Beef Straight from the Farmer

Occasionally I get puzzled looks when I say that I'm going to pick up 1/2 or 1/4 of a cow.  We buy our beef in bulk from a local farm that raises grain-fed beef with no hormones, steroids, or antibiotics.

Keith at Otter Creek Farms is our supplier. He also sells at the Farmer's Market in Richmond on Saturdays if you'd like to try his meat before you buy in bulk. I have never purchased from him at the market; so, I'll walk you through our purchasing process.

Placing the Order

When our freezer is low on beef we contact Keith (or rather he usually texts us to ask if we're ready for more) and tell him how much we want to order.  Usually we get 1/2 a cow.  That lasts our family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) about 9 months.  Sometimes, like last week, he only had 1/4 available from what he had planned to take the processor.  So, we ordered 1/4 and he has us on schedule to get another 1/4 soon.


Once he knows how much we want, we do a "cut list." Sometimes he takes our cut list and sometimes we talk directly to the processor, Foothills Country Meats. If you know the cuts of meat you usually buy at the grocery store, this is a simple process.  If you are are not sure how to cut the mean, the folks at Foothills are very helpful and explain options and make suggestions.

Here is our cut list for the beef we picked up yesterday.

What you see there is that we prefer steaks packed with 2 steaks per package and we want them 3/4 inches thick. We want our hamburger in 1 pound packages.  Apparently my husband ordered the liver, but not the heart or tongue (it may be that the folks ordering the other 3/4 of that cow beat us to the punch).

Further down on the sheet, you see that we want chuck roasts that are 2-3 lbs each.  Of the chuck roasts available we wanted 1/2 in hamburger, the same with Arm Roasts - 1/2 was made into hamburger.

Our brisket and sirloin were cut in half.  Our Ribeyes are not boneless.  We did get ribs, but not New York Strip or beef tenderloin (it may have been a choice of which of those 3 - but I Mike was the one who talked to them this time).

We did not get cubed steak or stew meat, but we did get round steak.

Some of our options are limited by the fact that the cow was split between 4 families.

Once we order, we wait for Keith to let us know which day he'll be back in town with the frozen meat. We usually get our beef about 1 - 2 weeks after ordering - depending on when Keith takes cows to processing.

Pick up

 Keith texts me the day before he picks up the meat to let me know his planned schedule and the rendezvous spot - that was fun to say!  We usually meet him in the evening at the AgCredit building on the bypass in Richmond.

Once there we load up our boxes and write him a check for the entire order. For 1/4 cow I get two large boxes of meat. In our case, one box had all of our hamburger and the other had all of the other cuts of meat.

 At this pick-up we had 24 lbs of ground beef.

 Don't let the "not for sale" labels scare you. Those are required because as an individual without a permit I am not allowed to sell the meat.  There is nothing sketchy going on here!

The beef is packed in vacuum sealed bags and frozen before we pick it up.

Here is a list of everything we got.  I did not measure the weight of each steak or roast (but you have the general dimensions from the cut list).

6 Chuck Roasts

1 Brisket

24 lbs ground beef (more about the cost later, but for reference at $4/lb at the grocery this is $96 worth of meat)

1 small flank steak

1 rump roast

4 Round Steaks 

4 2-packs of T-bones, 1-1 pack (remember the cut list - we wanted them packed by 2s, but obviously
our share didn't have enough for that last pack)

2 Sirloin Steak

4 Ribeye steak packs (2 steaks per pack)

4 Packs Ribs

1 Sirloin Tip Roast

2 Arm Roasts

Pricing

We write one check to Otter Creek when we pick up our meat.  They take care of paying the processor directly.

When you place your order there is never a specific price given  - just a general estimate because until the cow goes to the process we don't know exactly how much it weighs.

Here are our expenses for this 1/4 share.

We pay the farmer $1.75/lb of the live cow.  Our share of the cow (1/4) was 262.5 lbs = $460.00

Foothills processing charges were  $74. Those charges were based on the 1/4 of Animal slaughter cost ($7.50), and $0.36/lb hanging weight for processing, cutting and packaging, at $51.48.  Then we paid a "split fee" of $15.

Finally we pay a hauling fee to Otter Creek (taking the cows to the processor, and returning with meat), $50.

$460 + $74 + $50 = $485.00

It is interesting to compare live weight (1050 lbs) and carcass weight, which was 572.25. Apparently for 1/4 this means we got around 143 lbs of meat.

$485/ 143 lbs = $3.39/lb That's a bargain!
ETA: That 143 was hanging weight. I still don't know exactly how many lbs of beef, but I still think it is quite a bargain considering the list of what we got.

If you have questions post them in the comments!