Beef again! So good!

I was very reluctant to send my last steer to slaughter. He was a sort of pet you know, meant to be a trained ox and pull a little cart - but life got in the way and Butterscotch is now in mine and several other people's freezers.  After all, that's really why we raise beef!

Last night I cooked the first rib eye. It was very lean,  tender and very good and I am very glad to have a freezer full of beef again. I started it in a grill pan on the stove top and finished it in the hot oven, which is the AGA cooking way. I raw fried some  potatoes so I'd have meat and potatoes  and it was perfect!

I ran out of beef a couple of months ago and can't bear to purchase the stuff in the grocery. Every cattle publication I read talks about growth implants and how the farmers can't make money without them. I know all that beef in the grocery freezer probably has growth hormones - or at least most of it does, and I don't want to ingest those thank you.  My beef is all natural and grass fed and happy in the green grass and sunshine (when we get sunshine).

Pastured chicken, best for eggs.

Chickens grow fast.  I don't worry about them, so I eat a lot of chicken from the grocery. It's too much trouble to raise chickens for the freezer, though I have done it. I have to raise them separately from the laying hens and at present I just don't have the room for both.
  I don't eat much pork anymore just because it comes in such large packages in the grocery.  But if I had any room in my freezer and I wanted pork, I'd call a farm I know in Washington C.H. that raises Berkshire hogs, one of the heritage breeds, and purchase a hog from them. Berkshires are naturally lean and this farm raises them naturally. They would deliver it to the private butcher of my choice. For about $300 I'd have about 200 pounds of pork.  I'd smoke the bacon and ham myself or the butcher could do it for me. Alas, I don't need 200 pounds of pork on to of the 400 pounds of beef I have currently.

Berkshire Hog

Which reminds me - I have beef for sale at $4.00 a pound, all cut and wrapped and vacuum sealed. I sell a 25 pound box which consists of 12 lbs ground beef and 13 pounds of steaks and roasts. The steaks are NY strips, filet, rib eye, sirloin and round.  The roasts are rump and chuck. The ground beef is in one pound packages. Fill your freezer. You will be glad you did.