route 4, 1/2 mile east of Route 100. Telephone 747-4497. A full selection is also available, with 24 hours notice, at the Pilsmakers' restaurant The Mountain Creamery, 33 Central St., Woodstock. Telephone 457-1715. The Mountain Creamery serves breakfast and lunch and the Pilsmakers' homemade ice cream. Part of the food produced at the farm also stocks the larder at the restaurant.
During the growing season, from the end of May to mid-October, Hinterland Farm meats, eggs and produce are sold at the farm store from noon to 6 p.m. seven days a week.
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