SC - RE: Hardly Anyone eats lamb...???

[margali]

> Farmers tend to grow what will sell.  Tobbaco and cotton were cash
> crops
> for export to England.  Exporting wool would probably have been a
> losing
> proposition.  And England certainly didn't encourage people in its
> colonies to produce their own wool and ruin the market for English
> woolens.  Even after the Revolution, tobacco and cotton were more
> valuable.

moreso because cotton and tobacco will not grow in the british isles,
not due to the brits quashing oviculture.

> Historically, the eastern US has never been suited for major grazing.
> It was originally prime forest, inhabited by various predators that
> made
> stock raising difficult.  Most crops were garden patches for food and
> acreages for export.  Urbanization and steady popluation growth made
> cleared land more valuable for food crops than livestock.

bull pucks. vermont has a long tradition as a dairy state, as the
terraine tends towards the vertacle and rocky, which is ok for cows. new
hampshire has a long tradition as well of large tracts of land going
towards flocks of cows and sheep, have primary sources dating to the
late 1600's-one side of the family was shipped over here to be the 3d
royal gov of nh, fascinating diaries.the catskills of new york mention
all sorts of farming going on. most of the east coast was under
agriculture that involved animal husbandry not just of the 4 footed
kind, but also of geese and chickens.

> Stock raising moved into the newly opened lands west of the mountains,
>
> stock having the advantage of being able to walk to market rather than
>
> requiring transportation, but had slow growth again due to the prime
> forest.  Stock drives to the east coast were hazardous, but were very
> profitable if successfully delivered to market.  Pigs apparently were
> the most common stock, providing the fastest turn-over and the highest
>
> profit for the least expense.

beef just was ot a food of preferance as pigs and poultry were more
popular as they consumed table scraps and other foods that a cow will
not touch, as well as sheep for bith lambs and wool. milk was normally
not drunk, but used as an ingredient, so cows were byrned in towns and
even in the cities at great expense, not as meat animals, but as dairy.
the move towards beef as a food animal dates to the cvering of the land
with railroads to transport the animals more efficiently. it took
refrigeration to make the transition final, in about the 1880s. if you
read fiction of the era, they primarily eat mutton or poultry unless the
characters in question ate extremely wealthy or live in a more rural
setting.

> By the mid-1800s, population growth on the east coast had outstripped
> the capacity of the stock raising operations to feed the people.  But
> a
> transcontinental railroad and a bunch of broke Texans with a herd of
> ownerless cattle converged on Sedalia, Missouri in 1865 and kick
> started
> the US cattle industry.
>
> >Now, what people need to realize that it's perfectly understandable
> (if
> >not reasonable, if you know what I mean) to have aversions to foods
> you
> >have never personally encountered.
> >
> >Adamantius
> >troy at asan.com
>
> Ah, the truth will out -- military chow as aversion therapy.  My
> father
> disliked chicken for a similar reason and a friend of mine who is a
> Vietnam Vet hates rice because his outfit was getting about 10 lbs per
>
> day per man (rice for every meal and more.  His tale of the
> rice-filled
> sandbags in the Monsoon is a riot.)
>
> If you want to have people swear off hamburgers, have them try the
> ones
> that come in C-rations.  Thin hockey pucks embalmed in croton oil.
>
> Bear

in ww11, the army provided powdered eggs, condensed milk and oddly
enough, fresh bread. my father refuses to eat sos, creamed anything and
french toast. something about these items 3xday for several months and
in combat.

you know, we might have the basis for a new dieting technique...
margali

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