Beef Part 2 - What We Learned

aka. What NOT to do next time...

Or what TO do next time...

I think we are only doing one cow at a time,

one every 6 months.
(Buy 2 now, butcher 1 in a year and
buy a replacement, and then butcher the
other in 6 months, get a replacement,
rinse and repeat every 6 months after that...)
Two was a LOT of meat and kind of confusing.

We will split the cow into quarters.

We keep one and the other 3 are for sale.

Rod wants to get a chest
freezer and put it on our
flat bed trailer with a generator.

Jeff (the butcher) had everything

separated by cut of meat.

Our first mistake was randomly dumping

it all into coolers together instead

of keeping it separate.

When we get the freezer, he is going
to create dividers to section it into 4
sections.  Then at the butchers we can divvy it

up like dealing a deck of cards.

1 for you and 1 for you and 1 for you...

until that cut is done.

Then on to the next cut.

(We were trying to hurry since it was
late on a Friday evening, but that's kind
of Jeff's fault, he didn't let us know
it was ready until Friday afternoon,
we weren't expecting it until next week,
so we had to scramble,
making us later than we wanted, getting there.)

Having it already in a freezer will
take care of a bunch of headaches.
The biggest one, keeping it frozen!
And also storing it frozen for the folks
who can't make it right away to pick up.
(since they also didn't get much notice...)

Once we get the meat home,
all we have to do is weigh the meat in
each section and figure the price.
SO MUCH EASIER!

The other mistake we made was not

charging nearly enough.

Depending on the current meat prices,

the next cow needs to be priced out at

between $8 and $10 per pound.