Your Guide to Grass Fed Beef Cattle

Homemade Cleaner for more than Just cleaning...

2011-12-15T08:14:00.001-08:00

Farm and Home, Garden Remedies

(Note: In any agricultural application, your results will vary depending on your soil content, available nutrients, climate, etc. While these are reported used below, your mileage may definitely vary.*)

Basic H has numerous applications on the Farm. While not recommended for internal livestock use, it has been found effective by many farmers as a de-wormer. It also has been proven in use as a soil conditioner, allowing ground which was resistant to water penetration to become porous and more productive.

Here are a few of the many uses Basic H has been found effective for:

Fire Extinguisher – 1 tablespoon Basic H to 1 pint spray bottle; put water in first then add the H to prevent suds. Very effective on grease fires; keep one by the stove, in the tool box, by the welder… Also 1 gallon H to 55 gallons water in 55 gallon water barrel; suffocates a fire fast. In Fire trucks 1 gallon H to 1,000 gallons water.

Tape Residue – 4 drops to 16 ounce spray bottle filled with water, spray on let set and wipe off.

Paint Brushes – Work full strength H into brushes and wash under the tap.

Outside Windows and Screens – Spray mixture of 1 teaspoon H to 2 gallons of water.

Rust – Use Basic-H for rust inhibitor for rusty nuts and bolts. Also use one tablespoon to radiator full or water or anti-freeze to help prevent rust.

Changing Tires - Spray diluted or full-strength Basic-H on rims. Tires go on easier.

Septic Tank – Pour one quart of Basic-H into septic tank drainage when it becomes sluggish to clean it out. Does not hinder bacterial action in septic tank or cesspools. In fact, it helps build bacteria in your septic tank.

Boat Bottom Algae - 1 tablespoon Basic-H to one gallon of water.

Garden bug killer: 1 tsp of Basic H to 1 gallon water

Orchard trees: for bug killer; 1 oz. Basic H to 1 gallon water and spray before buds appear. For fungus or disease, 1 qt. Basic H to 5 quarts.water. Spray until drips off plant. (I used on my gardenia bush which was inflicted with something that was white and fuzzy. Whatever it was, it disappeared.)

Garden soil treatment: 2 1/2 quarts of Basic H to 25 gal. water. Spray and plow under in early spring or fall.

DE-WORMERS…

Dogs and cats: 2 drops of Basic H to one gallon of water.

Chickens: 1 quart Basic H to 95-100 gallons of water (1 C. for 25 gallons of water… keep reducing for your needs.)

Cow and horse: 4 oz. basic H to 150 gallons of water. (note in book says that cows drinking this liquid give more milk and have increased rumen activity. Also, gets rid of scours.)

Sheep or goat: 2 oz. Basic H to 150 gallons of water.

PEST CONTROL

Animal fly spray: 4 oz. of Basic h to 1 quart of water

Ant removal: 1 quart Basic H to 4 quart water. Pour over hill. ( I love this! No fear for chickens pecking at the hill after treatment!)

Basic H is also reported to have cut herbicide use in half, while improving crop production 20%, depending on application and crop.

Consider this video about Basic H - http://youtu.be/_0sDmf3a7Z4

Buy Shaklee Basic H in bulk quantities for farm and garden use.

*Shaklee Corporation makes no claims for Basic-H or H2 with reference to crops, growth response, or crop yield; as a nutrient release aid or fertilizers as a spray adiuvant, pesticide, fungicide, herbicide, or rodenticide.

How your beef is raised, mostly.

2011-09-28T14:38:00.001-07:00

Even this video was surprising to me, and I've been raising cattle and around farming most of my life.

We raise grass fed beef, which is the easiest and probably lowest input way to raise cattle. All the cattle's "waste" output goes directly back onto the land. Cattle are checked twice daily and any that need special treatment are moved nearer the house for extra care and attention.

However, check out how this feedlot operates. Quite fascinating.

Untitled

2011-09-24T21:00:00.001-07:00

missouri-grass-fed-beef-healthier-cheaper-safer-greener..pdf Download this file

Safer, Healthier, Cheaper, Greener: Missouri Grassfed Beef

2011-09-24T14:20:00.001-07:00

Missouri Grass Fed Beef is: Safer, Healthier, Cheaper, Greener

The reasons we raise grass fed beef are few. And they boil down to simply these four.

It's our opinion - based on our experience - that Missouri grass fed beef is the best solution for all of these points.

1. Safer

In any supermarket, you can't tell that two steaks laying next to each other actually came from the same beef carcass. Unless you see that carcass actually cut into its pieces, you won't know what animal it came from. But even then, you won't know how that cow was raised or what it was fed. And you don't know how it was processed into that meat you are buying.

This is exactly how all these infectious diseases get circulated. People trust that corporations, inspected by governments, actually know and do best for everyone. Neither corporations or governments do their jobs perfectly. Some short-cuts get taken here and there. They aren't caught and traced until someone gets sick.

And that system works only as long as everyone follows the rules. But it's not a perfect system.

Last time I followed the government tracing down a contagion which escaped, it traced to hamburger which was mixed together from 4 states and 3 countries. Somewhere, along the line, a processor goofed, short cut, cheated. And the result was that an untraceable infection was let loose into hamburger and widely distributed.

The result was that a few people died, a lot of people got sick. One person wound up paralyzed for life. Her mother cooked her up a hamburger from meat bought at the same local supermarket in their neighborhood.

With locally-raised Missouri grassfed beef, purchased from a farmer you know, processed at a local abbatoir that you can visit - then and only then will you know that your beef is safe to eat. Only then.

2. Healthier

When cows are fed anything but grass, they change. Diet determines the quality of the animal as it grows. What they are fed influences the muscle fibers. When they are fed corn grain, then extra fat is added to their system. Grain doesn't digest well, so the acid-indigestion is offset with other food additives. This is a solution that becomes another problem. Often this is where anti-biotics come in.

The overall situation is that the more they "add" to a cow's diet in order to make the production smoother, cheaper, or faster - those additives have an effect on the meat. Many of them stay in the fatty, intramuscular tissues. So what they feed cattle is what you eat, after a fashion.

That said, cows can and do eat a wide variety of forages in their natural state. They have four stomachs, which allows them to thoroughly digest growing material in order to extract all the nourishment they need. This one biological fact also allows them to digest all sorts of non-natural diet materials and not only survive, but continue to gain weight.

When you eat meat harvested from Missouri grass-fed animals, eating only natural forages, you get the benefit of lean and natural beef. It is said that where a person could make their diet only on this, they would actually get all the necessary proteins, minerals, and vitamins they need. Some have, in fact. While we suggest that you continue salads, breads, fruits, and milk products (avoids boring "same-old's" situations), one should take that into account.

A healthy diet would start with healthy foods, though. And grass fed beef is healthier than many, if not all feedlot-produced meats.

3. Less Expensive

Buying a Missouri beef by the quarter takes out tons of middlemen - literally. A beef raised by a farmer, and sent to a processor, then delivered to you, has no real middlemen. You pay the processing fee and the farmer's growing costs - that's all..

What you don't pay is having it trucked all across the country to go to different specialty plants which kill, part, and wrap the meat. Then it winds up in a supermarket. That's at least two more layers of workers which have to be paid, along with all those trucks, plants, warehouses, and stores.

Now some object to the cost of hamburger when you buy it direct from the farmer. But they often don't see that the various steaks, roasts, and other cuts are also the exact same price. Supermarkets charge much more for choice cuts. If you actually price the separate cuts by name, you'll find that a quarter-beef costs you 3/4's less than the same pounds of cuts bought separately.

The bargains are in buying direct and buying in bulk. Value you can't arrange from your local big-box supermarket.

4. Greener

While it's quite a buzz-word, growing "green" products is hard for many industries. There are all sorts of arguments about whether feed-lot beef or pasture-finished beef are more environmentally "friendly".

For us, the argument was solved when we found out that it was less expensive and just as productive to raise cattle using all-natural methods. Our cattle eat natural forages all their lives. If they need medicine to cure an illness, the vet gives it to them. But because they live healthier lives in natural surroundings, our vet bills have become less and less. Not all that surprising.

When our cattle eat corn, it's the whole plant when it's growing and green. (Did you know that corn is a grass?) But they mostly eat a huge variety of grasses and forbs and clovers, plus others. (For instance, they like to eat tree leaves, as it is a natural wormer.)

By keeping cows on pasture 24/7/365, you actually take nearly nothing away when you process that animal into meat. Well over 90% of what the cow eats returns right into the soil, in a manner which helps that soil raise even more grass than before. Feedlots have trouble with the manure. Our Missouri cattle put that manure right back where it would do the most good. It's natural fertilizer, after all. And so our pastures are constantly improving. We don't have to spray them or fertilize them - ever.

So any argument that we have to use carbon-based fuel for anything other than moving that cow to the processor is moot. Our cattle are born here, raised here, and the lucky few old cows are buried here. Everything else - you get. Meanwhile, they consume no fossil fuels, but help the land sequester more "greenhouse gases" than they create with their digestion. Tell me a feedlot can make those claims.

Summary

When you next have a chance to go to a commodity or big-box supermarket. Ask the manager or stock-person where that meat came from - and if those two steaks sitting side by side actually came from the same animal. And who processes that cow into meat. You'll find they don't actually know.

But now you know that your best pocketbook/wallet value, your best red meat raised in the "greenest" fashion, and perhaps the healthiest protein is also the safest. If you know your farmer, know your processor, and buy Missouri grass fed beef by the quarter.

And if you want to see how the safest, healthiest, cheapest, and greenest Missouri grassfed beef is raised - just come visit our farm. We'll answer all your questions and show you around. And you can reserve your next order at the same time.

About Worstell Farms

Producing the Finest Missouri Grass Fed and Pasture-Finished Beef

Our work and mission is to continually improve the health of our farm, it's pastures, and produce - and to raise the highest quality grass fed beef possible, becoming more sustainable as we do.

The current improvements have been in moving toward natural pasture-finished beef with improved genetics and heart-healthy beef. See our Raising Pasture Fed Beef section for details.

To do this, we are constantly improving our herd and also tweaking our grazing techniques to make these ever more environmentally sustainable.

We have also started to direct-market our beef, meaning that we can now tell you almost exactly what your cow has been eating for it's entire life, and where it was processed. And you get better value for your dollar, as well as un-matched food security.

Unlike your supermarket beef, you can inspect every step of the way if you want to.

We think that you deserve to know exactly where your food comes from and how it was raised and made into beef cuts you buy.

How our beef is different

Only locally-raised sires and dams are used.
Humane treatment at all times (some even say they are "spoiled").
No growth hormones.
Antibiotics only when prescribed to cure an illness.
Lots of fresh air, and all the water and grass they can enjoy.
Our beef is bred to thrive on grass, not grain.

So, enjoy on this site all the information we can give you about how to get high-quality, locally-raised beef which keeps all of its natively tasty flavor.

We raise our beef just so you can enjoy it, just as we have for most of our lives.

Farm Tours Available on Request

While we are very busy most days as usual, we do have visitors and these are always welcome. However, we do request that you call ahead for an appointment. Some seasons do not lend themselves to farm tours, but a nice day in the pastures is a joy nearly all year round. (Note: Non-guided tours are not permitted by our insurance.)

Just bring your boots and be prepared to walk!

Site Index of Worstell Farms

HSUS takes over the USDA? What's the truth?

2011-07-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

Is this true? Does some HSUS lawyer now enforce animal breeding for the USDA?

Sent to me by Ron Beedle, check this out - don't know where he got this, but:

HAS THE HSUS “HIJACKED” THE APHIS OFFICE OF ENFORCEMENT?!?!?!?
In May of 2010 the Inspector General of the USDA released a scathing report that criticized APHIS for placing too much emphasis on education and not enough on enforcement.  One of its recommendations included creating an Office within APHIS that would specifically focus on enforcement.  And the person who was hired to fill the new position was an attorney who had specialized in Animal Law Issues.  Her name is Ms. Sarah L. Conant, and she has been issuing a number of “enforcement” letters to dog breeders, and to at least one rabbit breeder with assessed fines up to $50,000 or more. A sampling of some of Ms. Conant’s “legal qualifications” that may have been considered by the USDA when she was selected to fill the newly created APHIS position, which may give all responsible breeders a reason to say “OMG,” is set out below:
·         Ms. Conant was employed by the HSUS as a Litigation Attorney immediately before she was hired by the USDA.
·         Ms. Conant first became associated with the HSUS when she was designated as an HSUS Litigation Fellow.
·         In 2007 Ms. Conant was featured and quoted in a Virginia Law Publication entitled “Humane Society Lawyers Fight Culture of Cruelty, Government Bureaucracy.”  One of her quotes included the statement that “Humane Society lawyers are working with legislatures and in the courts to change laws that affect the lives of farm animals,” and that “they are forced to go state by state in this effort because there are very few federal laws regarding farm animals.”
·         Ms. Conant was employed by the HSUS in the same HSUS Litigation Office which was so actively involved in the Litigation last year that challenged placing the Proposition B Ballot Initiative on the November 2011 Ballot in Missouri.
·         Ms. Conant’s “Name” has appeared as Counsel of Record for the HSUS on Lawsuits and Complaints filed against Federal Agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the U. S. Department of Agriculture, which now is her current employer.  (Here it is significant to note that on at least one Lawsuit document that may be found on the HSUS Website, the name of “Sarah L. Conant” was no longer listed as one of the Counsel of Record, even though the originally filed document filed listed her name.  Surely the HSUS would not engage in a “COVER-UP!”  Or would it?!?!?!?!?!?)
·         Ms. Conant worked in the same HSUS Litigation Office that sued the USDA under the Freedom of Information Act last October.  This Lawsuit seeks personal, confidential and business sensitive information on everyUSDA Licensed Breeder in Missouri.
·           Ms. Conant is listed as the Vice Chair of the Animal Law Section of the DC Bar, and is listed as representing the HSUS with no reference to the position that she currently holds with USDA.
While some may suggest that Ms. Conant has appropriate qualifications to act as the Chief of the Enforcement Section of APHIS, I personally and professionally believe that an egregious “Conflict of Interest” exists.  In this regard, Rule 1.11 that is published by the American Bar Association specifically addresses “Conflicts of Interests For Former and Current Government Officers and Employees.”    The relevant language states: “a lawyer currently serving as a public officer or employeeshall not participate in a matter in which the lawyer participated personally and substantially while in private practice or nongovernment employment, unless the appropriate government agency gives its informed consent, confirmed in writing.”    This is why a FOIA Request was submitted for a copy of the USDA “Informed Consent Document,” or a comparable “Conflict of Interest Document.”   In the Practice of Law, some would consider a Breach of the “Conflict of Interest” Standard to represent a serious issue that involves “Legal Ethics.”
Three Little “Dashes” of Potentially “Good News:”:
First Dash:  On Monday, July 11, 2011, I received confirmation from the IRS that it had assigned a Case File Number (2011-010153) for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).  Perhaps, just perhaps, someday the ASPCA will look back in the next year or so and wish that it had not thrown its “lot” in with the HSUS; that it had not contributed nearly $600,000 to the Proposition B Campaign in Missouri; that it had not been a Charter Supporter of the current and on-going “Your Vote Counts” Ballot Initiative Campaign in Missouri; and that it had not “hired away” from the HSUS Ms. Nancy Perry to fill its newly created position of Senior Vice President for Government Relations for the express purpose of overseeing the lobbying activities of the ASPCA in all 50 States, as well as at the Federal Level.
Second Dash:  On Tuesday, July 12, 2011, I received confirmation that the Inspector General of the USDA (USDA IG) had received a Fraud, Waste and Abuse Complaint that included a Freedom of Information Request for a “Conflict of Interest” Statement concerning Ms. Sarah L. Conant.  While there is no guarantee that the USDA IG will find wrongdoing on the part of Ms. Conant, the potential exists that the revelation about the specific duties that she performed on behalf of her prior employer could prove to be a major source of embarrassment for the USDA, and could “taint” the integrity of every single adverse action and all assessed fines against Breeders that occurred on “her watch.”    In this regard, Government Employees are expected not only to avoid “Conflicts of Interest,”but are expected to avoid any appearance of a “Conflict of Interest.”   This scenario raises Issues of “Legal Ethics”- - both for the USDA and Ms. Conant who is an attorney.
Third Dash:  On Wednesday, July 13, 2011, I received confirmation that the APHIS FOIA Office had received a FOIA Request for “information” concerning Ms. Conant, and that the APHIS FOIA Office has assigned Case File Number 11-645 to this FOIA Request with a suspense date of August 10, 2011 for its response to the FOIA Request.  Since it has been the HSUS that was submitting all of those FOIA requests for information about Missouri Breeders, it sure will be interesting to see if the HSUS objects to the release of information concerning Ms. Conant’s duties while she worked for the HSUS.  My oh my, won’t it be interesting to see how APHIS responds to a FOIA Request that might prove to be more than a “bit embarrassing.”
When a breeder does not comply with the “Rules,” there are consequences.  When a Government Employee does not comply with the “Rules,”…………………….. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see!!!!!

