It's been years since I had to buy beef or eggs from the grocery store. Every time I think about selling all the cattle and buying alpacas I visit the meat case at the grocery store and come home renewed as a beef farmer. In my freezer in the basement are steaks, brisket, ground beef (we do not call it hamburger) and a big 8 rib standing rib roast. It's always the best beef I've eaten anywhere.
The down side of raising and finishing your own beef for slaughter is that you get attached to them. Now don't get me wrong, I fully understand the only reason to raise beef cattle is to eat beef. And having cared for these animals for years and years I know just how stupid they are. I mean, how can you feel sorry for an animal who takes a bale of hay and while eating it also goes to the bathroom on it. Then of course the hay will not be eaten but turned into a bed. At $5.25 a bale, that's an expensive bed!
But I digress. The blond colored animal here is Butterscotch, a steer (castrated male) and was intended to be trained as an ox that would pull a cart. Butterscotch is a son of my pet cow Buttercup. He is gentle and good natured and completely grass fed. He has a slaughter date of May 22.
In the back of my mind I keep thinking I'll have time to train him to pull a cart and together we will clean up all the big trees that have fallen over the winter and I won't have to send him to slaughter, ever. In reality, if I can pre-sell the meat, he will go to Old Town on the morning of May 22 and be hanging beef by late afternoon.
The meat will be very lean and not as tender as the corn fed variety, but there is a market for grass fed beef and so I will not feed him anything but good grass and hay. Let me know what you think. Should Butterscotch meet his destiny on May 22?
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