We ended up with 150 pounds of veal! I paid and waited while they brought the meat out to load up. I wasn't sure how I would feel about it, since I know where the meat came from, and all.
It was just fine! As we loaded the meat into my coolers, I felt awesome! I felt like Nephi bringing back food for everyone after his bow broke, or something. I was so proud that my efforts over the past year will be feeding our little family. (And our friends.)
I stopped by Jessica's house on my way home. She and I have a joke that I took the calf to go live with a new family, on a farm.* So of course we joked that I was driving home from visiting the calf. It was fun to see Jess.
When I got home, we put the meat in our big freezer. Today I actually counted it out. This is what we ended up with:
Ground beef patties - 20 packages, 5 patties per package
Ground beef chub things - 7 of them
Short ribs - 4 packages
Rib steak - 9 packages
Sirloin steak - 5 packages
Tenderloin - 1 package
T-Bone steaks - 10 packages
Round steak - 1 package
Tip roast - 2 of them
Top round steak - 3 packages
Chuck roast - 5 of them
Cubed steak - 3 of them
Rump roast - 4 of them
Stew meat - 3 packages
Pot roast - 1 of them
Soup bones - 5 packages
I think the steaks have 2 per package. And I forget how many pounds I had our roasts cut to. Maybe 4-5 pounds? Now we just need to decide who all we are sharing with, and then start learning how to cook our different cuts of beef! It should be really good, since it was raised on our little pasture, with no steroids or hormones or anything. We did supplement with some grain.
We're pretty convinced now that we will be getting another calf for 2011. We may try a Holstein this time. We'll see.
* Oh, gosh. The kids who live on the other side of our pasture (little kids, like a 3 year old and a 5 year old) always stand on their side of the fence and they're friends with our animals. They liked the calves all right, but they really like our goats. They feed the goats, and call out to them, and the goats come visit. Anyway, as we were loading up Chuck to take him off to the meat place, the kids were over at their side of the fence watching. I don't remember if they asked what we were doing, or if J just volunteered the info, but J started to tell them, "We're taking him to go get meat!" and my jaw dropped. "NO!" I told J, in a sharp whisper. "DON'T!" "Why not?" "J. You are a bad person. You don't tell little kids like that!" "Ohhhh. Well? What do I say now? I'm in the middle of talking to them!" "Nothing. You can cut off a sentence and little kids don't realize it. They think what you said just didn't make sense, but that happens when adults talk to them anyway." "Okay." So he just kind of smiled at them. Their mom told us later that it was kind of funny because the kids told her we were taking the cow to go get meat. But like, they didn't realize the cow was the meat. They thought we were just taking him with us and bringing back meat. So it was all okay, because even though J practically told them we were eating their friend, it was still totally over their heads. Crisis averted.
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4 comments:
Hooray! I'm so excited for you! And I'm a little more convinced that someday I'll be able to raise a cow. Even if we do live close enough for BJ to have fast internet and be close to work. :) We got a 1/4 of a cow recently (but a full-grown one) and holy cow. It is a lot of beef.
Enjoy it! It's so tasty!
Em,
I love your blog because I feel like even though we don't chat often I know what is going on with you. I found the calf adventure fascinating because I think I will do something similar at some point. It sounds like things are going well. TVB un mondo!!!!
WOW Em! Now I really want a cow! I absolutely hate going out and buying meat, especially beef. It's so expensive at the market. Plus, I feel like I really don't know how to pick out steaks and roasts well. I mostly stick to ground beef and stew meat for the crock pot. Is raising your cow and butchering it economical? Does the meat taste more fresh? I wish we lived on a farm, too!
Erin - Well, it ended up costing us a lot more because we lost one of the calves right at the end. But otherwise, we estimate it was probably $2-$3/lb. Maybe less. At the beginning we fed them bottles milk replacer, and that stuff was pretty expensive. After that, we mostly just let them eat grass all summer, with a little bit of grain supplemented sometimes. We did feed them alfalfa hay for the last month or so. The cost for having him processed and wrapped was $94, including $5 extra to have 20 lbs of the ground beef made into patties. If you let steers get fully grown, and you have enough grass to let them mostly eat grass, the overall cost would be even lower per pound. So far we have been impressed with the quality of the meat; it does have a lot of flavor to it!
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