Perpetual Ruminations

Meat The Way It's Meant To Be

Back in November, we ordered a quarter of beef from a locker in a town close by. Our neighbor and friend said they had good, fresh, and local meat, and that he ordered some there a couple of times a year; a quarter beef and a half a hog. Being such a nice guy, he even brought us a few pounds of ground beef to try. It was lean and so much better than the stuff we had been getting in the grocery stores.

Our order went in during hunting season, so they wouldn't process the beef until after they had finished processing local game; it was ready the first week of January. What made it nice is they average the weight for a quarter of a beef, but include cuts from the entire half and custom cut anything to one's preference.

Today, we went through the freezer since it's getting low, and sure enough, we have almost devoured that quarter already! We have about a dozen pounds of ground beef, a dozen steaks, three roasts, and three packages of stew meat.

So, today we ran over to this local town, stopped at the locker, and picked up some meat. Since we have beef, we purchased some of their handmade Polish sausages, German sausages, breakfast sausage, braunschweiger, beef bologna, some pork chops, and smoked pork hocks. In total, we purchased about twenty pounds of fresh, locally grown, and locally processed meat, all for $105.00

We also asked about ordering more beef, curious as to how long it would take to get it. "Two to three weeks." was the answer. We didn't order any yet, we need to get the freezer empty so we have room for it. This time, we will do an entire half, but even with the freezer empty, we won't have room for that much meat. Luckily, most of it will fit, and what doesn't, our neighbor said we could store in his freezer.

So, a few more weeks and we should be ready to order, and if the price remains the same, we're looking at about $4.25 a pound, after processing unless we get jerky and sausage, which has a bit higher processing fee per pound.

It's all good, except now I don't like the flavor, texture, and added water that comes with commercially processed meat in the supermarkets...