This is a hero story.
At an age when, frankly, most of us are slowing down both our bodies and our commitments, my friend Sylvia Burgos Toftness has launched a new and ambitious venture. I tend to marvel most at the challenging physical aspects of the job because they would, for me, be most daunting. But the truth is that the real genius is the nature of her work and the amount that she has had to learn to make it happen. Six years ago, this lady who grew up in the Bronx and wore a suit to work every day of her more traditional career started a grass-fed beef operation that is turning heads.
I got to know Sylvia back when our children were young and the corporation for which she worked sponsored a program I represented. Like me, she was a communications professional. Now she's raising and selling beef. Always passionate about heirloom seeds and active in the organic community, I am not surprised by the new obsession nor about the thoroughness with which she has tackled this new avocation, but to see her working the fields is nonetheless impressive. I spent a morning with her recently at Bull Brook Keep near Amery, Wisconsin to learn about and photograph her work.
From birth to table: Bull Brook Keep, Sylvia and her husband Dave's beef operation, starts with breeding and birthing new calves and goes all the way to selling (and delivering) the purely grass-fed beef to a local restaurant and to individual customers. Marketing, not surprisingly, takes a good deal of Sylvia's day. To wholesale the beef at the time of slaughter would risk her meat being mixed with that of lesser quality and losing the hard-earned nutritional benefits. It would also mean another middleman would eat up her profits.
Every few days, Sylvia fences off with electric wire a new portion of the pasture into a paddock-size space that will offer 35 lbs. of grass per cow per day but will keep the herd together. Keeping them in close quarters rather than letting them run loose benefits the land - the grass is more thoroughly and efficiently cropped, the animals' hooves stir up the soil and encourage growth of a variety of nutritious wild flowers and grasses whose sugars enrich the plants and fatten the cows, and their concentrated manure enriches the soil. It keeps the cows much calmer, too, which is better for the meat. The transformation and quality of the farm's pasture land in six short years has neighbors talking and asking questions.
The chickens, too, are a mobile operation. By moving the coop around the pasture, the chickens' fertilizer joins the cow manure in enriching the fields. In addition, the chickens eat the fly larva in the cow dung, significantly keeping down the flies that plague the herd. The fresh eggs and tasty roasters are a bonus.
The grass in the new paddock is ready for cows as soon as the fence is up.
The right tools for the job: Sylvia and her husband Dave have quickly learned that the key to farming at an age when the rest of us are retiring is to invest in tools that share the load. A little Wrangler jeep carries her across the fields and light but sturdy portable fence posts allow her to re-fence the pastures every other day.
Hay for the winter is mown early in the season and bundled and stored in round bales. As in the summer, the cows are regularly moved to and fed in different pastures through the winter days and months in order to keep the fertilizer directly in the fields year round. In the early fall, the cows will pasture in this field, munching on the new crop of hay that will have grown up since this mowing. This will improve next year's hay crop as well as delay for about three weeks the time that Sylvia and Dave must switch to their winter supply.
Moving the cows from one paddock to another is the easiest part of the job. As soon as they see Sylvia coming, the cows know that greener pastures lie ahead. Behind is the well-cropped paddock they've been feeding on for several days. In front, the long tall grass awaits them as she readies to let them through.
They know it's time to move!
Cows are culled from the herd when horizontal "happy lines" appear on their bellies - signs that the cow is well fed and nutritionally prime for good and healthy meat. Though you can't see the lines here, this cow is plenty happy.
Mornings start early at Bull Brook Keep. Not every day is as beautiful as this one turns out to be, but there's always a sense of peace.
Sylvia and Dave's three dogs - Parker, Chevy and Ziggy - are an integral part of the team. Ziggy (in the shadows) is a corgi puppy who will soon be trained as a herder for both cows and chickens.
Water for the chickens comes from the vegetable garden hose. Ziggy helps.
Sylvia maintains her own blog: From the Bronx to the Barn and hosts "Deep Roots Radio," an internet radio show on Saturday mornings. She welcomes visitors to her farm.