And this has extreme importance to those of us in Agriculture, raising animals for beef from pastures.

While I haven't posted here for awhile (and am currently busy baling hay for this coming winter) when I got this, I considered that this is of import to post for all to see.

If you need more information, contact http://humanewatch.org - they have all the scoop on these "bandits".

What's so good about Organic Meat?

2011-03-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

This from http://caloriecount.about.com/ - titled, "Is Organic Worth It?

You may have noticed advertising in the meat aisle for grass-fed beef and cage-free chickens. Whether its popularity is due to Moms shunning pesticides for their children born and unborn or to celebrities flaunting organic diets, there is interest in avoiding some of the effects that mass meat production creates. But because organic meat is not offer a significant improvement in nutrition and the long-term health effects of consuming non-organic meat is not completely clear, is the cry for organic meat justified around the world?
Where Does Your Hamburger Live?
The Access to Pasture Rule gives the following guidelines for USDA certification of organic livestock:
Access to pasture throughout the grazing season (specific to their geographical climate)
Diet consisting of at least 30% dry matter intake from pasture grazed during grazing season, totaling at least 120 days.
No hormones to promote growth
No antibiotics
100% organic feed
No mammalian or poultry by-products in feed
You may be surprised to know that none of these guidelines apply to non-organic meat. In fact, non-organic livestock that produce dairy products may be confined to stalls for their entire lives.

- - - -

This blog goes on - and starts getting really alarming after that - talking about "factory farms" and other fictitious emotion-laden terms (Yes, I'd love to get one of those machines which just churn out meat on an assembly line - ain't gonna happen.)

The point here is that the only difference between the grass-fed meat we raise and "organic" is that we can take them to a local processor - and to get a beef organically-labelled I have to take it to the nearest "certified organic" processor in another state. And the grass I give them isn't "certified" as organic.

But organic is more a Federal label now than it is really all that better for you.

Look, the "Organic" scene is officially a mess. Sure, there's money in it - but there's more money in simply raising things naturally.

Reason: Less overhead. Means more profits. When you get the government involved, it's almost always a guaranteed disaster with cost overruns and inefficiency paid for with higher taxes. Yes, we are indirectly financing "Organic" producers. Even though they pay for their government-approved certification.

You have to know your farmer, what he raises and how he raises them to know your beef is safe, high-quality, and worth more in health-terms than the "mystery meat" you buy in commodity supermarkets.

For instance, that cute cow from their site? Highland cattle take 3 years to mature. Commodity Angus can be ready in 16 months. Our grass fed beef is ready about 6 months after that - but pays us twice as much as corn-fed commodity beef.

So grass fed beef is better for farmers (and better for the land) than corn fed. But that really gets into another topic for another day.

Suffice to say that all-natural, grass fed beef is more profitable for the farmer and cheaper to buy than high-priced organic.

Know you farmer, know your processor, know your wallet is a little safer (as well as your food.)

What are "CLA's" and "Omega 3 and 6's"?!?

2011-03-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

Here's some scientific jargon you can throw around during Missouri parties or at work to impress your friends and associates: “Omega 3 and 6, and CLA's.”

Now sit down, this get's thick. Following is a "simple" explanation from Kate Clancy, a senior scientist in the Union of Concerned Scientists - from a March 2006 publication called "Greener Pastures: How grass-fed beef and milk contribute to healthy eating."

The three omega-3 fatty acids—the so-called beneficial fatty acids—have been shown in many studies to improve health and prevent disease in humans. CLA has attracted attention because it has demonstrated many beneficial effects in animal studies. We have focused on the levels of these fats in milk and meat from pasture-raised cattle because, beyond their intrinsic value, widespread interest in these substances among health-conscious consumers could help shift American agriculture from conventional to pasture-based feeding systems. (pg 1)

(For more information about Omega 3 and 6's - see below PDF...)

What are "CLA's" and "Omega 3 and 6's"?!?

View more documents from Robert Worstell

Why our Missouri prime beef is striped...

2011-03-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

We did (and continue to do) substantial research on cattle breeds. Black Angus is predominate in the commodity-driven prime beef Missouri production. While this breed was originally a British/Scottish breed, it's "Americanization" has produced a large-frame cattle with various traits that mostly have to do with fattening quickly on a corn-based diet after they are weaned. This commodity approach with its feedlot base is unfortunately responsible for most of the bad press that beef has gotten in the last quarter-century.

We have been working for the last several years to move to grass-finished beef. So we looked around for the different breeds which did best on just grass. In the middle of this, we found that a medium-framed animal was more efficient in turning forage (grasses, clover, etc.) into muscle. As well, smaller-sized animals fit into people's freezers and budgets better.

The Galloway is a Scottish breed, raised to survive on just about anything it can find during those long, harsh Scottish winters. Very similar to the Highland, except they are polled (no horns). The more commonly found version of this is belted, meaning it has a white belt in it's middle. This is from their being crossed with the "Dutch Belted" breed some generations back. They are known as "Belties".

(For more information about Missouri striped prime beef, see below PDF...)

Why our Missouri prime beef is striped...

View more documents from Robert Worstell

How does a Beef Ranch Stay in Business?

2011-03-12T08:05:00.000-08:00

Simple answer: income greater than expenses and needed reserves. Makes running a beef ranch seem simple.

This was the problem I encountered when I took over farming. Most (and we still do, at this point) maintain a second job away from the farm. Because (as "everybody conventionally knows") you keep farming until the money runs out. It's that second job which pays the costs of farming when the crop doesn't.

It's the commoditized base of farming which is keeping dirt-poor farmers dirt-poor.

We studied this over and over and kept coming up to the same conclusion. Getting big doesn't make your farm more profitable. Studies show that about 300 acres is the max on cost breaks with the income/expenses leverage. More acres above that and you are doing longer hours with the same basic cost per acre. It's how many acres can you farm to replace your day job income. Not less hours or easier work.

Now you have to get smart about what you are doing. We really have nothing bad to say about corn-fed/lot-finished beef (other than it has no taste, really). But if you are selling a lot of bland burgers at a discount price, this is exactly what you want. And that is the commodity beef business. Why packers are vertically integrating to cut out middleman costs.

(For more information about running a Missouri beef ranch sustainably, see below PDF...)

How does a Beef Ranch Stay in Business?

View more documents from Robert Worstell

What's All-Natural, Humane, Pasture-Raised?

2011-03-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

Left to themselves, cows are naturally pasture raised. But humans have a very interesting view of things – not just we who live in Missouri. Humans are unique among all other lifeforms with the ability to think and consider and worry about the life-forms around them. While other animals can readily care for and respect humans, they don't seem to put the empathy behind it that we do.

And while that isn't a negative attribute, there are humans among us who prey on others by exploiting this emotional context. "Humane" is actually putting human attributes and attitudes into other species around us, regardless of whether they exist there or not. When people are repeating emotionally-charged phrases such as "inhumanely treated", along with "factory farms" and "puppy mills", in all cases they are stretching things a bit thin.

Humans do not know exactly and precisely what is being "felt" by any other species on this planet. And that is our particular problem, if you will. We can project that "if that (animal) were human, this is what they'd feel". And that's about it.

(for more information about pasture-raised beef, see below PDF...)

What's All-Natural, Humane, Pasture-Raised?

View more documents from Robert Worstell

Raising Missouri Pasture-Fed Beef

2011-03-10T07:57:00.000-08:00

While pasture fed cattle have been in Missouri as long as the earliest settlers, this is actually one of humankind’s oldest interests and occupations. The ability to domesticate animals in order to provide a regular food supply has determined civilization's rise and fall throughout our histories.

However, it is modernly as precise and specific as any other trade.

It isn't anything you can just start doing once you graduate high school. While you can always get a job as a "hired hand", there's a wide gulf of learning between being able to drive a farm truck to actually caring for and raising live animals - and a host of responsibilities you can't learn to shoulder from any text book. You just can't go out into a pasture and pick up a steak.

Most who raise livestock have done so their entire lives, and have been able to listen to their parents and grandparents, uncles, and aunts to glean their experience in order to make it their own. However, any farmer can tell you that every day out there is another one in the classroom. And most farm living rooms are filled with books and magazines which tell the new methods and techniques which are being tried.

(For more information about pasture fed cattle, see below PDF...)

Raising Missouri Pasture-Fed Beef

View more documents from Robert Worstell

Producing the Finest Missouri Grass-Fed and Pasture-Finished Beef

2011-03-09T07:53:00.000-08:00

Our work and mission is to continually improve the health of our farm and its produce and to raise the highest quality beef possible, becoming more sustainable as we do.

The current improvements have been in moving toward natural grass-fed beef with improved genetics and heart-healthy beef. See our Raising Pasture Fed Beef section for details.

To do this, we are constantly improving our herd and also tweaking our grazing techniques to make these ever more sustainable. We have also started to direct-market our beef, meaning that we can now tell you very closely what your cow has been eating for it's entire life, and where it was processed. And you get better value for your dollar.

Unlike your supermarket beef, you can inspect every step of the way if you want to.

We think that you deserve to know exactly where your food comes from and how it was raised.

(For more information about raising pasture fed beef, see PDF below...)

Producing the Finest Missouri Grass-Fed and Pasture-Finished Beef

View more documents from Robert Worstell

Missouri Beef is Your Best Health Food

2011-03-09T07:49:00.000-08:00

Now there has been some discussion about the heart-healthy aspects of Missouri grass-fed beef – a all-natural health food.

Here's a pretty well-documented summary from Eat Wild (http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm):

Summary of Important Health Benefits of Grassfed Meats, Eggs and Dairy

Lower in Fat and Calories. There are a number of nutritional differences between the meat of pasture-raised and feedlot-raised animals. To begin with, meat from grass-fed cattle, sheep, and bison is lower in total fat. If the meat is very lean, it can have one third as much fat as a similar cut from a grain-fed animal. In fact, as you can see by the graph below, grass-fed beef can have the same amount of fat as skinless chicken breast, wild deer, or elk.[1] Research shows that lean beef actually lowers your "bad" LDL cholesterol levels.[2]

Because meat from grass-fed animals is lower in fat than meat from grain-fed animals, it is also lower in calories. (Fat has 9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for protein and carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number of calories.) As an example, a 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished steer can have 100 fewer calories than a 6-ounce steak from a grain-fed steer.

(For more information about Missouri Beef as Best Health Food, see below pdf...)

How Missouri Beef is Your Best Health Food

View more documents from Robert Worstell

Environmental Impact: Raising Pasture Fed Beef

2011-03-08T07:45:00.000-08:00

Perhaps no species except for mankind itself that has gotten a worse rap about adversely affecting the environment than raising pasture fed beef.

The problem is not the cow, but the rancher. It's how you raise cattle that matters.

This section is going to tell the tip of an iceberg of little known data - how livestock raised according to natural patterns will actually improve the land they live on, and better than the majority of farming out there.

I'll have to discount a great deal of "conventional wisdom" which has grown up over the last few years. Most of this is urban legend, created by people with their own special reasons. All this data came to light as I studied to improve our own livestock care standards.

I only care here to tell what I know as the truth - from someone who has decided to make their living from raising food for other people. There is no real conclusive evidence on one side or the other - people will choose to believe as they will. But there is also no one-sided argument which will stand on its own. We only know what works for us on our particular farm, as well as the studies I'll refer to and link here.

(For more information on Raising Pasture Fed Beef, see the below PDF..)

Environmental Impact: Raising Pasture Fed Beef

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Missouri Grass Fed Meat for You To Buy

2011-03-07T07:36:00.000-08:00

Of course, our beef is special. Everyone's is. But seriously, we work to constantly improve the quality of the beef we feed here in Missouri as meat to buy, based on the needs of our clients, our own "taste tests" and what is good for our resident cows and calves (and the bull, too.)

What you get with Worstell Farms beef is based on how we raise them:

Only fresh grass and water - all they can eat.
No growth hormones or additives. They get needed salt and minerals as supplements.
Antibiotics only when they prescribed by a doctor (vet) to cure an illness.
Our beef has been selectively bred to thrive on grass, not grain.
Constant humane treatment in natural environments.

All of these, combined, result in incredibly good-tasting beef. And meanwhile, these animals are also improving the pastures they feed from, as part of the circle of life.

We sell by the quarter.

Meaning that we butcher the whole cow up to get the best and most numerous cuts and then parcel these up into even fourths so everyone gets some of the best cuts. Some people don't want the liver or other parts, so they can trade these off with other buyers, donate them to charity, or simply leave them for us and we'll do something with them. (And if you favor these parts, you might get a special email from us when there's a surplus...)

The average carcass is around 600 lbs., and a quarter-beef will give you about 75 lbs. of various cuts. We've found that an average freezer (stand-alone, not your typical refrigerator-freezer combo) will hold this easily and give a couple or small family enough to last them most of the year, depending on how many parties they host. Figure with what you share with friends and family, you may need to order once or twice a year.

The reason for quarters in in the way beef is cut (and you can see the parts charts at What Beef Cuts Are). The steaks are mostly in the front half and these are the most popular cuts. Our culture has put more emphasis on cuts which can be quickly seared on a hot barbecue, so chuck roasts aren't as popular. (Very little demand for ox-tail soup these days...)

(For more information about Grass Fed Meat for You to Buy, see below PDF:)

Missouri Grass Fed Meat For You to Buy

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How to Make Sure Your Grass Fed Beef is Tender

2011-03-06T07:31:00.000-08:00

I was doing my usual stint at Internet research recently and found an interesting article about grass fed beef tenderness and its relationship to tasty beef.

Meat Tenderness, by Richard J. Epley of University of Minnesota Extension.

While I earlier had found an article from the University of Missouri, where studies of grass-fed and corn-fed beef (Martz) showed no real differences of when processed using methods to increase tenderness on both types of beef. Simply put, corn fed beef will result in more fat on a carcass which will allow it to be processed and prepared faster. The loss is in the taste. Corn fed (IMHO) has little to no taste compared with grass-fed.

Now the disclaimer I have to make right off is that there are differences from farm to farm and from season to season. The idea is that you find a variety of beef which you are happy with and then stick with that producer and processor. As you know your farmer, you'll know your food.

To explain this, let's use the Minnesota article as a base to develop a checklist:

(For more on grass fed beef tenderness, see below PDF...)

How to make sure your grass fed beef is tender

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Grass Fed Meat has a Surprising Taste...

2011-03-05T07:27:00.000-08:00

The only real disagreement I have with corn-fed beef is that it's comparatively tasteless compared to grass fed meat. At least by my experience in Missouri.

Not too long ago, I was a guest of my boss's partner at an upscale St. Louis restaurant. Pretty fancy overall, but not too many forks to figure out.

$50 entrees, though. (That partner was working to impress us, alright.)

I had their New York Strip steak just to see how it would taste.

It didn't.

Once you got past the heavily peppered outside, it didn't have any real distinguishing flavor. None.

Now I'm used to grass-fed steak and so I know how it can be tender or can be over-cooked into shoe leather. But it always has flavor. It's own distinctive flavor.

This one, all $50 worth, didn't have any.

Because that flavor comes from the various grasses that beef consumed, particularly the last 60 days or so. What these guys got was a corn-finished beef which is fattened on corn for the last 30-60 days or so. Yes, that's the problem - corn robs the flavor from the meat.

(More on the taste of grass fed meat on this pdf below...)

The Surprising Taste of Grass Fed Meat

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Dry Aged vs. Wet Aged - How your meat is processed...

2011-03-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

There is always some discussion about how to prepare your meat – is it dry aged or wet aged? All meat has to have a cool-down period to get the temperature down, not just in Missouri. There is a minimal delay needed from the time the live beef is delivered and the wrapped, frozen packages are ready for pick-up and delivery.

Meat should be aged before it is cut and wrapped. This increases tenderness.

I found this PDF called "Beef and Port Whole Animal Buying Guide" from the Iowa State University Extension, which says:

(See PDF below for more on dry aged vs wet aged...)

Dry Aged Vs. Wet Aged

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What beef cuts you can expect - straight from the meatman...

2011-03-02T07:14:00.000-08:00

While separating the various beef cuts expertly can be an art, it's not rocket science.

My favorite online source for beef data is http://www.askthemeatman.com

Here's what they say about beef yield:

Beef Carcass Breakdown

With an average market (live or on hoof) weight of 1,150 lbs and the average yield of 62.2%, the typical steer will produce a 715 lb. (dressed weight) carcass.

The dressed beef (or carcass) will yield approximately 569 lbs. of red meat and trim (take home meat - which includes the average weight of 27 lbs of variety meat: liver, heart, tongue, tripe, sweetbreads and brains) and 146 lbs of fat, bone and loss. This is roughly a yield of 80% from the dressed or hanging weight - this is for a VERY LEAN Beef. A High Quality, USDA Choice Beef will yield approximately 70% of the Hanging or Dressed Weight. The yield on the take home meat weight from the live weight of the (VERY LEAN) steer is approximately 50%.

