Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Grass-fed, happy cow

Several months ago, my brother John asked if I wanted to buy part of a cow, which his neighbor had been pasturing. Usually his friend will finish off the cow with grain the last two months, but I told John I was interested only if it was totally grass fed. John assured me that this was one "happy cow" as he has been watching it all summer. If you knew my brother, you would know how funny it was for him talking about happy cows.

When we divided the packages several weeks ago, John told us that the woman at the packing plant remarked several times how great the meat looked and she could tell the cow was not stressed. If stress affects our bodies, why wouldn't stress affect a cow's body? The cow continued to eat grass and was butchered within two hours of leaving the field. The packing lady said that cows stress out in 12 to 24 hours and it changes the taste of the meat. Here's John deciding how many steaks each of us get. And yes, the meat is very tasty. We don't usually eat much beef, but that has been changing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you heard of La Cense Beef? They are 100% grass-fed. Sounds like you have enough meat, but I just got some of theirs and it's delish. The have a free burgers promo going on, if you wanted to try them... www.lacensebeef.com

and I just got a sneak peak of an article in GOOD magazine...and funny enough it's titled Happy Meal - why pampering cows make tastier steaks.

Earth Girl said...

Thanks for the lead. This is the first time we bought a cow so I don't know how long it will take my boys to go through it! And that is so interesting about the GOOD article. My brother said that the cow would come trotting up to the fence whenever he went outside, hoping for a treat. So I think I got a pampered grass fed cow!

Anonymous said...

Oh I love it! We have a friend that raises grass fed beef, we just don't eat enough to justify it...but there is nothing like a good steak from a good cow!

Daisy said...

I don't eat very much meat - used to be a vegetarian. But, I started on fish a few years ago, then game, and now I've tried bison a few times. Even though I don't eat much meat, I think I'm going to go in on a quarter bison and store it in a chest freezer. I've come so far, maybe someday I'll try grass-fed beef!

ps Your boat is pretty awesome. I looked it up after seeing your mention of it in your profile. Thanks for sharing! I'm excited to explore more of your blog!