Happy, Healthy--You Are What You Eat
/(This article was written for and appeared originally in The WEDGE Newspaper, August/September 2021 issue)
When Bob Vetter was a boy growing up in rural New York, farms fascinated him. His family didn’t farm, but one down the road did, and he started visiting, watching the activity, learning about the animals. That family put him to work, and he knew he wanted to work with farms for the rest of his life.
As Vetter continued learning and working with other farms, he became a Registered Animal Scientist with the American Registry of Professional Animal Scientists (ARPAS) and a Livestock Nutritional Consultant. His focus was on family farms and helping them with better production, healthier animals and “believing in family farming” that could compete in larger agriculture markets.
Along the way, Vetter discovered that he was feeling sick when he ate mass-market beef, suspecting additives in the meat as the culprit. So, he set up an experiment. He purchased his own cow and raised it on the diet he prescribed to many of his clients: grass, hay, and alfalfa supplemented with amino acids and all-natural mineral and vitamin supplements; no hormones, no antibiotics, no animal by-products.
“Cows have nutritional requirements for their bodies just like we do,” Vetter notes. “It stands to reason that the more nutritious the food for the cows, the more nutritious the beef will be for humans.”
He had the beef processed, ate that, and was no longer sick. At that point Vetter decided to raise his own cows.
One of his clients purchased a dairy farm between Avon and Honeoye Falls in 1955. For over a decade Joe Mroczek and his son Andy have used Vetter’s consulting service to enhance and optimize feeding and production for their herd of Holsteins, but the farm has been scaling back milk production little by little due to society’s waning demand for milk products.
“COVID was the final nail in the coffin,” says Andy.
It turns out that school systems are the biggest consumers of milk, and with the closure of schools last year for remote learning, the family made the difficult decision to cease operations.
About the same time, Vetter was looking for a new location for his small herd of beef cattle in the Finger Lakes that would be closer to his home in Avon. One day he stopped at the Mroczek farm with a proposal that would keep him closer to his family and keep the Mroczek farm operating.
“Today’s start-up costs for a farm, well, it just isn’t feasible,” Vetter says. “Combining my business with Andy’s is allowing us to grow at a rapid rate.”
Andy agrees, adding, “An empty barn deteriorates.” Having activity in the buildings and animals in the pasture keeps the farm functional and healthy. The farm also produces wheat, corn, soy, and hay for feed, rotating the fields for optimum quality and soil health. In fact, Mroczek Farm received an award in the 1980s for its environmental conservation practices.
The new partnership, a combined total of 100 years of farm experience, will continue the commitment to cleanliness, quality, and sustainability utilizing the systems already in place for silos, pastures, barns, and feed. They are also using crossbred cattle, Holstein (dairy) and Black Angus (beef.) This combination produces hybrid vigor: bringing out best traits of the breeds while decreasing the worst traits. In this case the result is excellent marbling in a lean meat that enhances flavor and tenderness without a heavy outer covering of fat.
Vetter adds, “Everyone wants Black Angus, but I’ve eaten some tough Black Angus. I’ll put my steak up against a Black Angus steak anytime.”
Each day the cows on this farm are checked and walked to confirm overall health and are fed a largely home-grown diet with a complete nutrition package. Their bedding is natural hay, and barns are cleaned daily with the manure carted to a separate pit to use for crop fertilizer. Cows are put into the free-range pasture in the morning and wander back into the barn out of the mid-day sun, where water and fresh hay are available for grazing. When the cows are sent for processing, it’s to a local, relatively small USDA-inspected facility.
In the barns, the lights and noises are low. The cows are serene—curious about visitors, but not anxious or jostling or bellowing. Humans in the barns speak in quiet tones and move slowly. This is by design, according to Vetter. The calmer, less-stressed the cows are, the happier they are, and this is reflected in the end product.
“When you buy ground beef in grocery stores and fast food, chances are much of it comes from a big facility that processes large quantities of meat a day,” explains Vetter. “You don’t know where it came from or what the animals have been through. It makes a difference in what you’re eating.”
Vetter says that working with his farm clients and seeing their commitments to quality food led him to “want better” for his wife, Jessica, and two sons, Evan and Wyatt. He says each day inspires him to provide not only a living, but an improved quality of life for his family, the animals, and for his clients and customers.
Beef from Vetter’s can be purchased at the South Wedge Farmers Market (see the SWFM Facebook page to see when he’ll be there,) through the website www.VettersBeef.com, and at Weaver’s Farm Market in Canandaigua.