Vote With Your Mouth.
One reason we sell our meat as grass-fed organic freezer-beef to people around here who want such things, is that they’re worth more that way. Money. Now, don’t get me wrong, we don’t have high prices, in fact we came up with our prices by going to the local meat-store and fixing them to be the same as other local (but not-grassfed and not-organic) beef. You can have theirs. Or you can have ours which is better for you and safer and tastier. Not that this argument convinces enough people.
See, we have only so much pasture, only so many bales of hay. We must sell as many calves (approximately) as we have born in a year. And currently demand is not such that this is the result. So occasionally I must cull my herd to a more reasonable and manageable size.
There is a weekly livestock auction the next town over. I load my trailer and haul them down. No questions are asked. The auction is purely: what you see is what you get. About noon that same day all the livestock is walked through one at a time and bid upon. Our cows, being healthy and well fed, look very skinny and old when placed next to the grain-finished steroid-huffing beefs from around the county. It’s exactly like those shiny swollen softballs that grocery stores insist are a variety of apple call Red Delicious. I’ve had a Red Delicious. They are small, not all that red, really, and, uh, delicious. Those softballs have a thick wax skin covering some sort of appleish flavored foam. In among this foam are brown deposits of flavorless sugar-water. Mmm. The beef surrounding my beefs at auction are the same way. They are Barry Bond’s turgid biceps. Their heads are shrunken because they are so much younger and practically force-fed, which, as any economics major could tell you, makes perfect sense. The faster you get them big, the less time it takes before they’re marketable.
This is my round-about way of explaining why my cows go for very little on an auction block. They look like slow-growers. They are. They look like they aren’t loaded with fat. They aren’t. No one wants that crap. Or, at least, no one who processes your food for you wants that crap.
Which is why we sell them directly to the public as much as possible. It’s only the informed denizens who deserve our meat. And we can’t make a profit selling them to the meat-purchasers of Knox County.
See, we have only so much pasture, only so many bales of hay. We must sell as many calves (approximately) as we have born in a year. And currently demand is not such that this is the result. So occasionally I must cull my herd to a more reasonable and manageable size.
There is a weekly livestock auction the next town over. I load my trailer and haul them down. No questions are asked. The auction is purely: what you see is what you get. About noon that same day all the livestock is walked through one at a time and bid upon. Our cows, being healthy and well fed, look very skinny and old when placed next to the grain-finished steroid-huffing beefs from around the county. It’s exactly like those shiny swollen softballs that grocery stores insist are a variety of apple call Red Delicious. I’ve had a Red Delicious. They are small, not all that red, really, and, uh, delicious. Those softballs have a thick wax skin covering some sort of appleish flavored foam. In among this foam are brown deposits of flavorless sugar-water. Mmm. The beef surrounding my beefs at auction are the same way. They are Barry Bond’s turgid biceps. Their heads are shrunken because they are so much younger and practically force-fed, which, as any economics major could tell you, makes perfect sense. The faster you get them big, the less time it takes before they’re marketable.This is my round-about way of explaining why my cows go for very little on an auction block. They look like slow-growers. They are. They look like they aren’t loaded with fat. They aren’t. No one wants that crap. Or, at least, no one who processes your food for you wants that crap.
Which is why we sell them directly to the public as much as possible. It’s only the informed denizens who deserve our meat. And we can’t make a profit selling them to the meat-purchasers of Knox County.
posted by Lord of the Barnyard at 2:01 PM
6 Comments:
I see links to Eat Wild and Local Harvest. Have you gotten any results from those listings?
We both know that you're simply raising beef the way nature intended but in today's screwed up food universe, you've got a niche product - artisanal is the cool word for it.
Stockman Grass Farmer ran an article from the NYT earlier this year listing the top 20 cities in the U.S. for spending on artisanal foods. Surprisingly, to me, Akron/Canton was in the top 10. I think Cleveland was 17. Columbus didn't make the list. I don't know if that's helpful for you or not.
Not one single person has approached us from Local Harvest. Eat Wild has provided us with numerous customers. My dad thinks grassfed might have jumped the shark. He also thinks thinking "green" is popular now just cause it's on a 30 year cycle. I think he's wrong on both counts.
Lotb:
I'm a city girl. I don't know anything about farming or ranching. But I know I buy organic grass fed beef anytime I can. Having a daughter, I'm also convinced I need to feed her hormone-free stuff as much as possible. I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but it makes sense to me. Keep up the good work.
Speaking of voting with your mouth, I thought you might find this interesting.
http://www.farmersonly.com
I'm Jerry Miller, founder of FarmersOnly.com. There are basically two groups in America. Group one: their lives revolve around four dollar cups of coffee, taxi cabs, blue suits, high heels, conference rooms and getting ahead at all costs in the corporate world. If you fall into this group you're probably on the wrong online dating site. Group two: they enjoy blue skies, wide open spaces, raising animals, appreciating nature and truly understand the meaning of Southern hospitality, even if they don't live in the South. This group makes up America's Heartland. This is not a geographic area, this is a slice of America with good old fashioned traditional values, values that were never lost by the farmer
I disagree. I think that there are two kinds of people: self centered and less self centered. The less self centered make more of an attempt at a symbiotic(sp?) life rather than a parasitic one.
Here's a testimony for you. I found your Dad's name on Eat Wild and we bought 2 quarters in the last 18 months. Great stuff! Good prices!
Now I am trying to get my own steer fattened up without following the "put him in a stall and grain him" advice.
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