The Hoven Blog

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO OUR FARM FOR OPEN FARM DAYS 2019! Hayride tours to see the cattle, chickens and beaver dams It had been on our minds forever How can we get to know our customers, open our doors to the public, and have an opportunity to visit & show them how we grow their food? When the province wide opportunity came up through Facebook we jumped at the chance to get on board. Alberta Open Farm Days has a goal of promoting Ag-tourism, offers a website and listed Hoven Farms along with 150 other farms around our province....

It is good to eat FAT.   For years, decades maybe, we have been told by experts and people in white lab coats that eating fat is bad. Don't eat eggs. Don't eat beef. Don't eat bacon. It isn't true. You need FAT!   A FAT FACT for you - More than half of the human brain consists of fat and cholesterol, and between a third to more than half of the fat in the brain is saturated. Both saturated fat and cholesterol represent a significant portion of the myelin sheath that surrounds nerve fibers and preserves proper function of...

Treat your taste buds to a wonderful feast and cook up some grass finished beef! You may need some pointers on how to treat your pasture-raised meat since it is different than what is offered at your local grocery store. Grass finished beef starts out just as tender as other meat, but it can become tough if you cook it the same way you would cook grain fed meat. To keep grass finished beef tender, you need to cook it more slowly. Your biggest culprit for tough grass finished beef is overcooking. This meat is made for rare to medium...

There are two ways to describe raising beef on grass. Unless you understand the difference, you may end up buying a product that is not what you think it is. Both GRASS-FED and GRASS-FINISHED are used to describe growing beef on pasture. It sounds like they may mean the same thing but there is a big difference between them. You must realize there is no legal description explaining what the difference is. CFIA has not mandated what the terms mean so they both can mean anything and everything that anyone wants them to mean. That puts much responsibility on you,...