The Field Guideby Moss & MarrowDe Pottum
- Cattle, sheep or goats graze on pasture in the grazing season
De Pottum is a dairy farm of 120 cows on the Pottumsestraat in IJzendoorn, in the Betuwe, that sells frozen beef from cattle born and raised on the farm.
Besides the dairy cows and their young stock the family keeps a number of beef cattle, crosses between Belgian Blue and Holstein, and all the meat comes from animals born and raised there. The cows are outside in summer, and the farm grows its own grass and maize for them. The beef cattle are slaughtered at almost two years old at a local butcher, where the meat is cut, vacuum-packed and frozen. The webshop lists 38 products, from steaks, brisket, picanha and short ribs to soup meat, beef smoked sausage and five- and ten-kilo nose-to-tail packages, and for broth and offal there are marrow bones, shin, oxtail and beef tongue. The milk itself is not sold.
Orders can be collected free at the farm at Pottumsestraat 11, by appointment, or delivered on Saturdays to about forty villages in the Betuwe and Rivierenland, among them Kesteren, Wageningen, Tiel, Druten and Buren; an order placed by 9:00 on Saturday is delivered that day.
The farm generates its own electricity with solar panels, and the heat released when the milk is cooled is used to heat the farm's water.