Tag Archives: Big Bear Ranch

Big Bear Ranch Stands Against Fracking: Photo Essay

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Big Bear Ranch is a unique constellation of 2500 acres of certified organic fields and forests accessible to the animals.

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Cattle herds graze on waist-high pasture during the rich summer months.

?I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade.?
What are People For? by Wendell Berry

I received this very touching letter from Gigi and Rainer Krumsiek from Big Bear Ranch that I wanted to share with you. They are very worried about our government issuing long-term water withdrawal licenses for the shale gas industry. Even though they completely control their watershed — unlike most of us — they understand the priceless value of clean water.

It is heartwarming to know that farmers like Gigi and Rainer are committed to growing the best food possible. But there are many problems outside the control of the homestead or household. We need to work together to send a powerful message to our governments to stop externalizing costs into the greater environment for the dubious benefit of increasing government revenues or enriching a few corporations or individuals. As a population, we need to stop asking our government for services so they will stop spending money that our children and grandchildren will have to pay back.

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Happy hogs enjoying a good wallow in a pond. These hogs are destined for the table but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a full and joyous life.

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A drove of hogs walking to a central feeding area.

Dear Friends,

Because of all the news lately about possible contamination of commercially raised meat — like this article today — we feel the need to assure you that all our animals are only eating what mother nature intended them to eat.

The only addition to food grown organically on our place is salt — mostly Redmonds Sea Salt — but sometimes salt with selenium, because our soil here is selenium deficient. We use kelp, which is a dehydrated sea plants containing over seventy minerals and vitamins, and certified organic hog and poultry grower mash. We also ask the manufacturer for mash without soy or corn. We are very concerned about cross-contamination from genetically modified soy and corn fields, considering that 85-90% of all corn and soy produced on this continent is already genetically modified.

A very good example of the screwed thinking humans are able to do is the way the corporate industry wants to protect you from bad E. coli. They’ve invented a vaccine against E. coli and want to force the beef producers to use it on every animal by law. The most logical way to prevent E. coli in the first place would be to raise animals with lots of space and sunshine and to not feed them stuff which raises their pH so much that their E. coli becomes resistant against our stomach acid.

Those of you who attended our Field Day or visited us otherwise?could observe the unique constellation of the 2500 acres of certified organic fields and forests accessible to the animals of Big Bear Ranch. We are situated around the highest point in our surrounding, being the source of four little creeks. That means besides the minuscule chance of air pollution no other contaminants can enter our fields. Another advantage is the absence of public roads across our place. This in addition to the fact that all our meat animals are born on our place — some other producers buy animals at the auction market in spring and sell them in fall, which is way more profitable — gives us the confidence to claim that our meat is the healthiest you can possibly buy.

Please help us to protect this rare opportunity by signing the following petition:
Don’t Give Away Our Fresh Water for Fracking

We feel it is time to stop polluting everything just for the advantage of a very few. Here is more information about fracking.
Fracking Threatens Farms and Food Safety

Thank you very much for your time and help.

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Sheep and lambs grazing on pasture at Big Bear Ranch. Note how electric fencing is used to control grazing. This ensures the animals always have fresh, clean pasture to eat.

Big Bear Ranch
Rainer and Gigi Krumsiek
PO Box 128, Horsefly, BC, V0L 1L0
T: 250.620.3353, F: 250.620.3393
E: info(a)bigbearranch.com
www.bigbearranch.com
305km
certified organic PACS farm no.16-250: organic grass-fed beef, pastured pork, pastured lamb, raw honey, pet food, custom lumber; breeders for Icelandic ponies, Tamworth pigs, Galloway cattle

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Big Bear Ranch is a breeder of Icelandic ponies, Tamworth pigs, and Galloway cattle.

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Seeing a place like Big Bear Ranch makes me believe we can learn to live in balance with our environment.

