In article , tomj wrote:

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 15:31:39 -0800, (Jan Flora)
wrote:

PBS is going to run a show on friday here that was produced by
Hal Cannon. It's about cowboys. If I know Hal, he'll have stuff in there
about a cowboy's relationship to the land and to the animals. (And I do
know Hal. Met him at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV a few
years ago.) Catch that show, if you can. It might explain a lot.

Jan


Thanks Jan, I learned a lot from this exchange. (still not gonna eat
cow, but am pretty impressed by the care some pasture feeders put into
their production)

I'll look for the PBS story!

I'm not trying to convince you to eat beef; just trying to let you know that
we aren't all heartless corporate slash & burn, overgrazing, phone book, dead
chicken & sheep "by-product" feeding monsters. (Yes, they feed old phone books
to cattle now. Isn't that special? =:-O Ruminants can digest cellulose,
but you
won't catch me feeding cardboard or phone books...)

Some folks have been on the land for generations, raising food for people
to eat.
If they didn't care for the land and the critters, they would have starved
out and
had to move to the cities. (The Depression ran my FIL's family into
sharecropping
in Texas. They lost their ranch to the bank. Dad came here to Alaska,
homesteaded
and built this place into a ranch in 1951. My MIL's ranch has the 5th generation
on the ground now. Her great-grandmother homesteaded the place in the 1860's
in Middle Park, Colorado. I'm waiting right now for a show about John Wesley
Powell going "Down the Colorado" to come on PBS. Janice's great-uncle, Jack
Sumner, was Powell's guide on that trip. Janice's home ranch is on the
headwaters
of the Colorado.)

Jan