....

Why our Missouri Angus Prime Beef is Striped...

2011-03-01T07:02:00.000-08:00

Black Angus is predominant in the commodity-driven prime beef Missouri production. While this breed was originally a British/Scottish breed, it's "Americanization" has produced a large-frame cattle with various traits that mostly have to do with fattening quickly on a corn-based diet after they are weaned. This commodity approach with its feedlot base is unfortunately responsible for most of the bad press that beef has gotten in the last quarter-century.

We have been working for the last several years to move to grass-finished beef. So we looked around for the different breeds which did best on just grass. In the middle of this, we found that a medium-framed animal was more efficient in turning forage (grasses, clover, etc.) into muscle. As well, smaller-sized animals fit into people's freezers and budgets better.

The Galloway is a Scottish breed, raised to survive on just about anything it can find during those long, harsh Scottish winters. Very similar to the Highland, except they are polled (no horns). The more commonly found version of this is belted, meaning it has a white belt in it's middle. This is from their being crossed with the "Dutch Belted" breed some generations back. They are known as "Belties".

More in the PDF below...

Why our Missouri prime beef is striped...

How to Get and Stay Healthy - Eat Missouri Beef

2011-02-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of misinformation out there about farming in general and beef in particular. We keep our Missouri beef healthy and they can help you, too.

All beef isn't the same. The quality of the beef changes not just from country to country, but from farm to farm and year to year. No two animals are identical and can't be raised that way. Each requires care to ensure they stay the healthiest they possibly can, being well-fed and watered even when Mother Nature decides a drought is due.

So this notion of a "factory farm" can't be further from the truth. I'm sure you've heard the horror stories or seen the videos. Truth is, there are bad apples in every barrel. And just because there is a handful of crooked accountants or shifty CEO's of corporations doesn't mean that all of them are that way. (The jury is still out on lawyers, politicians, and used car salespeople...) But animals are live things and cannot be run on any assembly line, any more than a mill can churn out puppies. They have to be individually cared for.

Beef is as healthy as you know where it came from, what went in it, and how it was processed. The meat you get from supermarkets is packaged to look as good as possible, right down to the colors of the packaging and what color lights they use. Doesn't mean it is going to make you fat or lean or somewhere in between.

And all we can really testify to is how our own cattle are treated, what they are fed, and what condition they were in as we sent them to be processed.

Missouri Beef: How to Get and Stay Healthy

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USDA to Require Nutrition Labels on Meat - so what?

2011-01-03T09:54:00.000-08:00

The USDA didn't formerly require nutrition labels on beef - as to how much fat, etc. But they just dropped a bombshell that as of one year from tomorrow, they will be.

And while this is a good thing for consumers (particularly where they rely on commodity-produced beef products), it's a hassle for the small producer and the small processor.

But it looks like the small people are exempt from this - as long as they stick to custom-exempt processing (meaning you buy the whole beef, a half, or a quarter.) Of course, I had to look this up, and over at a niche site, Justia (no, I had never heard of them, either), they have the whole deal laid out as to exactly what the nutrition labeling requirements have to be, when they originally went into effect, etc. http://law.justia.com/us/cfr/title09/9-2.0.2.1.18.2.21.28.html

Now while this is a good thing for farmers who want to stay small, it just poses another hurdle to those who want to expand into the by-cut markets of local restaurants and larger food providers.

The good part about this is that we'll then be able to differentiate the various beef cuts from each other, and by brand. But it's unknown if you'll have to send your own beef out for testing to see what has to be on that label. Grass fed beef, for instance, is going to be a helluva lot less fatty than corn-fed beef.

And it will show up that when you buy the commodity stuff, they are selling you fat by the pound - no matter whether they say it's "natural" or some other marketing label. Grass fed beef is higher in percentage of meat, as it's a lean beef.

Now, you'll also notice that there is no requirements to add "this meat is known by survey to have more taste and flavor..."

But I guess there's a point where government requirements leave off and marketing begins...

Tips to winterize your cow herd

2010-12-06T14:04:00.001-08:00

by Amy Radunz, Beef Cattle Extension Specialist, University of Wisconsin-Madison
(Blogger note: I've included this from the OSU weekly Beef Cattle letter, as an article worth sharing in it's entirety. There's a lot to be said here about how to set up your cattle to survive and thrive through the winter. Mostly, you don't expect more than minimal gain, since the best hay isn't the same as fresh grass. But the trick is to ensure they don't go backwards. So these tip and linked sites will help any cattle producer large or small. I only wish I'd run across this in about September…)

The fall is coming to an end and for most farmers the crops are harvested, the calves weaned, and cows are preg-checked. This is a great time for farmers to make plans for the winter for the cow herd and if you take the time now to plan how to feed cow herd this winter, this can pay dividends in the spring and summer. So here are some simple tips to help winterize the cow herd.

1. Body condition score your cows. Weaning is great time to body condition score your cow herd. If you didn't get this done, its not too late to do this before there is snow on the ground. After the calf is weaned, this is the period when a cow's energy requirement's are her lowest and cows can easily gain body condition during this period. Therefore, for your young and thin cows this would the most economically time to put on some body condition prior to winter and calving. One of the most mismanaged groups of cows in the herd is the young cows (3 to 4 years old) and can often be overlooked and farmers should pay close attention to energy reserves of these cows. By feeding your cows now to have a body condition score of 5 or 6 calving could pay dividends in the upcoming breeding season, since body condition score at calving is highly correlated to postpartum reproductive performance. Video on body condition scoring of beef cattle by Purdue University Beef Team

2. Conduct a forage test on winter feeds. This can be valuable information to determine a winter-feeding strategy. This allow producers to match forages to right stage of gestation and age of animal. Energy and protein intake of the cow during gestation is critical not only to her performance but the development of the calf. If cows do not intake enough protein or energy, this could lead to weak calves at birth, postnatal health problems, or poor growth performance. On the other hand, with rising feed costs farmers cannot afford to overfeed their cow herd. By knowing the quality of the forage, you can determine intake of feed instead of the cow, which will in turn save on feed expenses. Video on tips for forage sampling by Iowa State University Extension

3. Make culling decisions. The easiest decision is to cull those cows and heifers which are determined open in the fall. Farmers can be tempted to give cows and especially heifers one more chance, but with rising feed costs can you afford to keep this unproductive females in the herd? There are several other factors to consider when making culling decisions. Unsound udders, lameness and poor mouths should enter the culling list. These could significantly impact the performance of the cow in the coming year. Disposition is another important factor in making culling decisions, not only for your safety but these cows can pass these traits to their calves and the calves are typically lower performing.

4. Decide on heifer replacement strategy. After making culling decisions, you can determine how many replacement heifers you will need. But some important questions to ask first are: Can you afford to develop your own replacement heifers? Or would you be further ahead to purchase bred heifers to replenish the herd? The heifer calves are another challenging group to manage in the cow herd, especially in small herds. This decision to keep or buy heifers is dependent on several factors such as current and future market prices, herd size, facilities, available labor, and economics. To decide what is the best strategy, producers should develop budgets and management plans for each option. For more information: Buying vs. Raising Replacement Heifers by Jason Cleere

5. Estimate your winter feed needs. Now you have made the decision on what cows are being culled, how many heifers you plan to keep, and what is the quality of your feed resources, this will allow you to design your winter feeding strategy. First estimate, your winter hay needs and determine if you have enough forage on hand. If you estimate you are short on forage, the fall can be a more economical time to purchase feed than later in the winter or early spring. This is also a good time to purchase grains or by-products to stretch your winter forage supply. Reducing winter feed costs can have a significant impact on the profitability of a cow/calf operation, so planning a head can be beneficial to the bottom line. Tools to help: Estimating Hay Needs Calculator by University of Wisconsin Extension.
These are some simple tips to plan for the winter ahead for your cow herd, which can save time and money in coming months. If you would like more information on the tips outlined here contact your local extension agent.

Economics of Small Beef Farms is Better

2010-11-22T07:42:00.001-08:00

Bottom line of some serious number-crunching and pencil-pushing shows that small beef cattle farms are more economically and environmentally sustainable than any corporate setup.

Environmentally, this is essentially provable by food-miles – the amount of miles food has to travel to get to where its consumed. But that is really only viable for smaller towns near to farms. And I never said that big cities were ever a sustainable model to begin with.

All of this points to a decentralized model (including Washington DC) where government coordinates on larger issues, but otherwise simply leaves people alone. Same with the mega-corporations. Huge cities and feedlots aren’t efficient, despite their “economies of scale.”

And what’s in that South American beef you buy? Gawd-only-knows (and S/He might have a tough time with some of this stuff.)

But that is all a bit wide of the mark. We want to talk cattle here. And grass-fed, high-quality, heart-healthy, environmentally-responsible protein production.

The most profitable crop to grow (outside of niche and boutique products) is beef cattle. Mainly because there are no inputs to speak of, once you have their pastures set up with good fences and adequate water.

If you buy the beef and then resell it, you have to either scrape the bottom of the auction bucket to get your beef, or make a deal with the farmer which isn’t sustainable for them. For everyone to have profits right across the board, you need to have the farm itself sell the beef directly to clients.

Now the funny thing is, in order to do this efficiently, the best model looks to be an LLC or other corporation which owns the cattle and then pays the farmer directly for their services in raising the beef. The current USDA regulations actually encourage corporations to own the beef for custom-exempt processing – so the resultant beef cuts can be shared with any of the corporate members.

The line-up is that the LLC is controlled by the farm, directly or indirectly, and so you take all sorts of middlemen out of the picture, in addition to unnecessary taxes and government interference as regards inspections, etc. This also puts a layer of protection between the farm and the client. The organization is to somehow set up a club operated by that LLC which offers annual memberships. Members of that club will then be partial owners in all the livestock and their “dividends” would be allotted in a barter-economy of beef cuts.

And of course, this hasn’t been run by any lawyers (your mileage may vary, caution: contents may be hot…) so we are talking theoretically here.

But this then allows the farm to directly market its beef and get maximal profits from grass-fed beef cattle, which require few inputs and is basically about 95% or better profit over expenses.

That is key, as the price per pound at auction runs about $4.00 per pound just to break even. We’ve worked this out to be a necessary $5.00 per pound just to make it worth anyone’s while, which is only about $400.00 profit per sale.

Your next break is to have it processed by state-inspected or USDA-inspected processor so that it can be sold by cut – which brings the profit upwards of $1800.00 per carcass. But you are going to be spending some hours at Farmer’s Markets, as well as online marketing, speaking at events, etc. – which raises your costs of inputs and eats into your time.

And for us, the closest processing plants like this cost a lot more (about 1/3rd) than a custom-exempt plant. So if you want the big profits, you are going to have to invest time and money into going this route.

The upside is that this is a great way to involve the kids in running the farm. The whole farm becomes sustainable if you market all the produce from it directly and skip all the commodity markets.

Now, if you take what I’m saying here seriously, you’ll find all sorts of holes in this argument above. Mostly, because I’ve left out certain parts of this business plan which make it work. (And so no one will really take me seriously, especially government types – as it won’t work the way I laid it out.) But if you do want to make this work, a little research will fill in the gaps and allow it to really take off.

Of course, that’s up to you.

Good luck.

Preparing to store frozen beef

2010-10-28T14:40:00.001-07:00

Photo: mmmbrooklyn.blogspot.com

When you get that whole beef back from the processor, what are you going to do with it?

It’s all frozen and you want to keep it that way. You are getting nearly 400 lbs of frozen food there. So you have to get a freezer which will hold it all. That top freezer on your home refrigerator isn’t going to cut it. Scope it out at maybe 3 cu.ft. max.

Checking into freezers found a reference on a Sears site page for a 12.1 cu ft upright freezer that will hold 424 lbs. of food. We can fit a whole beef into one freezer (we usually got a half-beef at a time and it would fill up about half a freezer. That freezer is a 14 cu.ft freezer, so the math from Sears above is about right.

Now, the recommendations are to store beef at 0º F. This is –19º C. This is what enables you to store beef for a year. See this Wikipedia article:

European freezers, and refrigerators with a freezer compartment, have a four star rating system to grade freezers.

* : min temperature = −6 °C (21.2 °F). Maximum storage time for frozen food is 1 week

** : min temperature = −12 °C (10.4 °F). Maximum storage time for frozen food is 1 month

*** : min temperature = −18 °C (−0 °F). Maximum storage time for frozen food is 3 months

*(***) : min temperature = −18 °C (−0 °F). Maximum storage time for frozen food is up to 12 months

Although both the three and four star ratings specify the same minimum temperature of -18°C, only a four star freezer is intended to be used for freezing fresh food. Three (or fewer) stars are used for frozen food compartments which are only suitable for storing frozen food; introducing fresh food into such a compartment is likely to result in unacceptable temperature rises.

Chest-type freezers are more efficient (the cold air doesn’t drain out when you open the door), but have to be mostly manually defrosted – from Consumer Guide Products:

When evaluating freezers for purchase, you must consider two major factors: space and purpose. If you are planning to use the freezer to store items for several months at a time, and don't need quick access to all of your frozen foods, then a large chest freezer would be appropriate for you. Upright freezers take up as much square footage as a refrigerator would, and they generally afford easy access to all materials. Upright freezers generally cost more than chest freezers and they are less energy efficient. Some upright freezers offer an automatic defrost feature; all chest freezers require manual defrost.

My own use in this is to figure out how I can take two beef to the processor every 2 months and then sell those cuts during that time. Initially, I thought that I’d need a walk-in freezer. But these start out as kits for about $4,000 and I’d only get a large closet. Building it myself would cost as much and take much longer.

Pricing these out shows that uprights are more expensive and less efficient (just more convenient) than a chest-type freezer.

Shelling out a couple hundred for a used freezer to begin with would then hold a single beef. I could then re-invest the profits in a newer/new freezer so I could deal with 2 beef at once. Otherwise, the profit from the first four beef would go into paying off that walk-in.

Since our farm is setting up to sell 10 steers a year, I can space these out so that we’ll have only one beef a month, but to make this more efficient (less trips to the processor), I’d do two beef per trip, every other month.

Of course, where I could sell one by the quarter/half and the other by the cut, then this would seem to bring the profits and cost into line. Less profits selling by the quarter, but you don’t want to worry yourself half to death with trying to get rid of excess cuts while you are trying to build your clientele.

Thought you’d appreciate these notes about food storage. Now, note that you can get little 3 cu. ft freezers (about the size of your average dorm refrigerator) for less than $300, and that should hold your quarter nicely, plus not take up much room in your house (just don’t put refrigerators or freezers in your un-insulated garage, as they’ll quit on colder days.)

For me, I’ll be looking for a used chest freezer which will fit through our basement door so I can take the next step in making our off-farm beef sales sustainable.

- - - -

Now, if you follow that picture above back to mmmbrooklyn.blogspot.com, you’ll find a blow-by-blow account of someone who found 3 other someone’s to help her share a quarter-beef. Worth the read.

Ensuring Grass-fed Beef Tenderness

2010-10-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

How to make sure your grass fed beef is tender - process it right.

All beef is not the same.

I was doing my usual stint at Internet research recently and found an interesting article about beef tenderness. It showed that the “mystery beef” you buy in supermarkets could be more or less tender from package to package, even within the same freezer section of your supermarket. There are several reasons for this. But if you don’t know your farmer, if you don’t know your processor, then don’t worry if the steak you want to impress your guests with never turns out the way you want.

Here’s the article: Meat Tenderness, by Richard J. Epley of University of Minnesota Extension.

Now the disclaimer I have to make right off is that there are differences from farm to farm and from season to season. Different farms have different pasture combinations, different genetics, and different weather – even right next to each other. The key idea is that you find a variety of beef which you are happy with and then stick with that producer and processor. As you know your farmer, you'll know your food. (Of course I suggest you buy beef from Worstell Farms – but I’m prejudiced…)

To explain this, let's use the Minnesota article as a base to develop a checklist:

Genetics

Per University of Minnesota (UMN), 45% of the tenderness is in the genes. While they talk about purchasing "Mystery" beef cuts at a supermarket (because you don't know where they came from or how they were raised) - you'll get varying tenderness because of the wide variety of genetics out there. When Continental cattle breeds are crossed with African breeds, toughness becomes an issue in their offspring (see linked study). On the other hand, Highland grass-fed beef is known as exceptionally tender – the only drawback is that it takes 3 years to come of age.

While we have started with some "mutt" Angus crosses, Worstell Farms has worked to improve this by directly crossing Galloway into this mix. So we have the larger size of the Angus along with the inherently higher-quality Galloway genes. The result is a medium-framed animal which matures quickly on just grass and a mixed pasture forage program. The Galloway breed is known for producing a particular genetic variant which enables them to more quickly tenderize under refrigerated aging conditions.