Many specialists believe that feeding grain to a ruminant acidifies their gut and has caused the evolution of acid tolerant strains of Escherichia coli such as 0157:H7. These strains of E. coli can get through our stomach acid and make us very sick or kill the weak among us. For more information please see Slaughtering in BC: Information You Need to Know.

If you would like to learn more about fracking and the unintended consequences to our water and food supply please see Fracking Our Food Supply by Elizabeth Royte. It is a long article but please read it. If we do not act, we better get used to the idea of our children and grandchildren getting cancer at ever increasing rates. When I think about Canada using natural gas and water from the Athabasca River to transform bitumen into oil, I want to weep at our collective stupidity.
A Smoking Gun on Athabasca River: Deformed Fish
The Nature of Things: Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands

We are working towards our own local environmental disaster here in Kamloops. Please see Pick Your Poison or Change Your Life. If you want to read about what you can do on a household level please see What if? and Port-fool-you.

?Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.?
Wendell Berry

Updated May 4, 2013: Last week I was talking with Todd Stone, Kamloops South candidate for the BC Liberals, about his government’s policy to promotion fracking. He says fracking has a forty year history in BC and is totally safe due to government regulations. He told me the problems with fracking can’t happen here in Canada because Canada has the best regulations in the world. I contacted Big Bear Ranch for evidence about fracking damage in Canada.

These two videos are about?Jessica Ernst from Rosebud, AB. Jessica Ernst worked for the last thirty year in the Oil and Gas Industry as a Environmental Scientist. The first video is a six minute introduction. The second video is the documentation of the contamination that occurred in Rosebud, AB. Presently, Jessica Ernst is suing EnCana Corporation and the Alberta Government for water contamination. If you want your children to be able to drink clean water please watch both videos.

Winter Storage Part II

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This is part of our dried storage area. We like to have a large section of organic dried fruits, mushrooms, spices and other organic bulk items. We buy in bulk to save on costs.

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We like having a large section of organic beans, legumes, and whole grains. We grind our own flour at home.

Our household has three types of winter storage. We use a root cellar, dry storage and freezers. The root cellar is humid and cool, which is good for storing: potatoes, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, cabbages, onions, garlic, shallots, green tomatoes, raw cheese and crocks of fermented vegetables. The dry storage is dry and cool, which is good for storing: dried fruits, ground coconut, grains, beans, legumes, assorted herbs and raw honey. We have over 70 cubic feet of freezer space in which we store: beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, organ meats, bones, raw milk, raw butter, butter, nuts, seeds, berries, tomatoes and assorted vegetables.

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This freezer used to be full of raw milk. We will run out of milk before Olivia gives birth to her next calf. Normally, I would never store anything with frozen milk to avoid off flavors getting into the milk but I ran out of space in my other freezers.

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This is my fruit freezer. It was full at the beginning of winter. I now have space for nuts. When nuts are shelled it is better to store them in the freezer to protect their delicate oils.

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This freezer would normally be empty by this time of year. One of our big freezer's compressor failed. We where lucky that we didn't lose any food. It is a good idea to have a temperature alarm on all freezers to avoid this kind of problem.

Three years ago, we came to Kamloops and moved into an old mining pit. The soil is clay, rock and gravel. The first year we were busy building the warehouse and a home. The second season we started the garden. We had to bring in compost, peat, and manure from all over the city to grow anything. We planted fruit trees, currents, raspberries and other food producing plants. We use drip irrigation and a small number of spray emitters. The soil was so hard and rocky I was using a rock pick to dig shallow holes to plant my herb garden. Many plants died that first year.

The quickest way to build soil is animals. We have run chickens for two seasons now. Shaen is the gardener in the family and he has had some production this year. We have had good production from: raspberries, strawberries, some tree fruits, spaghetti squash, beets, zucchini, chard, tomatoes, green beans, herbs and dried beans. Everything else languished or died.

