Don't Have a Cow!! :)

Years ago, my parents raised steers for beef…just enough for the family, not commercially or for profit. The animals were well cared for, and given top quality food, hay, and pasture. The first few years, for butchering and processing, he brought them to a guy who ran a butcher shop and sold meat. I was not under the impression that the man had a habit of processing beef for small-time farmers, but for some reason, he made an exception for my dad. My dad would drop off the animals, and then pick up the packaged meat when the processing was completed. The meat was good, and my dad was very impressed with his home-grown beef. However, my father had a friend who worked as a commercial butcher in a processing plant. When my dad showed him the meat, his friend’s reaction was always sort of tepid…he was just not impressed with the quality. Then, one year, my father changed his plans about where he was going to get his beef processed. He had already told the first man he was going to bring his beef animals to him, so he had to tell them he had made other plans. He pulled up to the business, and walked in the store to tell them. On his way in, he could see an older cow grazing by itself in the usually vacant pasture they had beside the business. When he told the business owner of his change in plans, the man began chewing my father out “Oh, how can you just change your plans like that? That is just not right! You told me you were going to have your animals processed with me like you always have done, and I was planning on it!”

My father was very perplexed by the man’s behavior, as the butcher never made that much money from my father’s business dealings. Still, my father opted to have his animals brought to another place that year, despite the other butcher’s protests.

Well, when my father got the beef back that year from his new butcher, the quality in beef was an amazing improvement over past years. This time when my father showed the finished beef to his butcher friend, the man told him that the beef was of outstanding quality! This further perplexed my father, as he had done nothing different in raising the animals from year to year. So, his butcher friend told him that he believed the other place had not been giving my father the meat from his own animals, but switching it for inferior quality and keeping my father’s beef. Which would explain precisely why my father’s first butcher had a cow, literally, when my father was there. That was the animal he planned to switch for my father’s steer, and now he was stuck with the inferior animal!

I appreciate my local meat processing plants, and trust them to do their job fairly and honestly. They have good reputations…and this can be important for someone new to the whole home-raised meat world! If you don't know your meat, at least know your butcher. If you don't know your butcher, then one of your friends should!