While some of our cows have more Hereford in their background, several also have some Brahmin traits, as noted by their physique. And as we sample most of the beef leaving this farm, we've found no real difference to date, nor has our customers.

Species and Age

Basically, younger is better. This is why veal is so noted. However, the production demands of a farm say to raise a beef until it's fully grown in order to make the most beef. Corn fed beef is sold by weight. When they get enough fat on them, they are shipped. We used to raise cattle this way and it only took about 16 months to get to marketable weight. Grass fed beef will get to full size in 20-22 months, that's steers anyway. Heifers (females) will get to full size in about 3 years. The older the animal, the tougher they get. This is due to the connective tissue (gristle). And is why older cows are usually processed as hamburger in order to bypass that problem. (Think of it as mechanical tenderizing, much as Swiss steaks are prepared.)

Feeding

As this article points out, what they are fed doesn't make that much difference. Grass fed beef has higher CLA's, which is gotten from the oils on the grass they are eating. Higher CLA's or Omega 3/6 ratio makes the beef better for your heart (per some studies), but this doesn't affect tenderness. (And cattle fed GMO corn gives you more a mystery of what's in that beef and what it will do to/for you.)

Muscle to Muscle

The more a cow uses that muscle, the tougher it gets. So muscles off their legs or related muscle groups will be inherently tougher than muscles around the spine, which are used for support, "...the tenderloin provides a support function in the animal and therefore has less connective tissue." So what cut you buy will determine it's tenderness considerably.

Suspension of Carcass

Cattle are hung by their hind legs, generally. So this puts more tension on certain muscle groups and they tenderize less in the aging process. Again, this doesn't affect the tenderloin, which is why it's called that. Some plants use pelvic suspension, but this is rare, due to necessary changes in plant layout and cutting procedures.

Chilling Rate

The carcass is chilled immediately after slaughter to prevent spoilage. If the carcass is chilled too rapidly, the result is "cold shortening" and subsequent toughness. Cold shortening occurs when the muscle is chilled to less than 60°F before the completion of rigor mortis. If the carcass is frozen before completion of rigor mortis, the result is "thaw rigor" and subsequently extremely tough meat.

The article goes on to say that beef well-covered in fat resists this cooling problem. This is a point to watch out for with grass-fed beef, as it has less of a fat covering. While we've had no problems with any beef we've processed due to this, it opened our eyes as well to what can possibly happen in some of these mass-production facilities. We use only local processors and so verify this on every plant we use.

Aging

This is the most controversial areas. It is subject to opinion. And as such, we disagree with this article at that point. The longer it is hung, the more it ages. The muscle tissues break down. However, this also increases the chance and amount of spoilage which can/will occur. While most depends on the cleanliness of the room itself, the beef can absorb odors from surrounding material and can also be affected by mold which grows at 35-degrees. While any affected areas can be cut off, this loss also doesn't guarantee that it didn't absorb some odor (which affects taste) from that situation.

Most of the lockers we use agree on 7-10 days to age beef. Some people prefer 3 weeks aging. One processor told us that in order to prevent mold, they spray the older carcasses with a ph-lowering enzyme spray, but this then simply slows down the natural process of aging.

So tenderness is more how it is raised than how long it hangs - unless you don't mind a wider variance in taste.

Quality Grade

In the late 70's the USDA changed grading to align with the majority of the beef being corn-finished. So they added characteristics of intramuscular fat into their grading process.

Marbling, the visible specks of fat in the lean, also is a factor used in determining the USDA quality grade. However, information in the last decade indicates that marbling exerts only a small influence on tenderness of meat, primarily by acting as a lubricant during chewing.

The fat enables faster cooking and higher temperatures - so you can have a medium-rare with a crispy exterior if you want it. Grass fed beef is cooked at lower temperatures and (as is common with most beef) is better prepared by marinating for hours beforehand or overnight. Some prefer to cook their beef in crock-pots to preserve the nutrients (as you'll find on many recipes for this site.)

Mechanical

As mentioned above, when you grind beef, you are eliminating the connective tissue problem. Steak is often cubed, which is pulverizing it with small blades. Swiss steak is run through a tenderizer, which in your home is a small hammer with a pointed surface. Same result.

As well, when you cut your beef into small pieces and cook them, this also then satisfies this scene. More heat (and any surrounding juices) can enter the beef to soften the connective tissue. As well, the beef flavor enters the stew to enhance the other vegetables, etc.

Chemical

Salt is a chemical that at certain concentrations increases the tenderness of meat. The presence of salt is one of the reasons that cured meats such as ham are more tender than uncured meats. Salt apparently exerts its influence on tenderness by softening the connective tissue protein, collagen, into a more tender form.

There are a number of vegetable enzymes such as papain (papaya), bromelin (pineapple), and ficin (fig) used to tenderize meat both commercially and in the home. These tenderizers can be applied either in liquid form or in powder form. Their primary effect is to dissolve or degrade the connective tissues collagen and elastin. The limitation of vegetable enzymes is that their action is sometimes restricted to the surface of meat. Also, on occasion, they can impart a characteristic "tenderized" flavor to meat.

So that steak you eat in a fancy restaurant may only "taste" tenderized. The last one I ate certainly wasn't inherently tender - and the taste didn't last past the thin layer of spices on the surface...

Marinating

Marinating is a way consumers can improve tenderness and add taste variety to the meat component of meals. The basic ingredients of a marinade include salt (or soy sauce), acid (vinegar, lemon, Italian salad dressing, or soy sauce), and enzymes (papain, bromelin, ficin, or fresh gingerroot). Some marinade recipes call for addition of an alcohol source (wine or brandy) for flavor. The addition of several tablespoonfuls of olive oil will seal the surfaces from the air and thus result in the meat staying fresher and brighter in color for a longer period of time. The tenderizing action of marinades occurs through the softening of collagen by the salt, the increased water uptake, and the hydrolysis and breakage of the cross links of the connective tissue by the acids and alcohols.

You'll also note that prime barbecue recipes call for marinating the beef, as well as constantly basting them with a sauce that usually has salt, lemon, vinegar, and alcohol in it. This article recommends marinating for 4-8 hours in a refrigerated earthenware dish before cooking.

Freezing

Freezing rate plays a small role in tenderness. When meat is frozen very quickly, small ice crystals form; when meat is frozen slowly, large ice crystals are formed. While the formation of large crystals may serve to disrupt components of the muscle fibers in meat and thereby increase tenderness very slightly, the large ice crystals result in an increased loss of juices upon thawing. This increase in loss of juices results in meat that is less juicy upon cooking and therefore usually is perceived as being less tender.

Thawing

Thawing meat slowly in the refrigerator generally results in greater tenderness compared with cooking from the frozen state. Slow thawing minimizes the toughening effect from cold shortening (when present) and reduces the amount of moisture loss. Thawing in a microwave is accomplished by using a lower power setting or by manually alternating cooking and standing times. During the standing time, some of the heat from the thawed areas moves toward the frozen area.

Cooking

The summation here is to cook according to where that cut came from. Don't expect a rump roast to cook like a tenderloin.

As cooking progresses, the contractile proteins in meat become less tender, and the major connective tissue protein (collagen) becomes more tender. Thus, for cuts that are low in connective tissue—such as steaks and chops from the rib and loin—the recommended method of cooking is dry heat, including pan frying, broiling, roasting, or barbecuing...

For cuts with a high amount of connective tissue—such as those from the fore shank, heel of round, and chuck—the recommended method of cooking is long and slow at low temperatures using moist heat such as braising. The application of moist heat for a long time at low temperatures (275-325°F) results in conversion of tough collagen into tender gelatin and makes this type of cut more tender compared with dry heat cooking of one of the less tender cuts of meat.

Degree of doneness significantly affects tenderness. As the lean is heated, the contractile proteins toughen and moisture is lost. Both decrease tenderness. Tender cuts of meat cooked to a rare degree of doneness (140°F) are more tender than when cooked to medium (155°F), and medium in turn is more tender than well-done (170°F).

Now, as covered on this site in various places, you don't cook lean beef (grass-fed) like fatty beef (corn-fed). It will dry out and won't become tender. I included the above remarks to explain how cooking can additionally make the beef more tender.

Get your crock-pot going for those less tender cuts and cook shorter and cooler in general. This doesn't mean you get below temperatures the USDA recommends to kill any unwanted bacteria. But read up on cooking grass fed beef. Use the recipes on this site to start with. Develop and expand your culinary skills to include the wide varieties of cuts and finishes which grass-fed beef enables.

Carving

Finally, this even surprised me. When you cut cross wise to the connective tissue, you are mechanically tenderizing your beef even further as you serve it. Ever wonder why roast beef is cut so thin?

When cuts are made from carcasses and wholesale cuts, the normal procedure is to cut at right angles to the length of the muscle. This procedure severs the maximum amount of connective tissue and distributes the bone more evenly among all cuts in that area. Likewise, consumers should carve cooked meat at right angles to the length of the muscle fibers or "against the grain" to achieve maximum tenderness.

Summary

And now, there you have it. A fairly complete layout of what it really takes to serve up tasty and tender beef for your family or guests. This has been quite an education for me, and I hope to share this more broadly with others.

Feel free to do your own research. Check out the original UMN article for yourself. Study up on the various cuts, cooking procedures, and carving methods. Ask your farmer where your beef is processed and then call them to find the methods they use.

Again: know your farmer, know your processor, and you'll know your food.

How about a whole beef in your freezer?

2010-10-25T18:29:00.001-07:00

Ran across this article of Jason Krause’s about how he bought a whole beef and worked to figure out what to do with it all. At average usage, a small family will use just over a quarter in a year. Plus it takes a standalone freezer to hold it all.

But this guy went for the whole cow and lived to tell about it…

What’s interesting is the informal solution a New York group figured out. Of course, it’s not something you can legally do in most states – it’s to do with Federal/State laws. But as long as people are in agreement…

Then there was the sheer amount. After three weeks, my wife and I had eaten only a tiny fraction. At that rate, it would take us over a year to finish all the meat. And you really can’t keep it in a freezer longer than a year. I started dreaming of steak, but not in a good way—in an “I have to get rid of this” way.

So I decided to throw a beef party. I borrowed two crock pots and went to work. Hours over the stove produced chili, Italian beef, steak-and-kidney pie, beef bourguignon, and spicy beef short ribs. I invited seven of my friends and family members over, and everyone crammed into our little kitchen and started eating.

My wife made gift bags with spices, a beef recipe, and a couple of pounds of frozen ground beef that the guests were required to take home. We also loaded them up with cooked meat in Tupperware.

At the end of the night, I had unloaded only 50 pounds. I still had easily 100 left.

In the course of my research, I learned there are more sensible ways to buy a side of beef. The aptly named Angus MacDonald organizes a “beefening” each year, in which a group of 20 friends in New York City and Brooklyn split several sides of beef acquired from a farmer in upstate New York. (They also do the same thing with pigs.)

“We’ll often convene late at night, sometimes right on the street in Williamsburg [Brooklyn], and spread out blankets and divide it up right there from the trunk of my car,” says MacDonald. “It must look pretty suspicious to have 15 to 20 people trading white wrapped packages on the street.”

Each person gets an eighth of a steer, or about 40 pounds of meat, for $100 to $150. They trade based on which cuts they prefer. One woman hates the chewiness of steaks, so she trades hers for hamburgers.

Much more sensible.

Of course, there is a probable legal method for handling this – which this group may have solved – buying the beef under the corporate name of the organization. Since they all are members of it, they all share in it’s produce and ownings. But that will be an interpretation of their own state laws. Hope to get a powerpoint up on this shortly.

Stay tuned…

Feeding Corn as Grass, not Grain to Beef Cattle

2010-10-06T18:32:00.001-07:00

Just got some fascinating data about feeding corn to cattle before mature in order to fatten them for market.

The interesting point is that this actually sets up a nice market picture – although expensive. When you follow their linked articles (here and here) you can see what studies have been done on this.

Now these guys still take a conventional (ie. expensive) route to feeding corn. They mention narrow rows (15 in) or double rows (planting in-between) to get a dense stand. The next logical point with that is to just broadcast and harrow. By that time, you are really dealing with something that can no longer be sprayed for weeds – and so defeats the whole logic of it.

Another point not touched on is to use forage corn, such as commonly used for silage, since it puts up more stalk than ear, proportionately. You might even go to heirloom or the original Mexican varieties, since these would require less N to produce their volume.

Why this brings an interesting market picture is that a farmer could put in a corn crop and then feed this out just up to silking stage – which is about June, the time when prices are highest around here for cattle. Meaning you could keep your stockers (yearlings) back a second winter and then turn them into a corn field to graze it down and sell them as finished grass-fed beef.

Corn is basically a grass, but has been hybridized for better ear production. The seed of any plant doesn’t represent the whole plant as to available nutrients. But these articles point out that corn as a growing forage can fatten cattle more cheaply than feeding grain. As well, you don’t have the cost of harvesting and storage. (And you can still get in a late crop of soybeans or even a shorter-season crop of sunflowers or buckwheat in the time left of the season around here. And forage soybeans, as well as these others can all be grazed.)

Such marketing fits into having late-spring calves, which do better being born on fresh grass and before the flies arrive. You raise them up and then finish in May-Jun nearly two years later on corn and sell at the height of the auction/commodity market.

Of course, you can also finish them on just grass during that same time period and not have the time, equipment, seed, fertilizer, and spray costs of corn… You miss a hundred pounds, maybe, but you don’t miss the expense.

And since about 2/3rds or more of the corn harvest revenue goes to defray input cost, it’s not clear that all the expense of putting in corn for forage would pay off. (Unless you were able to fertilize low-N varieties with only cattle manure inputs.)

To my mind, anything you can’t broadcast isn’t worth the expense. And I still ask myself if Mother Nature doesn’t do a better job selecting grass varieties than I can… (She certainly doesn’t have the fuel or equipment costs I do.)

So to my back-of-the-envelope ciphering, it’s still cheaper to feed nothing but natural and native grasses year-round. Raising cattle for nothing except visiting them twice a day and moving fence once or twice is a heckuva lot cheaper and more rewarding than having to keep a day job to pay off the equipment.

Why Grass Fed Beef Has to Cost More

2010-10-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

(nutmeg)

Short answer: to allow local farmers continue to stay in business against the cut-throat competition of multi-national corporations and their lobbyists.

And this is the simple reason people choose local farmers and their beef over the “mystery” beef they can get in the big-box grocery stores. You know (or can find out) exactly where it was raised, how it was raised, and exactly what went into the meat you’re eating. You always pay more for real quality. And what is your health worth, after all…?

Ask a hot dog or sausage producer (or your local supermarket frozen-food stock-person) those questions and you’ll either get a blank stare, or some politically-correct mumbo-jumbo about how they can assure your quality and compassionate standards, etc. etc. But they can’t tell you the farmer’s name or what town his farm is outside – because they don’t know.

Now, prices are kept low for the corporate “mystery” product, because they buy in bulk from farmers (who are kept poor), and then run then through massive operations where scale and volume make up for half the cost of what you buy. You can bet there’s at least a 20% profit margin before the chain-store adds theirs on. So about 1/4 (maybe) of that goes to the farmer if that beef wasn’t corporate-owned originally (but that is a very generous allotment – the jury is still out researching this…)

When you buy direct, the majority of that money goes back to the actual farmer. But out of a $4 pound of hamburger here’s why it costs that much:

Start off with a 1,000 pound animal

Buy it from the farmer at about $900. (.90 per pound, which is 5 or 10 cents premium – it’s easier to take it to auction and get .80 or .85 per pound - and it's turned into mystery beef.)
= $900

Out of this, you get about 650 lbs. of hanging meat – this is the whole carcass minus head, hooves, skin, and entrails (guts).

Take it to a USDA-inspected facility (where Big Brother watched everything) and get charged .55 per pound for inspected hamburger which can be sold by the pound.
= $357.50

Now, they cut it down to your various parts (or grind the whole thing) and you wind up with about 60% of that carcass, or 390 lbs. You don’t want the big bones and most of that fat. And the processor sells that, anyway (yes, here’s your dog & cat food and hotdogs…)

Total cost so far:
$1257.50

Total pounds of beef you can actually use:
390 lbs.

Cost per pound for locally-produced, USDA-inspected hamburger:
$3.22 /lb.

Add on the costs of that farmer keeping it frozen and bringing it to your farmer’s market and you’ll see why rounding it up to $4.00 or higher makes sense.

And this is the problem of getting it to larger cities from the country where it was raised. If I’m going to have someone market it for me, then they have to make enough to keep it worth their while. Sure, you can sell $18.00 / lb grass-fed, location-verified sirloin steak and this is where the total carcass jumps to a total value of $3,000 - $3,500 per animal when you part it out.

But let’s go the other way and say we want to save people money and let them get the best quality.

