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BlueMoods

BlueMoods

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Feb 9, 2014
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Location
Arkansas
Not exactly my animal but it is now. My step daughter's father in law raises cattle just up the road. He had a cow in severe distress, DOA calf stuck in canal, couldn't even pull it. He tried for 2 days and, finally gave up to day and called us to come down when he put the cow down if we wanted the meat. So, you got it, the entire cow is now in quarters, on ice in my bathtub. It's going to be a long night processing all of that but, I am not about to pass on that much free beef.

My windfall gin for the year I guess :)
 
Oh my that is a LOT of meat. Sounds like you need an old fashioned sliciing party like what they did back before the days of freezers.
 
got one going on, six of us working on the beast. Still have the shoulders to do is all. The rest is in the freezer. A couple more hours with getting the roasts and the last of the burger out of it. I'll have jerky to make tomorrow but, that's all.
 
I know, grass fed Angus at that. DH and I are sore today and I'm still cleaning up the mess but, we'd do it again tomorrow if we were asked to get another one. Well, it was a big one. One hind quarter with the lower leg removed (just the ham piece) weighed 130 lbs. We took 200 lbs of burger out and still hadn't put a dent in the pile in the tub. Thank goodness we bought that band saw last summer and, still had a new, clean blade for it.
 
Oh, MY!!! That is much larger than what we get lol. We get Highland beef, which are a smaller cattle - our last quarter was 129 pounds hanging weight, so I think about 72 pounds freezer weight! Actually, we always have more than we need - the last month or so before getting the new batch we end up eating a lot of beef! But then, for just the two of us I get six little dinners in the freezer from 2 pounds of ground beef, since for portion control I always factor in what other protein sources are in the recipe! We wouldn't know what to do with 200 pounds of hamburger, except donate it!
 
Well, add another to my menage around here. Got bottle calf to raise, it's a twin and mother rejected the smaller of the two so, I now have a 6 hour old heifer in the barn with a belly full of peto bismol and milk replacer. :pancake:

When it rains, it pours - cows in my case this week. LOL

As for my bathtub, it is now meat free and shiny clean again and, the freezers are beyond full.

We do have family and neighbors that can use some of the meat but, we already filled all of those freezers too.

Come December I'm going to have to have room for a hog and, at least a couple of deer. the hybrid bass run is next month so, there will be fish a plenty then to get in there.

And do you know what feels really good? Going to the grocery store and bypassing the meat section entirely for a whole year or more, hopefully two, then my orphan will be ready to fill the freezer again. :) (Rabbit, chicken, pork, venison, beef, bass, and catfish is enough variety for me.)

Someday I will eliminate the need to go grocery shopping at all. Maybe my little orphaned heifer will have a gentle enough temperament to be made a milk cow, though that is rare for an Angus.
 
That's the goal, isn't it? To see how little money we have to spend at the grocery store! We will never have a cow here (I can't drink milk anyway) - I can see that we will never get away from dairy products or baking supplies, but with the rabbits and garden this year and laying hens next year, and maybe a pig down the road… We get closer every day!

Congrats on your second windfall! Raining cattle… :lol: :lol:
 
:congratulations:

That is wonderful! We've put the word out with some of our hunting friends, that if they ever have too much, we'll be glad to help them out. :p
 
So many hunters only want the meat, they could care less about the hide, bones and organs. Hides can be tanned or made into rawhide, bones can be used to make stock, cleaned and polished to make knife scales (handles) and, some can even be made into sewing needles, hearts, livers and kidney are human food, lungs make good dog or cat food, the intestines can be washed and the layers separated to be sausage casings, you can clean the stomach and make a water bag or wine bag out of it. Larger animals like cows, you can cut the two larger stomachs in half and dry them over frames to make large, durable baskets for almost anything you want to put in them or, take 1/3 off and dry on a taller frame to make a cooking pot for soups that can be used over a fire.

If you are ambitious, you can even boil the hooves for a non toxic glue, and get the marrow out of the bones to use instead of butter. (roast then crack the bones to get the marrow for butter.)

You might want to let you hunting friends know, you will take gut shot deer, a lot of hunters think the meat is ruined by a gut shot. Well anything inside the body cavity is but, you can strip a lot of meat off the outside w/o even gutting the animal that is perfectly good meat and, you still get the hide that way too. (I used to have neighbor we nicknamed "gut shot George" after he gave us 4 gut shot deer in one season LOL)

If you have a beef rancher near you, make friends, let them know you will take on orphans, gimps and, are willing to come help with injured cattle and birthing problems. Most will welcome the free help and happily let you have some or all of the meat if one needs to be put down, and, you will occasionally get a calf to raise. Even with a small area, you can get a free calf to 5-6 months old and use it for veal. At a year it's a 600 to 800 lb animal, still manageable with minimal butchering equipment. (And if the calf dies younger, it's still veal and nearly as much as a small deer so even a newborn is worth it.)
 
No, you can, just like rabbit, go right to the freezer or to burger, just need to thaw then, let it sit in the refrigerator 2-3 days before cooking it (unless it's burger). Aging beef is more to concentrate the flavor and firm it up so i is easier to cut. I do prefer it that way but, it's too warm here now for that and, we don't have a walk in or even refrigerators enough for aging it this time of year. (can't leave it hanging when it's getting near 70 in the day)

I'd have been more concerned with aging if it had been a younger animal, but she was going to be a bit tough no matter. I can cook it low and slow and, get tender meat and, would have needed to do that even if we had been able to age her.

Had meatballs in marinara last night and, having liver and onions tonight. Then that's enough beef eating for a few days. I'll do a roast this weekend while I'm drying the jerky. (loin was not marbled at all so, she was B grade had she gone to a processing plant. - Choice is mostly what is in the grocery store, and is more tender than this one. She'd have been all hamburger in a processing plant.)
 
Post Number:#8 by Comet007 » Mon Feb 24, 2014 8:21 pm

That's the goal, isn't it? To see how little money we have to spend at the grocery store! We will never have a cow here (I can't drink milk anyway) - I can see that we will never get away from dairy products or baking supplies
Click to expand...
I used to milk cows, -- and discovered that the reason I could not drink "store milk" was not the pasturization process, - it was because they use the wrong kind of cow, and Holstein milk makes my stomach upset, -- My Guernsey , Jersey, or Brown Swiss, never made "indigestion" But --when I worked on a Dairy I could not drink the milk either.
I never knew why-- until lately-- I guess there are really two types of milk.
http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/03/ ... re-bought/
 

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