Our First Beef

Farmers Helper mobile slaughter

We recently finished our first steer for processing, and have sold our first beef.  We only sold a quarter to help offset the processing cost and to ensure we have enough beef for our own freezer.  We'll likely be canning some beef stew as well to have a bit of fail safe food storage.  It was a far better experience than we had with our hogs out in Mohawk.   Farmers Helper (FH) is an excellent processor to work with, and will be our go-to handler for future processing needs.

The guys that came out to perform the slaughter were skilled in their craft and made quick work of skinning and halving the steer.  They were in and out in less than an hour.  Theresa was a little surprised that the chickens swooped in to drink the blood, but the FH crew told her it was normal.  Theresa helped take care of the waste with the bucket on the tractor and it got buried under the compost pile.  We kept the hide and are working on cleaning, drying, and tanning.  It's a big hide and a lot of work goes into preserving it.  We hope to make some chinks or other useful items from the hide.

 Our steer was on the smaller side when we opted to harvest, but still ended up with 506 lbs of hanging weight which produced nearly 400 lbs of excellent fresh grass fed beef.  We're pleased  with our finished product and glad we didn't greedy and go for bulk rather than quality.

Six of the eight tubs of beef

loading beef into boxes

Perfect marbling, excellent beef top loin steaks

Now that we have some experience under our belt, we'll be working on developing our heard and pasture maintenance to establish our own grass production for winter hay.  Still a lot of work ahead, but we've been busy.  Recently we finished the head-gate and chute so we can work with the cows, to administer vaccines and inseminate our heifers.  We also picked up a new Angus steer, we named R2, so we have more beef to process at the beginning of next year.  With the AI tech coming out this Saturday the 26th to inseminate we should have calves on the ground this coming November.  The herd is starting to grow and the pastures are being put to work.

Chute added to head-gate

Adding chute bracing, with Patty licking on...

R2 in holding pen