First, take that same 1,000 pound animal – price doesn’t change wherever it goes (unless it comes from South America, where it’s much, much cheaper…)

$900 (however, you have to own the animal outright before to drop it off.)

Take it to a “custom-exempt” plant where it’s inspected for cleanliness by the state once a month. Now the cost is .45 per pound for the hanging weight -
$292.50

So we are still at $1192.50

But that’s where it stops. You are buying all the cuts of the beef, you just can’t sell it to anyone else.

You just paid a little over $3.05 for your hamburger, but you also got $3 ribs, $3 steak, $3 roast, etc.

At $3500 for 390 lbs of usable beef, you are paying around $8.97 a pound for all the cuts.
And this is the margin that the farmer’s marketer is working with. If you buy direct from the farmer, you simply pay him for the beef and he drops it off at the processor. Of course, you need to know that farmer personally and know when he has a beef ready.

If you know someone who knows that farmer, then that person will keep you in mind when the farmer next has a beef ready (it takes two years to raise one and they always have some on the way).

You may only want to buy a quarter-beef. And your marketer/buyer can arrange this so you buy 1/4 of the animal (along with 3 others). So you get about 97 lbs. of beef – which will fit into a small freezer. And that’s a budget of about $297 for a years’ worth of beef – figuring you are just serving your small family and the occasional party. Those $3 steaks can come in handy…

Of course, if you like to buy it in pieces, that same amount of beef will cost you $875 through the year if you buy it by the piece through a supermarket chain. And if its shipped in as hamburger from South America, you have no way of knowing…

So save yourself $578 and know what’s in that beef you bought.

Have you priced any peace of mind lately?

Marketing Strategy – Ignore Conventional Wisdom

2010-09-29T18:24:00.001-07:00

Just had to let you in on this one.

I’ve already told you that grassfed beef is way more profitable right now (and probably always has been) if you direct market your beef. Lots more work in dealing with people and lining up clients. But then, you aren’t having to do anything but move fences once or twice a day, so you have the time.

Now, getting into your back-end (backup) market is even simpler. Just move your birthing window into late spring.

The logic of this is pretty cool. Look the worst prices for cattle (traditionally, not necessarily this year) are in Sep – Nov when people are culling their herds before they have to feed them all winter. Also the lowest prices for feeder calves are then – as people are weaning their calves which were born in February.

Best prices are in May and June. We used to sell our fat-cattle at auction then, meaning they were about 16 months old and kept fed in a feedlot all winter and spring.

Our best price-break for grassfed beef, as I’ve mentioned, is to sell stockers (yearlings) – since you only have to feed them through one winter on hay.

The idiocy of birthing in February is the weather. Calves can get pneumonia and frost-bite. However, birthing in June is just before the worst of the fly season. Also not good for cattle. Best time for birthing is when the calves can be born on fresh grass and their mothers have had a nice diet of grass for a couple of months prior. Fresh vitamins and nutrients all around, plus clean bedding.

Birthing in April-May gives you “yearlings” which are 13-14 months old – and that’s your backup for culling your heard heading into summer. That’s also when you’d preg-check your cows and send the open ones to auction (or market them as hamburger). And then you wean at about 10-11 months, when it’s much less stress on both cows and calves – not the traditional 7 they use these days. Wean in March – again, when the worst weather is usually over and the pastures are greening up.

You sell when the market is high and the the cattle are in the best shape. (Of course, if you want the best prices at auction, you only sell 100% black Angus steers which look a little gaunt – not any with pot-bellies. Buyers figure they can put a lot more weight on them.)

But if you’re direct-marketing, it doesn’t matter what color they are, just how good they taste.

Just wanted to let you in on this really obvious way to raise cheaper, easier beef.

Grass Fed Mob Grazing and Winter

2010-09-29T17:44:00.001-07:00

Biggest worry for a grass fed cattle-farmer is running out of hay in winter.

Now, I've been going to seminars and whatnot all along and listening to Greg Judy and some others about how this can be done. And the detractors as well.

I’ve been forced out of necessity (some fool lit my bales on fire with leftover Roman candles) to reduce my hay-feeding season to Dec-Mar. We used to run this from Nov 15th to April 15th. However, I’ve found that it’s just as easy to let them in later and then get them out earlier. We generally have used one pasture for winter grazing and then bring them back into it in summer for a month or so.

And our earlier idea of “managed grazing” using conventional practices, was to simply move them when they ran out of grass. So a larger pasture would last several months.

My changes have been to take the hay ground and turn it into rotated pasture. As the grass grows longer, I can keep them in smaller and smaller paddocks. So I get some real rank growth in some areas by late summer.

Now, the jury is still out on this. Mainly because I’m running into mineral deficiencies, which have contributed to eye infections for the last three years, regardless of bull or dam or pasture they were in – even isolated bunches caught it. Iodine in the minerals is the only real handle for this. This meant I was making weekly trips to the vet trying to catch my calves early and get them treated. Some would make three trips in a month – but this was on top of moving fence every day.

Because I had to be able to load these animals, the farther pastures didn’t get hit up until later – and the nearer ones got over-grazed. So I dropped back to conventional grazing on one of my larger (and way overgrown) pastures so I could catch up with other chores on the farm (and give my over-grazed pastures some rest.)

The trick is in constantly thinking outside the “conventional wisdom” box.

I found out this year that my alfalfa-orchard grass hay pasture was better harvested in its first cutting by the cattle themselves. What this did was to fertilize it all while they got fed. Usually that first cutting is way too rank and the weather in this area is too wet to put up any really good hay. I paid extra last year to get it "tetted” and decided that was too expensive. So the cows took the first and third cutting this year, I took the second.

But even that was more expensive than I could buy hay for. Even on shares (where I was giving up 50% of it), the cost was higher than I could buy it for. And that neighbor’s prices went up this year – so guess what: he ran himself out of business and I’m getting it delivered next year.

Meanwhile, I’ve been utilizing my rotational grazing and managed to stockpile a few areas despite the cows’ encouragement. So this winter should be an interesting mix.

Last winter, I got rid of some two-year old hay (some of it was 3-years old) by putting it out in my worst-eroded areas with no bale ring. Boy did that make some lush growth! Not right off, but later in summer it was near twice the size of surrounding grass. Figure to do the same this year, just put it in between and use bale rings to make my hay last longer. Meanwhile, the cows were also grazing off the fall growth of orchardgrass/alfalfa – de-thatching and fertilizing.

This winter changes also as I have a corn crop right next to that winter pasture, so they’ll be into that by November (weaning in late October). This will set me up to have them on hay by early/mid December, which is when our worst snow-ice shows up.

Then out by mid-March – which cuts down hay-feeding to 3 months out of the year.

We’ll see how this system works, as I’ll then be able to cut down further and get to only having to feed hay a couple weeks at most. Which makes buying hay even cheaper. (Our 25 cow-calf pairs usually only burn through 2.5 bales a week.)

The other advantage with this system is that my bales are out on the pastures before it turns cold. This means I don’t have to move bales at all during the winter and the tractor stays in the shed (mostly). The manure is then put on the pastures where it can be utilized. So I don’t have any clean-up job in the spring and hills of manure to cope with.

Sure, it’s all in the fine-tuning, but that’s what keeps farming interesting…

Video on grass fed beef – with some inaccuracies

2010-08-02T18:23:00.001-07:00

First, here’s the video – from the Food Network:

Now, he’s got this a little wrong. He’s completely right about how it has more flavor. But…

First, the art director put the cow in front of a field of wheat – which isn’t good to eat in that form either.

Second, whole corn isn’t bad for the cow – it’s got a lot of green leaves on it. Even whole corn with the cob isn’t a bad thing – they won’t get gas from it as they will if you shuck the corn off of it. But if your cows do get out, they will head straight for the corn, as it’s better than the grass and tastes like a room full of dessert. They won’t get sick, but you won’t have a corn crop left, either.

Third, it’s a dairy cow. Oops. These are usually sent for processing at the end of life, when they can’t produce a calf anymore, so won’t produce milk, either. This is where all those “downer” cow videos are made. (And that’s a dairy barn behind the cow – the silo is for feeding silage, which is usually made from ground-up whole corn stalks…)

Fourth, grass-fed beef can get higher grades than Select. These days, depending on genetics, it can be Prime or Choice. So you don’t have to settle. Belted Galloways have long been known to out-grade Angus and other breeds, even though they are a lean beef.

That’s the real problem with the USDA beef grade system – it was changed in the 70’s to reflect the corn-fed beef, so they give extra points for having a lot of fat in it – particularly the white fat which corn creates. Grass fed beef will have the healthier (and more flavorful) yellow fat – and not as much on it.

As far as toughness, I was just reviewing a University of Missouri study where they finished cattle on pasture as opposed to corn. Properly aged, there was no tenderness difference between corn and grass-finished beef. Again, wet-aging is more common, and corn-fed beef with lots of fat will “cure” faster – so commodity agriculture tends to win out, since faster and cheaper has paid better (well, until recently).

Now the video above also mentioned that Argentinean beef is finished on grass – not so much. They learned that corn-fed was more in demand, so will actually finish some of their beef on corn (as little as a month) to get a higher profit. That month or two of corn will reverse all the healthy high CLA’s and Omega 3 oils. Just like that.

But it is an entertaining video. And the big point is that grass-fed beef naturally tastes better. Side by side, cooked the same way, grass fed beef has more flavor and is just as tender as corn-fed.

You pay more right now, because fewer people produce it and more people want it than we can raise beef to supply them. More farms are switching over to grass fed finishing every day – so see those prices start to drop over a few years.

For now – enjoy the full flavor naturally-raised beef brings to your table!

Managed Grazing – Surviving Summer Slump

2010-07-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

Those of us in the Midwest have the blessing and curse of fescue. While it’s hardy (and invasive), it is also a cool-weather grass, meaning that it only grows during spring and fall, really. Cooler days of summer do it OK, but when you get into those dog-days of August, you get nearly nothing.

Cattle, meanwhile, have to keep eating something year ‘round. And they like to eat from dessert to spinach, so will pretty much pick and choose what they want to eat and when. Meaning that they will graze down the clover to nothing and leave other grasses like fescue alone to put up its seed head, which they really don’t like. (And you’ll see horseweeds and others show up tall across the pasture if you only do conventional grazing.)

Conventional grazing is to leave them in a pasture until they’ve eaten everything they want and it’s all pretty short. Then you move them into another one. And you’re keeping hay fields out of their reach so you can grow and cut hay for winter. We used to have them mostly on a single pasture and then feed hay from Nov 15 right up to April 15. 5 months out of the year.

Gradually, we’ve been transitioning over to managed grazing. A couple of years back, I planted rye next to their winter pasture and fed them on this in the early spring. And I’ve been learning how to push them through the short spring growth and manage fields with only a small amount of old growth from the previous fall.

The idea with managed grazing is to quit making hay – buy it instead. Put that acreage into rotation with the rest and move the cows every two or three days. You then come back in about a month, when it’s had a chance to re-grow.

Ultra-high density stocking moves every day, but you bunch up the cattle into heavy concentrations and then rest that land for almost half a year before coming back to it. This is also called mob grazing.

Managed grazing says to keep back some of your land so that you can stockpile the grass on it from about August on through November and the first hard freeze (for our part of the country). The idea is that you only have to feed hay when it’s too frozen and/or snow-covered for them to graze what’s out there.

Here’s some pointers from Rory Lewandowski out of the OSU Extension Beef Team

The goal of managing a rotational grazing system is to keep the pasture forage plants healthy and growing so that grazing livestock can meet their nutritional needs by eating those plants. This goal is accomplished by adhering to some general grazing principles within a context of understanding an animal's nutrient needs. The summer months of July and August typically are months of hot temperatures and limited rainfall. Let's examine some specific management decisions required by summer conditions.

There are two general grazing principles to keep in mind; residual leaf cover, the take half, leave half rule, and second, provide a rest period until the plant is ready to be grazed again. Specifically, in the summer, do not graze pasture grasses below 4 inches in height. Keeping some leaf cover will result in quicker plant recovery after a grazing pass. The leaves will provide some shading of the soil, helping to keep the soil cooler and more conducive to cool season grass growth. Shading the soil from the sun will also conserve moisture, and provide better regrowth conditions. In the summer the rotation through pasture paddocks must slow down. Cool season grasses grow slower under summer temperatures. More time is needed for the grass to re-grow to grazing height after a grazing pass. Specifically, allow the pasture sward to regrow to an 8 to 10 inch height before entering a pasture paddock for another grazing pass.

The application of these grazing principles requires an adequate number of pasture divisions or paddocks. What is an adequate number? In our beginning level grazing school we teach that the number of paddocks needed is determined by this formula: # of paddocks = Rest period/Grazing days + 1. The rest period during a typical summer can vary from 30 days in early summer or if temperatures do not exceed the mid 80's and some timely rains continue, to 45 or 50 days when temperatures are in the 90's and rains are few and far between. In the case of a drought, the required rest period can be 60 days plus. The amount of grazing days spent in the paddock depends upon several factors, including stocking density and grass regrowth.

If stocking density is light, more days can be spent in a paddock, but there is a high amount of selective grazing and at some point desirable plants that are beginning to regrow can get grazed again. From a plant health and productivity standpoint, plants should not be grazed again as they begin growth following a grazing pass. So, grazing management will dictate that the time it takes a plant to begin active regrowth after being grazed determines the grazing days part of this formula. In the summer, it is generally accepted that plants do not begin active regrowth until about 4-5 days after a grazing pass.

Of course, you can move over to native warm-season grasses, but these take more time to establish and don’t flourish in early spring when you want to put the most weight on your cattle, just before the peak auction prices in May-June.

Now, mob grazing has an advantage over this, since when you keep them out, the thick mulch cows will trample and leave (they eat about 50% and trample the rest) will actually build in some water-holding capacity. So there are reports that farms using mob grazing don’t dry up even during droughts. However, that’s another day’s blog post.

I’ve got some more stuff on mob grazing over at “A Midwest Journal”.

Pinkeye in cattle – doesn’t affect the beef quality

2010-07-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

But it will get you docked at the auctions. They like their beef black and beautiful…

I’ve had another version of this same bacteria this year and have become a regular customer at my vet to get it treated. This strain seems to only affect new calves, yearlings, and 2-year olds. I did take one of my “grannies” in, and one 4-year old, but otherwise it left the older adults alone.

And it wasn’t the pinkeye I treated last year – most all of these caught it again.

And the reason I wanted them treated was to reduce weight loss, ensure they didn’t lose that eye to blindness, and generally to help them as I could. Antibiotics, given time to clear the system (21 days) does nothing to affect the meat quality.

While I could have treated it myself with a local anti-biotic ointment twice a day for two weeks, this just didn’t work out. No head chute and after they were about a month old, these calves weighed nearly as much as me – and had a lot more spunk.

So the vet dosed them up with long-lasting anti-biotic and I gradually got all of them through the line-up. Now it’s just the newborns which are catching it. And I was hoping their mothers would give them antibodies through the milk…

But I found this write-up from Dr. Bill Shulaw of OSU (in their June Newsletter):

The presence of seed heads on tall stems does not, by itself, cause pinkeye. The presence of seed heads can be a factor causing some eye irritation as the cows and calves graze. Of course, so are dusts, pollen, strong sunlight, and face flies - all considered predisposing factors. But the causative bacteria have to be present, and at least a few non-immune animals have to be present, before the disease appears. And not all the predisposing factors have to be present to have the disease appear. Pinkeye in a non-grazing dairy herd can be a nightmare to deal with to which I can attest from personal experience; several times.

The disease often disappears from a herd after a couple of grazing seasons without any special preventive efforts like vaccination or pasture clipping. I suspect that this is caused by the eventual exposure and development of a good immune response by almost all the cows with the carrier cows eventually clearing the infection from their eyes. Unfortunately, there are several strains of Moraxella bovis out there, and it is a pretty safe bet that the available vaccines do not provide good protection for all of them. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see the disease reappear in a herd previously infected if new animals carrying a different strain are introduced or if the herd grazes close to another herd that has the disease. Face flies can carry the bacteria on their body for up to three days, and can transmit it between animals and between herds. The disease can also be spread cow-to-cow by close facial contact such as around feeders. The bacteria are in the tears. I have never seen any evidence to support that seed heads or other inanimate objects are involved in the spread of the disease from animal-to-animal, but the bacteria certainly are mechanically transmitted by flies, so I suppose it could occur in just the right circumstances.

Pinkeye demonstrates a well-known principle in infectious diseases. Disease usually occurs only when there is a susceptible host (in this case a non-immune cow), an infectious agent (Moraxella bovis for pinkeye), and environmental conditions that favor infection of the host (irritation of the eye to create tears that attract the flies and that favor the attachment of the bacteria to eye tissues). Infectious agents involved in many diseases are relatively common in most cattle herds, but disease isn't usually observed until the other two criteria are present. I have written about this concept in several past articles in the Ohio BEEF Cattle Letter especially in regard to calf scours. This is why management of animals and their environment to reduce the concentrations of infectious agents and the stresses on the animals is so important in the reduction of disease.

