Poor Ol' Bessie

What is that you ask? Why, its a giant pile of meat, of course. I'd like to say that one of the dairy cows at the homestead stopped producing milk and we had to chop her up, but we don't have the space for a herd of dairy cows in the 20' x 20' back yard.

In reality, some of our friends did an informal buying club sort of thing and bought 1/4 cow together. We got it from McDonald farm in the Finger Lakes. Not only is it a local farm, but its organic, pasture-raised, stress free, etc, etc. You can read about all the reasons that their animals are happy and healthy on their website. There are quite a few farms around Rochester that sell beefs like this in the fall at "harvest" time, but the nice thing about this place is that they have a really big freezer and can keep a lot of meat there that they sell year round. The farmer also comes to Rochester every other week to drop off meat. The cows get dressed, dry aged, butchered, vacuum sealed and quickly frozen in the fall. It should keep well for over a year when packaged that way.

I like buying a 1/4 cow for a few reasons. First, its significantly cheaper than buying the individual cuts of meat. Second, it really give you a feel for the relative amounts of different cuts from a cow. For instance, the good steaks that you get in a restaurant probably only make up 10-15% of the animal. Lastly, it forces me to eat cuts of meat that I probably otherwise would not have eaten. For some reason it gives me a certain amount of satisfaction that I am making sure all the different parts of the cow get eaten. Makes me feel like I'm a native american using every last piece of the Bison or something. And no, there was no organ meats. You don't get those unless you buy at least a 1/2 cow.

Our 1/4 cow was 162 lbs hanging weight (before it is aged, butchered, and deboned). The farm charges $4 per lb hanging weight for a 1/4 cow. Less if you get a half or whole cow. I think they charge based on hanging weight so that regardless of how the cow is butchered (bone in or out, etc), the farmer still gets the same amount. The final weight of the 1/4 cow when I received it was right around 120lbs.

Check back soon for the 2nd (and even more exciting) cow related blog post!