Give me some of that homegrown, grass-fed beef!

About two weeks ago, we took our steer, Jelly in to get butchered.  Yesterday we got a call from the butcher shop telling us that the meat was ready for pick up.  So this morning we went and brought him home, and he was "a changed man".

Before we were flooded about 2 years ago, we bought a baby steer to raise and use for meat.  But unfortunately that calf we named Ribeye didn't survive the flood. 

So now I'm so excited to try out our very own grass-fed beef for the first time.  This is the first time we butchered a steer that we bred and raised from the very beginning.  So I'm excited to see what the meat tastes like. 

As we had learned before, if your cows are mainly grass-fed, between 21-24 months would be the best time to butcher them.  That will give you the best quality, and best yield of meat.  We didn't keep our very best record of expenses spent on raising our cows this time.  But with our brief calculation, which includes money spent on shots, cattle cubes (they're more like treats, so we don't give them all the time), renting trailers/transportation, and finally butchering expenses, we ended up paying about $2/lb for our natural, grass-fed beef!  Now that's a steal!  Plus, we know what exactly is in our beef, and no junk, no hormones or additives added!

This is what 298lbs of beef looks like. 7 big bags full of meat!

We got a bunch of steaks and a good variety of different cuts
of meat.

This is our list of inventory.  

One very full freezer!

Fixin' to fix something

When you live on a farm you are always working on something.  There's always something to fix or to build etc.  Today is no exception either.  We were trying to fix the fences in our front pasture.  Originally fixing the fences was not on our priority list but we are now gearing up for something.  But what is it?  Ha, I guess you will have to find out later.  I know the suspense is probably killing you so I'm hoping I could give an update tomorrow. Stay tuned!

fixing some fence

The area we were working in happened to be in the swampy area of the farm.
Yeah, it was kind of yucky.

Thank goodness for rain boots!

The Project

This is one of the projects that we worked on over the weekend.  We replaced the roof of a big section of the barn.  So now it won't leak all over the barn when it rains.  It was a lot of work!
After my husband took down all the old sheet metal from the roof, we decided it would take us quite a few days to finish the rest of the work installing the new roof and pearlings.  So we cheated and hired someone to finish the job.  Those guys finished it in about 7 hours when it would have taken us probably at least 3-4 days if we did it ourselves.

 Taking down the old roof

Yeah, we rented a scissor lift to do the job

Almost done taking down all the old roof

This section of the barn is finished

 Before (not the best Before picture but you 

can kind of see the old wood looked kind of 

dark and old, they were all rotted out and the 

sheet metal roof was all rusty and there were holes 

everywhere.

 After (new pearlings and new roof)    

                                           

 It was really cold that morning we started the project.  

There was frost on the ground.

"Keep the change! You filthy animal"

I know, I know this is the 3rd pig post already.  But I just want you guys to see the pigs "in action".  In my earlier post I mentioned how all pigs care about is food, right?  Oh they KNOW when chow time is, they know!  So this video is to prove that I was right about pigs.  I guess I don't blame the pigs for acting that way towards food.  I am kind of the same way when it comes to food (well, minus the drool).  I just get so excited when I see it.  Meal time is my favorite time of the day!  Pigs might be filthy animal but they are actually quite interesting to watch.

We feed the pigs food scraps AND pig feed.  The food 

scraps you see in this video is orange peels, egg shells, 

and onion peels.  They ate every single bit of that food scrap.

When you have pigs, there's no wasted food!

I guess animals in general are pretty interesting to watch.  One of our dogs LOVES chasing our cats.  This dog is on a mission, seriously!  Despite our constant effort to stop him from taunting the cats, he just would not quit!

Does anyone have any idea or advice on how to handle this situation with the dog?

This dog is relentless when it comes to taunting
these cats.  Poor cats!

Front porch sittin'

I love this picture so much!  This is my husband and one of our kids taking a break from working on the property and eating breakfast on the porch.

We had a never-ending list of projects to do when we first moved out here (now the list is not never-ending, it's ever growing).

The pig escaped

So one of the pigs got out of the pig pen last night.  I admit we don't know ANYTHING about pigs.  We spent about a total of probably 1 1/2 to 2 hours trying to catch the pig and chasing it around.  Man, that was exhausting!  Despite being fat and having short legs, these suckers can actually run!  We sure got a good workout out of this.  We tried luring it with food.  That didn't work.  We tried putting a rope around her neck, that didn't work.  We tried a few other things and it didn't work.  Finally we were able to corner and trap it in the cow chute and eventually got it back into the pig pen. 

This whole experience was actually quite funny.  I wish I would have recorded it but I was a little bit busy catching a pig and recording this whole incident was not on my mind at that moment!  But if you could picture the show Simple Life with Paris Hilton chasing after the pigs...ya that was us!

After doing some research, we learned that pigs at this age eat about 4-5 lbs of food A DAY!  That's a lot of food.  I can't even eat that much at an all-you-can-eat buffet during my prime years.  (and those of you who know me know I can eat!)

cow chute

The sucker was trapped in the cow chute and she was 

awaiting there until we figured out how to get her from 

the chute to the pig pen

The next day, the same pig escaped again! 2 more times!  Luckily we are pros in catching pigs at this point.  Instead of spending 2 hours catching it it only took us about 20 minutes each time to catch it and put it back into the pig pen.  And we fixed all the holes so it wouldn't escape again!

Pigs, from our experience, are pretty low maintenance, except when they get out of the pen!  But honestly you just need to keep them fed and watered, and make sure they have enough shades (pigs don't sweat so they need shades to keep them cool) and that's it!  Pigs eat just about ANYTHING.  Any food scraps, really.  We have given them banana peels, even egg shells.  I'm gonna try giving them jalapeños next and see how they like it.  Who knows, maybe they like spicy food, right?

Oh deer

So a couple weeks ago I was driving home at night with one of my kids.  I was probably about 1/4 of a mile from our home, then out of nowhere came a deer!  Well, while I don't believe grandma got run over by a reindeer, I sure got run over by a deer that night!  That was the first time in my whole entire life that I ever got hit by a deer.  I didn't know what to do and I kind of panicked, so I just kept driving, I didn't even stop.  If I had any redneck blood in me I probably would have gone back to "finish the job" and brought home some deer sausage...but I didn't. My car suffered relatively minor damages but it still required some repair done to it.

Poor little Bambi or Feline.  I just assume at this point that 

the deer survived the incident and she lives happily ever after...
maybe just with a broken leg or ribs or something