Beef

Whew!

Jeff (the butcher) called Friday afternoon

and let us know the meat was ready to 

be picked up.

There went our plans to take Kyle to

Fiesta Azteca (his fave restaurant)

for his birthday.

Instead we had to dash over to Brock's

and gather up every cooler we could find,

load them up into our horse trailer,

and then drive down to Vero.

We didn't get there until nearly 8 pm.

(The original plan was to drag his

refrigerated trailer down there, but

when Rod called and said the meat was

ready, Brock mentioned he wasn't sure

the lights worked.

ARGH!  We just talked to him about

the trailer LAST NIGHT and he didn't

say anything about the lights!!!!)

Life is all about Plan B.

At least mine is.

Since we were trying to hurry

(what with it being 30 minutes to sundown,

and Friday evening...)

we just dumped each tray of meat randomly

into the coolers we had.

Then we stopped at Steak N Shake for

a quick burger and headed home.

Happy Birthday Kyle! 

(LOL)

We are taking him to Fiesta Monday night.

Anyhow.

When we got to the house, we took the 

trailer over to Brock's to put the meat

into his giant walk-in freezer room.

Our dogs were still our in their pen

and barking their heads off.

(Shadow HATES the dark.)

I left the guys to unload the meat

(since I'm basically in the way anyway)

and I walked back to our place to take

care of the dogs.

Turns out the freezer room was locked

and Kyle couldn't remember the lock combination.

(It hasn't been locked in a LONG time)

So they took the meat over to the barn

and loaded it all into the cooler trailer instead.

They walked home, leaving the truck and horse trailer

over there.

Off to bed!  LONG day!

Saturday morning dawned, Rod fed the animals

and then we all headed next door to get the meat.

We unloaded it all into our garage

(with the A/C on in the house, the door open,

and a giant, LOUD, fan in the doorway).

The first thing we did was divide the meat up

by the different cuts.  We put labels on the lids

of the smaller coolers and separated it all out.

The guys separated and I kept count of each package.

Once we had that all done,

we started weighing the meat.

Jeff told us we had 1310 pounds hanging weight.

So we divided 1310 by 17 (the number of shares

we were working with) (assuming each share 

was 75# - some people wanted 150#,

some only wanted 75# and 1 guy wanted 50.)

and figured each "share" should get the following:

4 roasts

5 steaks

8 burgers (1.5# each)

1 pkg stew meat

1 pkg short ribs

1 pkg soup bones

Then we weighed it.

And lost our minds.

Turns out 1310# hanging weight is the

STARTING weight BEFORE they hang

it and allow it to age (and dry) (and shrink)

for 21 days.

So we actually ended up with a LOT less meat

than what we thought.

We sold 850# of meat.

We had a total of about 725#.

(I don't have an exact total because

we immediately pulled the 4 flank, 4 skirt,

2 hearts, and 4 livers out for us...

so those didn't ever make it to the scales.)

ACK!!!!!!!

You don't want to know all the mental 

gymnastics my poor brain tried to go through.

I'm not a math person.

It wasn't pretty.

I eventually made the executive decision

that we would stick with the "share" idea,

so those who ordered 150# would get 2 shares.

Those that wanted 75# would get 1 share.

The man who only wanted 50# showed up

first, LONG before I was confident I knew

what I was doing, so we fixed him a share and 

then fleshed it out to make 50# out of our shares.

(He had already made out his check...)

From that point on, we just pulled the meat

necessary to make a share,

put it all in a plastic trash bag,

weighed it and charged the agreed upon

$6/pound and wrote up a ticket.

NOBODY got the amount of meat 

they were hoping for.

(including us...)

but nobody was unhappy.

The final person picked up their meat

about 4:30(ish) which gave us a little

time to shower, relax, and run to the 

grocery store.

I needed to buy some meat.

(hahahahahahahaha - just kidding...)

We had invited Kyle's friends, Carly and Brandon

over for dinner, I needed some sides.

Yes, normally I would whip something up,

but my brain was FRIED!

They came by about 7:00 and Kyle

grilled up two giant "bone in sirloin steaks".

Oh My Stinking Heck!

I have paid upwards of $25.00 for a steak 

at a restaurant.

I have NEVER eaten a steak this good!

It was butter knife tender.

Flavorful.

AMAZING!

We learned lots of things,

(tomorrow's post)

we will do lots of things differently

(hopefully BETTER)

and we will DEFINITELY charge more.

But I'm excited to do this again!!!!!!