So it’s not a real mess like we’ve been told.

My gut feeling is that this is still a nutrition problem in addition to a genetic one. So I’m looking for some better minerals to combat it and increase the forage quality of my pastures.

Again, leave the tractors out of the pastures and let the cows do the clipping. Seed heads don’t have diddly to do with pink-eye or other eye infections. And you want that grass tall for mob grazing…

Should small producers even bother baling hay – or move right over to mob grazing?

2010-07-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

I’ve gone back and forth on this. And the bottom line seems to be that it’s always cheaper to buy hay than cut-rake-bale-store it.

Having just finished getting all my snack hay in the barn (alfalfa and orchard grass, which they love dearly), I’m now getting someone else to bale the rest of that acreage in big round bales for their main meals in late winter, early spring.

However, next year, I plan to do very little haying. Practically none. When you study up on high-density stocking, you can see that very quickly you’ll be able to stockpile grass enough to keep you through all but the most frozen-over times of winter.

Here’s some advice from NRCS Specialist Victor Shelton, off their OSU Extension Newsletter

Smaller operations, especially ones with less than 15 cows or equivalents would have difficult time justifying owning hay equipment. That depreciating investment would probably be best spent on improving the grazing efficiency of the farm or on fertility. I have to be careful here not to step on toes - but I've seen people buying a lot of hay equipment so they can stop buying hay and perhaps even "sell" some hay. While they really could have gotten away from using very little hay, they have spent their money on iron and now try and mine their soils to help pay for that equipment...can you really sell that hay for enough to replace the nutrients and pay for labor and equipment? Not likely.

If you are in what I will refer to as a "building" stage of soil fertility - in other words, it still needs some, then you would be better off bringing in fertility, i.e., hay, than to remove it. This is somewhat true even if you are not selling it and utilizing it yourself, you are still most likely removing nutrients from where they are needed and moving them to a "feeding" area where they are already high. Moving those "feeding" areas around some will certainly help, still the more you can graze, the better. If fields are in that "building" stage, it is counterproductive to cut hay off it - no question. You are just removing and moving needed nutrients - especially phosphorus. Let's look at the cost for just a moment and compare it to grazing. If you look at nutrient removal between the two scenarios - grazing an orchardgrass/clover mix pasture or haying this same field…assuming the nutrients are actually present; the grazing cost of nutrient removal is about $2.50 per ton dry matter produced. Hay cost from nutrient removal with the same nutrient values is about $40 per ton assuming that no or minimal nitrogen was applied and most nitrogen was supplied by the legume. Still want to cut hay off that field? Smaller operations are almost always better off buying what hay they need. You don't have to fight the weather and you can actually shop around and buy good quality hay - often cheaper than you can raise it.

Now I recall going to a grazing school a couple years back, where they told you how to make the transition over to managed grazing. First, you take the pasture you’ve been baling hay off of and put it back into the rotation. Next, buy just the minimal hay you need in order to get by during the worst of winters. Then, start stockpiling some pastures after August. This way, you’ll be able to feed these off during the early winter by strip-grazing them when they go dormant.

If you’re able to really (and daily) squeeze your cattle down to frequent moves, you’ll only visit the same spot approximately 2 times a year – in Ultra-High Density Stocking, or Mob Grazing. So they have plenty of time to regrow after your cows have stripped and stomped and fertilized everything in small strips.

The point is that you are saving time and money by utilizing your cows to do your reseeding and fertilizing. If you need hay, buy it – and then you’re bringing more nutrients back to the farm instead of having to buy expensive fertilizer and spend your time applying it.

What you will need is some decent minerals as free choice for the cows. This starts making up what your soil just doesn’t have. I’m still working on that one.

But thought to let you in on some haying data today…

July 4th Meat Barbeque Tips from USDA

2010-07-01T04:53:00.001-07:00

Just got referred to this neat video from the USDA.

The safest way to have a nice, enjoyable eating experience is to follow their four tips:

Clean
Separate
Cook
Chill

But they go into a great deal of detail here:

In an article on the USDA site, they tell a bit more:

1. Clean: First things first – start with clean surfaces and clean hands. You and your guests should wash your hands with soap and warm water for 20 seconds before and after handling food. Equally important are the surfaces that come in contact with raw and cooked foods – make sure they are clean before you start and are washed frequently.

2. Separate: Raw meats and poultry should be prepared separately from produce and cooked foods. Use separate cutting boards when chopping raw meats and produce, as juices from raw meats may contain harmful bacteria that can cross-contaminate ready-to-eat foods.

3. Cook: Your food thermometer is the most important tool that will tell you if your food is thoroughly cooked, as color is not a reliable indicator of doneness. The safe minimum internal temperature to kill any harmful bacteria in steaks, roasts, chops and fish is 145°F, while ground beef should reach 160°F. Take extra care with frozen hamburgers as these take longer to reach a safe internal temperature throughout the patties. It is important to measure the temperature in several areas of your burgers. All poultry and fully cooked meats like hot dogs should be grilled to 165°F or until steaming hot.

4. Chill: Perishable food should never sit out for more than two hours. If the temperature is above 90°F – which is common at summer picnics – perishable foods shouldn't sit out more than one hour. Refrigerate or freeze leftovers promptly, and discard any food that has been out too long.

So - enjoy your summer cooking with some fine Missouri Grassfed Beef – preferably some from my farm. ;)

New Ground Chuck Crock Pot Recipe – Low Fat and Delicious Albondigas

2010-06-14T16:53:00.001-07:00

This starts a series of recipes on this site, as while many people know about cattle, they are more familiar with the business end – the one they buy over the counter.

The reason I’m bringing these to you is to give you more ways to prepare some of the best beef (both in quality and nutrition) which this country produces.

Crock Pots are a very modern, efficient way to cook beef. Grass-fed beef needs lower temperature and longer cooking, since it doesn’t drip with fat (that stuff which can clog your arteries), so is more easily over-cooked. Crock pots arguably keep more of the nutrients contained and utilized.

So this series of recipes just for you .

Today is Albondigas, a popular Mexican meatball soup.

According to Wikipedia:

In Spain and Latin America, meatballs are called "albóndigas", derived from the Arabic 'al-bunduq' (meaning 'hazelnut,' or, by extension, a small round object). Albóndigas are thought to have originated as a Berber or Arab dish imported to Spain during the period of Muslim rule. Spanish albóndigas can be served as an appetizer or main course, often in a tomato sauce, while Mexican albóndigas are commonly served in a soup with a light broth and vegetables.

Albondigas

1/2 pound ground chuck
1/2 onion – minced
2 cloves garlic – minced
1/4 cup instant rice – uncooked
1 egg
Salt and pepper -- to taste
4 ounces chopped green chiles --canned, drained
1 carrot – shredded
14 1/2 ounces stewed tomatoes – canned
4 cups hot water
2 cups low fat beef broth -- or water
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley – or cilantro

In a bowl, combine beef, onion, garlic, rice, egg, salt and pepper to taste. Form into 1 1/2" meatballs. Place chilies and shredded carrots in bottom of crock pot. Spoon tomatoes evenly on top. Place meatballs on top of tomatoes. Pour in water, broth, oregano and parsley or cilantro. Cover and cook on LOW 5 1/2 to 6 hours. Garnish this popular Mexican soup with sprigs of fresh cilantro or mint, and serve with flour tortillas.

Moving from Conventional to Mob Grazing

2010-04-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to let you know the simple steps on how to move from conventional grass fed beef over to mob grazing, or "ultra-high-density managed grazing." It's really quite simple. Since I've already blogged this today over at "A Midwest Journal, I'll give you the highlights:

1. Get out everyday for some excuse and move some fences. Actually walk out in and around your cattle regardless of the weather. This gets them used to you. And you’ll get more familiar with the individual cattle and how they are doing. You’ll probably go through more pairs of boots, but it’s cheaper than fuel and engine parts.

2. Study up on Managed Grazing. This is the step that both Joel Salatin and Greg Judy did first, while they eventually moved to Allan Savory’s methods of ultra-high-density stocking.

3. Start laying some temporary electric lines out with battery-powered chargers, subdividing your existing pastures so that cattle just have enough to eat for a couple of days in every small part. You’ll probably want to start with a small herd in a back pasture. We have some heifers and steers we keep back until they’re ready to meet the bull or the processor, so they are a good experiment. Take a nice pasture that already has a water supply available and a good perimeter fence.

4. Start buying hay with the money you’d spend on fertilizer, fuel, and equipment for hay. It should buy you the same amount or more. Quit growing your own. Import other people’s grass onto your farm and use it to fertilize your own fields. But put those hay bales out where they'd do some good - not just in a feed lot where you are having to move it back out to the pastures again. Takes some foresight - but you'll use your tractor a lot less during the winter as you do.

5. Start moving your cattle through those former hay pastures. Under managed grazing, you’ll get through these about three or four times over eight months. In mob grazing, you’ll get through about twice a year. All that former hay ground can start making beef pounds while it's fertilized at the same time. Win-win.

6. Study the temporary layouts you are using. Cattle need three things – water, grass, and shelter. In “Grass-Fed Cattle", Julius Ruechel says that you can take your whole farm and simply rotate the cattle through it as you go. Our own farm is dotted with ponds, strips of woods, and waterways that are full in the spring, so this is a no-brainer.

7. Study where you are putting fences – if you keep putting them in the same spot, maybe you should put a permanent fence up there. We use steel t-bar posts for corners and just leave them there with the insulators on (so we can find them later) and this tells us where we are coming back to all the time.

8. This brings up another point – use what you got to start with. There’s a lot of great fiberglass poles out there and fancy-dancy geared wind-up reels. We use reels for power cords and our old rebar poles with plastic insulators on them. (If you can’t shove them in with a heavy leather glove on your hand, you can carry a hammer on your belt for frozen or summer-hardened ground.) Invest in better gear when your cows start bringing you more profit from the lower overhead.

And I'm trying out an Amazon widget to give you some related books - so you don't have to look all over for references as you're getting started. (But this looks buggy - have to get back to you on it...)

This of course brought up the point of figuring out how to raise just a few or a couple of cows on very few acres. Look's like I've got some more to put on my backburners...

New Calf - New Breed?

2010-03-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

Well, this little cuss was born yesterday and was up and kicking his heels within hours. Quite a beauty.

He's a cross between a Belted Galloway (Beltie) bull and a white-faced Angus cow. That's how he's gotten his darling Panda looks.

The advantage of the Beltie/Angus cross is that you get the faster weight-gain of the Angus with the improved forage efficiency of the Beltie - who is rumored to eat almost anything out there. We've had one other last year, a heifer, who is already known affectionately as "Little Goat".

Combined with our shift to managed grazing, ultimately to a "mob stocking" level, we will be able to produce an improved efficiency through our crossbreeding and forage management.

I'm working on a whitepaper about this subject, so should have more information for you shortly. And I have to get a video of this new little one for YouTube...

But our lives are already enriched.

Recipes for Crockpot Grass-Fed Beef - with beans, gravy, or as lasagna

2009-11-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

I know that all this writing about naturally pasture-finished beef recipes has probably put on pounds just in the research. But I could hardly wait to bring these to you.

Beans and beef have been a staple on this continent ever since settler times. These recipes - even the lasagna - are for easy cooking and delightful dining - especially for those of us on a hectic schedule.

Now note: today, I'm bringing ones you may want to try over the weekend, when you don't have to be away from your kitchen all day. After all, you can smell the delicious aroma's through the whole house - so coming in after some morning exercise or sports will make lunch a true treat. Or maybe a quick dinner for friends you've been out with all afternoon...

Again, I'm recommending a crockpot for these first few grass-fed beef recipes, as it helps lock the moisture in and further tenderize the beef.

CROCKPOT BEANS
1 lb. ground beef
3/4 lb. fried crumbled bacon
1 c. chopped onions
1 c. ketchup
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. hickory smoke flavoring
1 lb. can each pork and beans, lima beans, butter beans, and kidney beans
-Cook on low in crockpot for 4-8 hours. The longer it cooks, the smokier it tastes.

CROCKPOT BEEF AND GRAVY
2-3 pounds roast cut into bite sized pieces
1 packet Lipton's Onion soup mix
2 cans Cream of mushroom soup
Place pieces of roast in crock pot. Sprinkle packet of onion soup on meat. Cover with cream of mushroom soup. Let cook up to 9 hours. Stir about 1/2 way through cooking (but I'm sure you could just stir at the end). Serve over mashed potatoes or pasta.

CROCKPOT ALMOST LASAGNA
1 box rotini (or ziti), any fun, flavorful pasta will do
2 - 28-oz jars pasta sauce(one with tomato chunks works well)
1 egg
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb sausage
2 tbsp olive oil
1 C. parmesan cheese
1/2 C italian breadcrumbs
1 bag mozzarella cheese
16-20 oz. ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1 C. parmesan cheese
1 1/2 tsp. parsley flakes
dash salt & pepper
Grease crock-pot, or spray with non-stick cooking spray. Cook rotini according to package directions, drain. Brown and drain meat. Toss pasta with olive oil. Add pasta sauce to mixture, toss well. Stir together parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, egg, 1/2 bag mozzarella cheese, and browned meat. Can sprinkle lightly with garlic powder. Beat together ricotta, 2 eggs, parmesan, parsley, salt & pepper. Pour half of pasta/sauce/meat mixture into crock-pot. Spread entire ricotta mixture over first layer of pasta. Cover ricotta layer with remaining pasta mixture, and cover with remaining cheese. Cover, and cook on low 4-6 hours.

And now we again visit La Cense - those Montana grass fed beef experts - for a chili recipe specifically designed around the incredibly flavorful natural beef they raise:

Chili Con Carne

Ingredients
1 pound La Cense Ground Steak Burger
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic
1-14 oz can pureed tomatoes
2 teaspoons dried Mexican Oregano
2 tablespoons ancho chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 cup beef broth (optional)
Salt, cayenne and pepper to taste

Instructions
Brown meat in large heavy pot on medium high heat, drain excess fat if desired. Add onions and garlic and saute until soft (about ten minutes). Reduce heat and add tomatoes and spices. Salt and pepper to taste, if you like your chili hot add cayenne pepper (1 teaspoon for medium and 2 teaspoons for hot) but be careful!

- - - -

While I raise my own grass-fed beef here in Missouri, I suggest you try a vendor such as La Cense Beef if you want to sample some truly wonderful, Montana-raised grass fed beef.

Just what you need - a juicy, tender, grass-fed beef steak...

2009-11-07T16:31:00.000-08:00

Nothing like a juicy steak, cooked to order.

Unfortunately, except for some weekends, who has the time on our busy schedules to cook steak just the way we like it? And with this economy - how are you going to afford a restaurant that will cook grass-fed steak for you? (Most don't even know there's a difference between grain-fed and natural, pasture-finished beef!)

A crock pot is our best remedy for cooking this lean beef just the way we like it, while also keeping the moisture and tenderness in. Set it up in the morning to cook, come home at night and enjoy!

I was looking around for recipes recently and came across two recipes for scrumptious crockpot steak.

Have fun with these:

CROCKPOT BEEF STROGANOFF III
3 lb. beef round steak, 1/2 inch thick
1/2 c. flour
2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
2 med. onions, thinly sliced and separated into rings
2 (4 oz. each) cans sliced mushrooms, drained or 1/2 lb. mushrooms, sliced
1 (10 1/2 oz.) can condensed beef broth
1/4 c. dry white wine (optional)
1 1/2 c. sour cream
1/4 c. flour
Trim all excess fat (if you can find any) from steak and cut meat into 3 inch strips about 1/2 inch wide.

Combine 1/2 cup flour, the salt, pepper and dry mustard; toss with steak strips to coat thoroughly. Place coated steak strips in crock pot; stir in onion rings and mushrooms. Add beef broth and wine; stir well. Cover and cook on low setting for 8- 10 hours. Before serving, combine sour cream with 1/4 cup flour; stir into crock pot. Serve stroganoff over rice or noodles.

CROCKPOT BRACIOLE
2 1/2 pounds Round steak
1/4 to 1/2" thick 1/2 pound Bulk Italian sausage
1 tablespoon Dried parsley flakes
1/2 teaspoon Leaf oregano
2 cloves Garlic -- minced
1 large Onion -- finely chopped
1 teaspoon Salt
1 can Italian style tomatoes -- 16 0z
1 can tomato paste -- (6 oz)
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Leaf oregano
10 large Tomatoes or 2 28 oz cans tomatoes
5 cloves Garlic -- chopped
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons Salt
2 large Onions -- chopped
1 tablespoon Flour
1 tablespoon Vegetable oil
1 teaspoon Oregano
1 teaspoon Thyme
1 tablespoon Wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Sugar
-Trim all excess fat (if you can find any) from round steak. Cut into 8 evenly shaped pieces. Pound steak pieces between waxed paper until very thin and easy to roll. In skillet, lightly brown sausage. Drain well and combine with parsley, 1/2 teaspoon oregano, garlic, onion, and salt; mix well. Spread each steak with 2 to 3 tablespoons of sausage mixture. Roll up steaks and tie. Stack steak rolls in crock pot. Combine tomatoes, tomato paste, salt, and 1 teaspoon oreagno; pour over rolls. Cover and cook on low setting for 8 to 10 hours. Serve steak rolls with sauce.

