This year, we’re buying one-quarter of a locally raised, hormone- and antibiotic- and cruelty-free steer.
Beef. From the hoof to our house via a local processor.
We’ll be investing a few hundred dollars (it comes out to around $2 a pound, a great price for beef raised on grass and locally raised organic grain in a non-feedlot environment) in enough meat to last us the better part of a year.
But the strange part is knowing that an animal will die to become our food — specifically, on Feb. 19.
We’re not huge meat eaters. We might have meat twice a week. Chances are good that this beef will be our main meat protein while it’s in our freezer. We have to place a cutting order with the processor, and we’re not asking for T-bones — we are most interested in chuck for stews, flank steak for Mr. Cheap’s carne asada, maybe oxtails and shin bones for stock, and I never turn up my nose at ribs.
When I was a vegetarian (which I was for 10 years), a large part of my reason was the cruel way animals are raised as fodder for our culture’s consumerist lifestyle — part of which is the thoughtlessness with which we consume meat. Later, I grew to believe that I should not eat any animal I felt I would be unable to kil myself — an inexact science, to be sure, that allowed me to consume fish and chicken.
This takes me one step closer to that ideal, although I still won’t be doing the work myself. If you want to see some shots of doing the actual work, check out Green as a Thistle’s post on the subject (and per her readers’ request, *caution* if you are disturbed by raw meat).
It’s a humbling process, but my goal is to appreciate it every step of the way.
Interesting! I’m a vegetarian right now too (been so for about 10 years) and have had thoughts about meat and animals along your lines. I had a friend that invested in 1/2 a cow once and he had nothing good to say about it. Though he never did it again because of the freezer space issue. That 1/2 cow fed his family of four for a year.
If you take requests… please post more about this as I am very curious to hear about your experience with this.
Thanks for this blog! I found it a few weeks ago. Also, why do you have a bottle of fish sauce in your blog header graphic?
Thanks for the feedback! But wait … do you mean he had nothing good to say, or nothing BUT good to say?
And ha – the fish sauce: I had a garden photo up all summer, and when fall came around, I decided to change to a photo of the many jars of pickles that are filling my pantry. I snapped this one (bread-and-butter, dills and curry pickles) and the extra bottle of fish sauce had snuck its way in … so I left it. Which reminds me to “slaughter” (as I like to call it) one of our 8-pound butternut squash from the cellar for some Thai green curry.
[...] 7, 2008 by cheaplikeme Yesterday, I posted about our upcoming order of a quarter beef. This purchase is part of our ongoing work to consume only meat that has been “treated [...]
Ah… oops. He had nothing BUT good to say.
I don’t know what your arrangement will be like but he said the meat guy came to his house with what looked like a big moving trailer hitched to the back of his truck. Only, it wasn’t a moving trailer… DUM DUM DUM!
It was a mobile butcherhouse/room. It was then and there that my friend was able to specify specific cuts. He was very positive about the experience, though the mobile meat room was a little strange!
Whoa, that is totally crazy.
We have a professional meat cutter with a stationery shop. We have to go pick it up, aged and frozen. I think I’d feel less relaxed about a mobile butcher-trailer.
Hi!
I would love to know who you are getting your meat from. I am in the Boulder area and that is a smoking deal! Could you please share your rancher?
Thanks!
The rancher is Bender Natural Beef. We don’t have our meat yet (it’s aging at the processor in Windsor, Colo.) to vouch for the quality. E-mail me at cheaplikeme at gmail dot com and I’ll send you Bender’s e-mail address, if you are interested.