The last week, has been a race with the weather to remove the remainder of our crops from the garden. We managed to put away some spaghetti squash, pie pumpkins and green tomatoes in the root cellar. We froze some raspberries and green beans. We put away a very small amount of dried beans into our dry storage. It was chickens that really worked this year. We put away 120 chicken or about 600 pounds of meat in our freezers. We have eleven turkeys still growing in the back “pasture”. Our new laying hens are consistently producing over a dozen eggs a day.

Every urban homestead starts from humble intentions. The urban homesteader must be flexible. The land can only produce what the land can produce. The urban homesteader must be patient. With careful tending and a little effort, the land will produce more and more each year. If we are in a hurry, production can be increased, but a cost will be paid in labor or money. The urban homesteader needs to be grateful. Whatever comes is a bounty, a gift, from the land. In our modern world we have forgotten how precious food is. Growing your own food counteracts this delusion.

These are some of the local producers I have used for dry stores and for our freezers:
1. Westsyde Apiaries: 250.579.8518: raw honey, raw honey comb
2. Fieldstone Granary Ltd: 250.546.4558: organic spelt kernels, golden flax seed, oat groats, green lentils, and buckwheat groats, chicken scratch
3. Healthylife Nutrition: 250.828.6680: raw pecans, raw walnuts, shredded coconut, raisins, currents, dates (Once a year fall order from www.ranchovignola.com.)
4. Jocko Creek Ranch: 250.374.9495: grass fed beef, grass fed lamb
5. Lyne Farm: 250.578.8266: grass fed beef, grass fed veal
6. Beaver Valley Livestock Services: 250.243.2257: pastured pork
7. Big Bear Ranch: 250.620.3353: pastured organic pork
8. Golden Ears Farm: 250.679.8421: unsprayed strawberries
9. Highland Farm: 250.803.0048: organic cherries
10. Blueberry Hill Farm: 250.246.4099: unsprayed blueberries
11. Avalon Dairies: 604.456.0550: pasteurized organic butter (Good for cooking.)

New Cow Share Program in Haida Gwaii

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Big Bear Ranch sent me a link to an article in The Tyee called: Did you Want your Milk Raw? (The Tyee was started by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon the minds behind the Hundred Mile Diet). Lisa Graham-Knight has two Jerseys which are supplying Haida Gwaii with raw milk. I read through the postings after the article and was saddened by all the fear the general population has around raw milk. I wrote a posting on The Tyee site about why I like raw milk and consider it safer than pasteurized milk. Below is my posting:

I am the Chapter Leader for the Weston A Price Foundation in Kamloops. My family and I have been drinking raw milk for about three years now. This summer I decided to buy my own Jersey cow so I could ensure a supply of this nutritious traditional food.

It is important that raw milk comes from healthy grassfed cows. The raw milk is of better quality if the cows are on fresh pasture, so it is a common practice to milk only on a seasonal basis. It is better for the cow’s long term health not to be milked while pregnant.

We drink fresh whole raw milk daily. I make raw butter, kefir and yogurt. I freeze raw milk for winter consumption. My family has not become sick from drinking raw milk. In fact, I did not drink milk for nearly ten years because of “lactose intolerance”. It turned out I had “pasteurization homogenization intolerance”. Industrial milk is dangerous for me.

I would recommend interested people reading Ron Schmid’s book The Untold Story of Milk. It gives historical background about how we have found ourselves fearful of a nutritious traditional food that has nourished generations of people.

In the name of “safety” we have seen our rights to choose healthy foods reduced. Farmers and ranchers in my area are being regulated out of business. It’s really all about choice. Does the government have the right to choose what is right for me? Unfortunately, they have the power to do so. The farmer becomes a criminal just by selling me this traditional food.

I want the government out of my business so I can get nourishing foods directly from the farmer at a reasonable price. Even at this reasonable price, the farmer gets paid more than what they would receive from the Industrial Food System. (I won’t get into government run dairy quota.) Legal raw milk sales would save the small family farm. Legal farm gate sales regarding meats is another issue that would save the family farm.

I will try to connect with the people involved in this new cow share program.