-SAUCE: Place all ingredients except flour, oil, and vinegar in crockpot; stir well. Cover and cook on low setting for 8 to 10 hours. Remove cover and turn to high setting for the last hour to reduce excess moisture. Before removing sauce from crock pot, stir in flour, oil, and vinegar. Allow to cool. Pour 3 cups of sauce at a time into blender container; blend until smooth.

From the folks at La Cense - the premier Montana grass-fed beef folks - I've found this marvelous recipe for steak. So set aside some time to really revel in luxury - maybe one of those longer holidays coming up...

Steakhouse-Style Bone in Tenderloin Filet
by Ulla Kjarval
Ingredients
- 2 12oz La Cense Bone-In Tenderloin Filets
- Salt and Pepper to Taste
- Olive oil to cover steak

Instructions
Salt and pepper the steak and rub with a bit of olive oil. You want to bring the steaks to room temperature so let them sit for half an hour before you broil them. Preheat the broiler for 15 minutes. You will need to broil the steaks for about 5 minutes on each side, but broilers vary greatly so use your discretion. This is a perfect dinner for two. Serve with creamed spinach and oven-fried potatoes. Enjoy!

- - - -

While I raise my own grass-fed beef here in Missouri, I suggest you try a vendor such as La Cense Beef if you want to sample some truly wonderful, Montana-raised grass fed beef.

Grass Fed Recipes - moisture-rich cooking for busy people

2009-11-06T15:22:00.000-08:00

Here's some recipes I've uncovered in my research. Now you cooks out there, have patience with this old cow-boy. My best meal to date has been Pancakes, followed closely by French Toast.

But the key with Grass Fed Beef is to realize it doesn't have that extra fat in it. So these recipes mostly use a crock pot to keep the moisture in and additionally tenderize the beef.

The other advantage to crock pots is that it can safely cook all day while you are at work, creating a warm and satisfying meal (or several) ready for you when you return that night. So even if you don't enjoy a rural lifestyle like many of us, you can enjoy the beef we grow!

CROCKPOT BEEF AND BEANS
1 1/2 lbs of stewing beef
1 tbsp. prepared mustard
1 tbsp. taco seasoning
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
2 garlic cloves minced
1 can 16 oz diced tomatoes, undrained
1 med. onion chopped
1 can Kidney beans rinsed and drained
1 can chili beans

(I also added 1 can of black beans)
-Combine mustard, taco seasonings, salt , pepper and garlic in a large bowl. Add beef and toss to coat!
-Put the beef in your crock pot and add the rest of the ingriedients. Cover and cook for 6 -8 hours on LOW.
-Serve over yummy hot rice!

CROCKPOT BEEF AND GRAVY

2-3 pounds roast cut into bite sized pieces
1 packet Lipton's Onion soup mix
2 cans Cream of mushroom soup

Place pieces of roast in crock pot. Sprinkle packet of onion soup on meat. Cover with cream of mushroom soup. Let cook up to 9 hours. Stir about 1/2 way through cooking (but I'm sure you could just stir at the end). Serve over mashed potatoes or pasta.

CROCKPOT BEEF FAJITAS

1 1/2 pounds beef flank steak
1 cup chopped onion
1 green sweet pepper, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
1 Tbsp. cilantro
2 garlic cloves, minced (or 1/4 tsp. garlic powder)
1 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. salt
1 can (8oz) chopped tomatoes
12 8inch flour tortillas

Toppings: sour cream, guacamole, shredded cheddar cheese and salsa

Cut flank steak into 6 portions. In any size crockpot combine meat, onion, green pepper, jalapeno pepper, cilantro, garlic, chili powder, cumin, coriander and salt. Add tomatoes. Cover and cook on low 8-10 hours or high 4-5 hours. Remove meat from crockpot and shred. Return meat to crockpot and stir. To serve, spread meat mixture into flour tortillas and top with toppings. Roll up.

More pointers on cooking grass-fed beef

La Cense - the Montana Grass-Fed Beef experts - have some additional pointers about cooking pasture-finished, natural beef:

Like all grass fed meat, La Cense Beef cooks differently from the grain fed beef found in most supermarkets and butchers. This will help you get the tastiest results - every time!

Keep It Frozen!
Keep your La Cense Beef frozen until you're ready to use it. Then thaw it completely before cooking. To defrost, we recommend placing each individual vacuum-packed cut in the refrigerator overnight. If you're in a rush, you can also defrost in a bowl of cool water. Never use warm water.

Less (Heat) Is More (Flavor)
Because La Cense Beef is lean, lightly marbled and lower in fat than conventional grain-fed beef, its flavor is accentuated by cooking at a slightly lower temperature and for slightly less time. So, unless a recipe specifies grass fed beef, reduce the temperature in the recipe by 50° when cooking with La Cense Beef. Even at the lower temperature, cooking time for grass fed beef will be about 30% to 50% less than for conventional beef.

And as well, here is one of there top recipes from Ulla Kjarval:

Roasted La Cense Boneless Prime Rib Roast

Ingredients

3 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 Boneless La Cense Prime Rib Roast- about 3 pounds
Salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste
Olive oil

Instructions

Defrost the roast in water the day before keeping it in the plastic in a large bowl of water. This should take about 3 hours. Place in the refrigerator overnight. Two hours before you cook the roast take the roast out letting it reach room temperature. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees, season the roast and slather it with olive oil, roughly chop rosemary and place on top with garlic, set in a roasting pan. You will be roasting this quickly at about 5 minutes per pound - I had mine in the oven for about 20 minutes. It is important to have a meat thermometer so that you can monitor the doneness, as most ovens vary greatly (mine takes a long time) you will want it roasted to an internal temperature around 130°F to 140°F which is medium rare. Let it rest in a tin foil tent for 10 minutes before you serve! Enjoy!

- - - -

While I raise my own grass-fed beef here in Missouri, I suggest you try a vendor such as La Cense Beef if you want to sample some truly wonderful, Montana-raised grass fed beef.

Why my grass fed beef won't replace any corn for your tortillas any time soon

2009-11-05T13:03:00.000-08:00

Sure, I'm just joking about the tortillas - practically, the seeming biggest use of corn is sent to animal food. 1% is sweet corn, 25% goes to ethanol (and the byproduct leftover is then fed to animals), 20% is exported and another tiny bit is used for food ingredients, chemicals, fabrics, and plastics. (Source: EcoProducts)

But one of the big whoppers being told by the "animal rights" activists and other enviro's is that cattle are taking the land we'd be growing crops on.

Look, I'm from Missouri, where we are #2 behind Texas in raising cattle. If the land is good enough to raise profitable crops, you won't see a cow anywhere near it.

Good crop ground makes between 150 - 200 bushels of corn an acre. It takes 2.5 acres to keep a cow alive in Missouri (more out West.) So if you are getting $800 for a full-grown steer or could take those 500 bushels of corn off those same 2.5 acres and sell them at $4 each ($2,000) - which would you do?

That's probably why we shifted over to feeding cheap corn to cows instead of having them munch away at prairie grasses. But you will also see the big feedlots in crop country, not down in the rolling hills that start where I live and keep going further down into southern Missouri.

But I'm awfully tempted to take the rest of my 45 acres I farm as crops and convert it to pasture. Why? Because it doesn't make but about 80 bushel per acre of corn. And the cost per acre is the same, whether you get a 200 bu. yield or nothing.

Crunching the numbers for the land I have showed that I got about $2,000 profit off those 45 acres last year. Pays the taxes and the bills, barely. Now, say I had a crop which didn't require inputs and was pure profit. 45 acres should keep about 18 more cows. If I sell their calves at about $600 profit, then I make $10,800 - so which is more profitable?

That's what these other big-city complainers just don't get - cattle are raised on marginal land which won't produce any decent sort of food otherwise. Our own farm land is all marginal, even the stuff we crop right now. Mostly trees, shrubs and clay ground under about 2-3 inches of top soil. Raises better grass and trees than anything else.

You go 40 miles north or east and it's a different scene. 6-8" topsoil and that 200 bu. corn I mentioned earlier.

The trick is to raise that low-maintenance, low-input, environmentally-friendly grass fed beef.

Because the land only gets better when you raise your beef right. And the quality of the beef is the best that can be produced. Award-winning and lab-tests to prove how heart-healthy it is.

And it will make this farmer improve his own rural lifestyle by being able to maybe quit his day job - one day, anyway.

If you follow what Nature laid out, not the government, you generally have an easier time of it. At least, that's what I've experienced.

Try it for yourself and see...

- - - -

While I raise my own grass-fed beef here in Missouri, I suggest you try a vendor such as La Cense Beef if you want to sample some truly wonderful, Montana-raised grass fed beef.

Why you probably won't ever see Organic Beef coming from my farm

2009-11-04T12:06:00.000-08:00

The reason is pure economics. Has nothing to do with the quality of beef produced. Let me lay it out for you.

I've already covered in a broad sense how grain-finished beef is more expensive to produce than grass-fed beef.

Let's look this over:

I don't have to have a lot of expensive equipment to run my farm or produce my crops.
I don't have to spray anything as the cows eat almost all of the weeds.
I don't have to deal with insects, since the more I can get in the pastures (well, except maybe face flies) the better the pastures do.
If I do it right and manage my grazing, I don't have to even cut and bale hay for the winter.
And If I manage my herd properly, the soil will actually improve in quality - which means I can actually start adding more cows just to keep up with the grass.

Follow the money...

What's my net cost for each calf I produce? About $40 in shots for the new ones (and I'm beginning to think those are even unnecesary...)

Now, per beeffrompasturetoplate.org,

The truth is it takes 2.6 pounds of grain and 435 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef in the United States.

When you take a 400lb just-weaned calf up to 1100lbs, you are using 1820 lbs of grain (usually corn and soybeans, ground and mixed). If it were just corn and I had to buy it at commodity prices, I'd be paying at least $4 per bushel (more or less) - so a rough cost would put the extra cost at $7280 - at least on paper. Large operations will get their feed much cheaper than this (and have to.) But that tells you right there why you pay high beef prices and farmers still go broke.

My own experiences, from fattening cattle on this farm, told me that the feed bills alone took half the calf crop. We never made enough corn on our land to feed out cattle, so we'd sell the corn we raised (for real minimal profit) and then buy the other feed.

Now, the funny thing was when I found out feeder calves (sold right after weaning) made as much income as keeping those calves up to fattening weight - well, I never fattened cattle on corn again. (And I got to keep the money from that corn we raised.)

The next price break was when I found that a calf fattened to a year old on just grass will give me about $600 profit per head - and that's taking out the cost of keeping them and their mother alive during the winter with hay.

So my profit of selling these calves as yearlings was better than feeding them on corn I didn't have.

The next break - selling them as finished cattle (about 20-22 months) was no better profit, because you have to winter them over with hay again. Since they are now eating more to put those last few pounds on, it's a wash for those extra months. (Of course, when I go over to "mob grazing" and no hay in the winter - every calf is nearly sheer profit...)

The cost of Government-inspected Organic Beef

Here's where organic comes in. Annually, I would have to keep paperwork and get this inspected to prove that I didn't add anything to the land or the cattle. So I pay a fee to have my paperwork checked - for every single acre and animal (as I understand it.) Essentially, this is a government tax at work.

Right now, the premium paid for locally-raised, grass-fed beef is the same or higher than organic beef. Why? Because people know where it came from and who butchered it.

And the last case of e-coli infecction I heard of came from what? USDA Government-inspected beef - which came from cattle out of four states and two countries, all mixed together into a yummy, tasteless, uniform-sized, frozen, plastic-wrapped, gray patty.

So if it costs more to get the government involved, but I make the same amount of income - which is more profitable? Pasture-finished or organic pasture-finished? (And we're leaving out the idea of making organic corn - a whole 'nother expense...)

That's why I'm not going to be raising organic beef anytime soon. It gets the government into your operation and makes it cost more. I'll make more money and higher quality beef, even if I just sell to my neighbors in our local cities.

- - - -

While I raise my own grass-fed beef here in Missouri, I suggest you try a vendor such as La Cense Beef if you want to sample some truly wonderful, Montana-raised grass fed beef.

How grass fed beef improves the land it comes from

2009-11-03T08:46:00.000-08:00

A lot of exaggerations are used by “animal rights” activists to forward their own agenda. One of these is how natural grass-finished beef is lumped in with all the rest of the ways beef is produced in the US.

Practically, they'd be better off taking more vacations from the urban blight they live in and go get some lessons from their country cousins. (Or maybe just try to raise some of this stuff themselves for once instead of giving advice all the time...)

While New York and other coastal cities are busy dumping its waste into the ocean on a daily basis, as well as covering huge masses of land with their garbage landfills, the lowly cow recycles between 75-100% of what it eats directly back onto the ground (depending on what study you believe).

You see, cows are some of the most efficient and environmentally-friendly automatic harvesters we have. And not only that, they also produce another of themselves every year.

Factory approach to meat production

It's only since WWII, when we started feeding grain to cattle that we started interrupting their natural process with our man-made “efficiencies”. When you add the cost of planting, fertilizing, spraying, and harvesting miles of corn just to coop up animals in a concentrated feeding operation – well, that's where things get messy. Literally.

In their natural environment, cows roam around the pastures, usually with one calf at their side and another on the way. For about every 50 cows or so, a bull keeps it that way – year in and year out. Meanwhile, all concerned are simply eating all the forage they can. When they get full, they rest and digest, then get up and go at it again.

As they eat, they drop their manure in the pasture, where it is digested and improves or restores the ecosystem with concentrated nutrients. And when their calf is born on a grassy field, there is little bacteria that they can't handle on their own – because they are already immune to most everything out there.

However, when you take that calf and shut it up in a dirt feedlot to eat grain on a schedule, that whole ecosystem is interrupted. Grain puts on low-quality pounds of flesh, with a lot of fat to go along. While their mothers had high Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratios (bad fat to good fat), grain-fed beef are known for their heart-stopping renditions of the “Cholesterol Blues”.

Grain does another funny thing – it robs the flavor. Anyone who's ever gotten a hamburger from a pasture-finished beef and then went to eat one of these fast-food wanna-bes will tell you – nothing from a supermarket has any taste at all compared to an all-natural grass-finished beef burger.

And with all those cows in a small space - there's a lot of cleaning up to do. Literally mountains of manure being piled up...

Let's look further at the land it comes from – when you have a cow on pasture, you don't have to spray for weeds or insects. Sure, there are a lot of insects out there – and they all have plenty to eat. Because there are thousands of varieties of plants out there. It isn't a problem that we can only raise one type of plant and have to spray to keep any other plant from growing out there – or to get rid of just a few insects that attack that particular plant you are trying to raise.

Plenty for everyone.

And about those weeds – depending on the particular breed of cow you have, they are just as likely to become a meal as to get to their full height where they can shed their seeds.

Everything-bunched-up-together-and-on-schedule, please

Let's look at another problem with these Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's): just like when you put a bunch of people into a small space and force them to live together, any disease spreads quickly through such a herd. The current veterinarian practice is to load the whole herd up with antibiotics to keep everyone safe.

And what about these hormones? These are used to create growth spurts so that the animal gains weight more quickly. The idea being presented is that you can factory-ize these animals.

All cows chemically suppressed and then artificially inseminated so they are giving birth at the same time.
Cattle are weaned at 7 montths. Either at birth or at weaning, the bull-calves are neutered so they put on extra weight. Calves are sent to a feed lot for fattening on corn or other grain rations.
At 14 months, the steers are sold to a packing plant – and the heifers (if not also slaughtered) are now ready to be inseminated.
If you check the schedule, this means that these heifers can now take their place in the herd besides their mama's – and the whole oragnization keeps right on schedule. Fattened calves are sent off, the pens are cleaned – and just in time for the next set of feeder calves.

Grass finished beef is different.

It takes around 20-22 months to fatten a calf on grass. So it doesn't fit that once-annual factory schedule. As well, the natural insemination from a bull isn't as definite as an artificial one. So there are “windows” of birthing - weeks, not hours.

But everything is in sync with the natural conditions around them. Illness and sickness – rare. Visits with the vet – rarer. Cost and overhead – nearly non-existent. Just move your cows to fresh pastures frequently or infrequently and both the cows and the pastures stay healthy. And that makes for healthy beef.

When you know how your beef is raised, you know how healthy it is for you – or not.

Choose healthy beef to begin with – chose grass fed beef.

- - - -

While I raise my own grass-fed beef here in Missouri, I suggest you try a vendor such as La Cense Beef if you want to sample some truly wonderful, Montana-raised grass fed beef.

How my local beef is better than your supermarket version - and I can prove it!

2009-11-02T07:53:00.000-08:00

While I've been working to improve the quality of the beef I raise, I find that many people don't know that they can buy their beef directly from the farmer. Factually, this will actually save them money when they do.

Additionally, they know how that meat was raised and what it was fed.

Most local beef is raised in an environmentally-friendly and responsible manner. This is why a great deal of it is grass-fed, also known as pasture-finished. It's as natural as they come.

Government Intervention in Beef

Now there is some discussion about organic versus natural versus grass-fed beef. And another discussion about USDA-inspected or not.

My rule of thumb is this: the less the government is involved, the better. The Feds own the organic trademark and license it's use. That doesn't mean you get the best quality - but you can guarantee it costs more.

If you stick to the USDA definitions for these types of beef, you'll quickly see that they are nearly impossible to achieve - as they are so limited. So that again means that you are going to have higher costs.

Same with USDA-inspected. All meat lockers and processors have to have regular inspections from the state health inspectors. When the USDA is involved, they have to check into other special items, like the conditions of the lymph nodes, and so on. All USDA means is that you can re-sell the pieces of a cow (like a single steak or just one pound of hamburger) and it's guaranteed safe. (Well, almost always...)

Again, this just raises the overhead for the beef - which is passed right on to you.

The more your beef is connected to the government, the more it's going to cost you.

Buying grass-fed beef directly

The best guarantee of your beef quality is to know how it was raised, where it came from, and who butchered it.

You should be able to drive out to these places and visit them. (Try that with Argentinean beef when you are in New York...)

I was looking around and found this great explanation from the University of Washington:

Many farmers do not sell meat by individual cuts, but offer it in sides, quarters, or smaller packs containing a variety of cuts. It may be more economical for you to purchase a whole, half (side), or quarter of grass-fed beef if you have the freezer space to do so. It is important to understand how you are buying the beef if you choose to buy a large quantity.

A variety of factors affect the amount of meat a whole, half, or quarter will yield. First, the dressing percentage (the weight of the carcass after the hide, blood, and organs are removed) will alter the amount of meat a 1,100-pound live steer will yield. Typically, dressing percentages range from 56 to 65%, so a 1,100-pound steer would result in a carcass weighing between 616 and 715 pounds.

Cutting yield is the amount of meat remaining once a carcass is further processed. Typically, with grass-fed beef, there will be a loss of 25–30%, which is attributed to the removal of bone and fat. Losses can be greater when the consumer prefers more boneless cuts. With a 650-pound carcass, a consumer can expect to take home 455–487 pounds of beef. A side of beef will yield about 200–240 pounds of beef, and a quarter will yield 100–120 pounds.

When buying meat as a whole, half, or quarter, be sure to ask who will pay the processing costs. In most situations, the consumer works directly with the processing plant and pays the processing costs; however, some farmers will pay the costs for processing and then include that charge in the overall price of the meat.

If you are unfamiliar with negotiating regarding cuts of meats and costs, ask the farmer from whom you are buying the meat to assist you with this process. Most farmers consistently work with the same processing facilities and should be able to address any questions you may have. You will need to follow up with the processing plant soon after the animal has been delivered to the facility to provide cutting instructions as well as any special requests you may have (e.g., sausages or special cuts). Depending on how long the carcasses hang before they are cut up, the meat will not be ready for 2–3 weeks. The processing facility should call you when your meat is ready. Payment is expected when the meat is picked up.
Questions to ask the producer
Farmers use a variety of production practices to produce high quality meat products, and it is worthwhile to talk to the producers about how their animals are raised. Typically, beef cattle are slaughtered at 18–24 months of age. Grass-fed beef is usually produced without growth-promoting hormones or other additives, but be sure to ask the producers about their production practices if it is important to you. Grass-fed beef may or may not be produced with corn. Some pasture-based farms feed a little grain to “finish” the animal.

One benefit of buying directly from farmers is you can talk with them about their production practices, develop an understanding of their actions, and learn the reasons for their production decisions.

- - - -

While I raise my own grass-fed beef here in Missouri, I suggest you try a vendor such as La Cense Beef if you want to sample some truly wonderful, Montana-raised grass fed beef.

With thanks to University of Wisconsin - A Consumer's Guide to Grass-Fed Beef - A3862 - http://www.uwex.edu/ces/cty

Cooking with Grass Fed Beef - not yo' mama's roast

2009-11-01T06:49:00.000-08:00

I ran across this excellent pdf created by the University of Wisconsin and just had to share this part of it with you.

This excerpt is about how to cook with grass-fed beef. As you see below, our whole culture has evolved to handle all the extra fat that grain-fed beef has leftover.

With the enhanced flavor of grass-fed beef, it isn't hard to re-learn a few basics when you first order this natural protein.

Cooking with grass-fed beef

Because grass-fed beef can be leaner than grain-fed beef, modified cooking methods may produce better results. Because of its typically higher fat content, grain-fed beef is more forgiving when cooked in that it is less likely to dry out or toughen if overcooked. Grass-fed beef depends more on juiciness than fat for its moisture. Searing the outside of the meat to trap moisture, then cooking it slowly is recommended for grass-fed beef. For best results:

Bring your grass-fed meat to room temperature before cooking, about 30 minutes for steaks and not more than 90 minutes for a roast.
Don’t overcook! Because of the leanness of grass-fed beef, cooking to well-done can dry it out. Cooking to rare or medium-rare preserves the meat’s natural juiciness.
Reduce the cooking temperatures by 25–50°F. The USDA recommends an internal temperature of 125–145°F for roasts.
Fat and juices make beef tender and flavorful. When grilling or roasting, sear the meat quickly over high heat to seal in the juices.
Ground beef can also be very lean. You may find that you need to add a little olive oil when browning or pan-frying hamburgers.

General guidelines for cooking different cuts

Loin cuts: The highest quality, most tender cuts of meat come from the rib and loin areas of the animal. These include such cuts as rib, T-bone and porterhouse steaks, and prime rib roast. Next comes the sirloin area which includes sirloin steaks and sirloin tip roasts. All of these cuts are good for grilling, broiling, and roasting. They can also be pan-broiled over low heat on the stove. The roasts are good for dry-roasting in the oven.

Round cuts: Rump roasts, round steaks, and round roasts tend to be somewhat less tender. Round steaks can be marinated and grilled, but they’re more often cut into chunks or sliced thin and used for kabobs, stir fry, or stew. Rump and round roasts work well either as pot roasts or in stews cooked in liquid on the stove or in the oven.

Shoulder cuts: Shoulder, or chuck, cuts include chuck and arm roasts as well as short ribs. These cuts all work well braised or roasted slowly in liquid. Braising involves browning the meat, then cooking slowly in a small amount of liquid in a covered pan on the stove top. If prepared in the oven, these roasts are best cooked as pot roasts in a deep pan with liquid.

Working with frozen meat

Buying meat directly from a farmer often involves working with frozen meat. Butchers use either white freezer paper or plastic vacuum packing for packaging meat. The plastic maintains freshness for longer periods in the freezer and reduces the risk of freezer burn. If your supplier’s butcher uses freezer paper, ask if it is wrapped in plastic inside the paper. This will help maintain quality during storage.

While it is possible to cook a roast starting with a frozen cut of meat, most people thaw meat before cooking. There are several ways to thaw frozen meat.

Refrigerator thawing: This can take 24 hours or more, so you need to plan ahead.

Microwave thawing: Most microwave ovens have defrost settings that work fairly well for thin cuts of meat, but thicker cuts often end up being cooked around the edges before the center is thawed. The meat should be cooked immediately after it is thawed.

Thaw in cold water: If your meat is wrapped in freezer paper, remove and place in a water-tight plastic bag. If it is vacuum-packed in plastic, you may place it directly in the water. Change the water every 30 minutes. Thawing will take 1–4 hours, depending on the size of the cut.
- - - -
While I raise my own grass-fed beef here in Missouri, I suggest you try a vendor such as La Cense Beef if you want to sample some truly wonderful, Montana-raised grass fed beef.

With thanks to University of Wisconsin - A Consumer's Guide to Grass-Fed Beef - A3862 - http://www.uwex.edu/ces/cty

What is grass-fed beef?

2009-10-31T20:04:00.000-07:00

What is grass-fed beef?

Some purists consider that grass-fed means only animals which “have have eaten nothing but their mother’s milk and fresh grass or grass-type hay from birth to harvest—all their lives.” Technically, this is a bunch of bunk and impossible to achieve.

Reason being is that there are seeds, legumes, tree leaves, even small shrubs that cows need to eat to keep their bodies in balance. A pure grass diet would actually make them a bit sick. But cows eat a wide variety of forage to keep themselves healthy. They do this because they have a four-chambered stomach and so re-digest it until all the nutrients they can use are extracted.

Any healthy pasture you look at has a thousand or more different varieties of plants growing there, and not all of them are really grass.

The best, most environmentally responsible grazing (called mob grazing) will actually have them eating stalks that have grown up and gone to seed. So it's not some academic issue phrased by government dictocrats. Cows eat a lot of varieties of stuff to make your beef. And that's what gives it real flavor.

Which then brings up the problems that grain-finished cattle producers have – a pure grain diet changes the body chemistry of cattle and makes them put on extra fat, which causes all sorts of problems for us human consumers (as well as the cattle.) Since our corn has similarly been commoditized to be always yellow and 1/3 of the possible protein geneticized out of it, it's mostly tasteless starch - which to us would be similar to having a diet of Twinkies. Sure, we put on extra fat and gain weight. That's what a grain-fed diet is supposed to do.

The bulk of our meat in grocery stores and local markets and restaurants are grain-fed beef. The problems with this is that it is fairly tasteless and a steady diet of it would not help your heart much. Too much fat, too little of the good vitamins people need.

And the current trend is to get back to more traditional methods of raising beef – which is just on grassy pastures. Of course in the winter, unless you make other preparations, you'll be feeding them hay - which is just grass dried up and compressed into big rolls or squares and kept out of the weather so it doesn't decay.

Environmental and health benefits of grass-fed beef

To be most environmentally responsible, it make far more sense to raise animals on pasture. High quality, healthy pastures reduce soil erosion, improve water quality (a University of Wisconsin study showed that pastures are the “best” crop for reducing runoff and erosion), increase plant diversity, and provide high quality wildlife habitat. Properly managed, grazing cattle will actually improve the quality of the pasture in both quantity of forage and diversity.

Grass-fed meats are associated with a variety of health benefits as well. It is leaner and lower in fat and calories ounce for ounce than grain-fed beef.

Additionally, studies have shown that grass-fed meat contains more of vitamins A and E, conjugated linoleic acids (CLA), and omega-3 fatty acids, all of which have been shown to lower cholesterol and high blood pressure, and decrease the risk of diabetes and cancer.

Nutrition information for grass-fed beef: Galloway beef nutrient content comparison to other cooked meats, three ounces, trimmed

pasture-finished Galloway beef loin

USDA Prime Grade beef loin

USDA Choice Grade beef loin

Pork loin

Lamb loin

Chicken breast without skin

Chicken thigh without skin

Protein (grams)	27	24	24	26	26	26	22
Fat (grams)	3.5	11.6	8.7	6.6	8.2	1.3	7.0
Calories	129	201	175	165	176	119	151

And Grass Fed Beef has real taste

A pasture-based diet directly affects meat flavor. It changes the fatty acid content of meat. Grass-fed meats are often described as more intensely flavored. And this changes your approach to cooking this meat, as it requires far less additives to make it tasty. It already is tasty..

The other points affecting beef flavor are age (how old the animal is) and stress at slaughter (when the animal is shipped to a remote location, it is often excited and releases hormones into the muscle). Many locally-raised beef producers will have the animal slaughtered on site and then processed at a locker nearby to avoid that stress. And older animals, even when made into hamburger, are still far more flavorful than their corn-finished cousins.

(My old standby is to tell someone to take an average fast-food burger with everything on it, then take out the patty and eat the rest. Usually, there is no difference in taste, just slightly softer in texture.)

Another action taken with most pasture-finished natural beef is to “dry-age” it for 3-4 weeks, allowing the natural enzymes to break down the tissues and make the beef more tender. (Commercial grain-fed beef is “aged” only the amount of time it takes to ship it cross-country to its destination.)

- - - -

While I raise my own grass-fed beef here in Missouri, I suggest you try a vendor such as La Cense Beef if you want to sample some truly wonderful, Montana-raised grass fed beef.

(Thanks to the University of Wisconsin, "A Consumer's Guide to Grass-Fed Beef" Bulletin A3862 http://www.uwex.edu/ces/cty)

Welcome - and thanks!

2009-10-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

Julie Brown's Missouri Angus Grass Fed Beef Cattle

Thanks for visiting my blog and giving me some of your time.

I hope to bring you consistently good content about raising and marketing grass fed beef cattle through the posts on this blog.

I've been working in this area for about 9 years now, having taken over my parents' farm and learning all I can about it. Turns out, with the land we have, grass fed beef cattle are more profitable than any other crop we have - but the two cheapest crops to raise are grass and trees. Of course, then, the most profitable sight you can see is a herd of cattle grazing under a tree-shaded pasture.

(It turns out, oddly, that cattle will eat more if they have shade, and grass grows better if it's shaded during part of the day. So my farm needs to look like a savannah to be the most profitable.)

Anyway, I have tons to write about as I keep my own research going. Hope to keep you informed, entertained, or enlightened as I work this rural lifestyle.

Cheers!

Your Guide to Grass Fed Beef Cattle

Homemade Cleaner for more than Just cleaning...

﻿ Farm and Home, Garden Remedies

How your beef is raised, mostly.

Untitled

Safer, Healthier, Cheaper, Greener: Missouri Grassfed Beef

Missouri Grass Fed Beef is: Safer, Healthier, Cheaper, Greener

1. Safer

2. Healthier

3. Less Expensive

4. Greener

Summary

About Worstell Farms

Producing the Finest Missouri Grass Fed and Pasture-Finished Beef

How our beef is different

Farm Tours Available on Request

Site Index of Worstell Farms

HSUS takes over the USDA? What's the truth?

Is this true? Does some HSUS lawyer now enforce animal breeding for the USDA?

What's so good about Organic Meat?

What are "CLA's" and "Omega 3 and 6's"?!?

Why our Missouri prime beef is striped...

How does a Beef Ranch Stay in Business?

What's All-Natural, Humane, Pasture-Raised?

Raising Missouri Pasture-Fed Beef

Producing the Finest Missouri Grass-Fed and Pasture-Finished Beef

Missouri Beef is Your Best Health Food

Environmental Impact: Raising Pasture Fed Beef

Missouri Grass Fed Meat for You To Buy

How to Make Sure Your Grass Fed Beef is Tender

Grass Fed Meat has a Surprising Taste...

Dry Aged vs. Wet Aged - How your meat is processed...

What beef cuts you can expect - straight from the meatman...

Why our Missouri Angus Prime Beef is Striped...

How to Get and Stay Healthy - Eat Missouri Beef

USDA to Require Nutrition Labels on Meat - so what?

Tips to winterize your cow herd

Economics of Small Beef Farms is Better

Preparing to store frozen beef

Ensuring Grass-fed Beef Tenderness

How to make sure your grass fed beef is tender - process it right.

Genetics

Species and Age

Feeding

Muscle to Muscle

Suspension of Carcass

Chilling Rate

Aging

Quality Grade

Mechanical

Chemical

Marinating

Freezing

Thawing

Cooking

Carving

Summary

How about a whole beef in your freezer?

Feeding Corn as Grass, not Grain to Beef Cattle

Why Grass Fed Beef Has to Cost More

Marketing Strategy – Ignore Conventional Wisdom

Grass Fed Mob Grazing and Winter

Video on grass fed beef – with some inaccuracies

Managed Grazing – Surviving Summer Slump

Pinkeye in cattle – doesn’t affect the beef quality

Should small producers even bother baling hay – or move right over to mob grazing?

July 4th Meat Barbeque Tips from USDA

New Ground Chuck Crock Pot Recipe – Low Fat and Delicious Albondigas

Albondigas

Moving from Conventional to Mob Grazing

New Calf - New Breed?

Recipes for Crockpot Grass-Fed Beef - with beans, gravy, or as lasagna

Just what you need - a juicy, tender, grass-fed beef steak...

Steakhouse-Style Bone in Tenderloin Filet

by Ulla Kjarval

Ingredients

Instructions

Grass Fed Recipes - moisture-rich cooking for busy people

More pointers on cooking grass-fed beef

Why my grass fed beef won't replace any corn for your tortillas any time soon

Farm and Home, Garden Remedies