Eight Acres

Our butcher is coming next week and he will do two beasts this time, so we are getting organised.  I've written a lot about butchering over the years and this will be our eighth and ninth animals killed on our own property.  On that last day, they will know no fear, maybe some curiosity (who is that strange man pointing that stick at me?) and it will be a quick end to a fairly peaceful and comfortable life.  Its not such an easy day for us, it can be quite emotional seeing the death of an animal that you've raised from a young age, not to mention physically draining putting all the meat away, but its all worth it to get the best quality meat possible. One of the things we are doing this year is make our own sausage mix.  If you want to know more about home butchering in general, here are all the posts I've written in the past: Homekill meat - some tips for beginners Home butcher vs meatworks Homekill butchering Homekill butcher day - tips and tricks ...

Our home butcher doesn't like to age our beef for more than 3-4 days as he has quite a complicated system to rotate his mobile cool-rooms to each customer.  If he let us hang our meat for longer he would need more cool-rooms and would have to put his prices up, so we don't mind fitting in with his schedule.  This does mean that our beef is not as tender as if it was hung for longer.  Some people will hang a beef carcass for up to two weeks! wet aged rib fillet  We have found a couple of different strategies to still get tender meat.  Both involve what is known as "wet aging" the meat.  Wet aging means aging the meat in vacuum packs after it is butchered, as opposed to dry aging which is hanging the meat in a cool-room before its butchered ( read more about it here ).  This is a technique that has only been possible since plastic bags and vacuum sealers have been available.  The first few times we had beasts killed we wet aged all the good s...

I usually split homekill beef into two distinct days.  Slaughter day is stressful and emotional.  There is the worry of getting the animal into the appropriate yard, the butcher turning up on time, seeing the animal killed and quartered, its a hard day.  Then a few days later (depending how long the carcass is hung for, this could be up to a week or more) you get butcher day.  Butcher day is hard work, but its not stressful if you are well prepared and you have a good butcher.  Here's a few tips and tricks for getting all that meat safely into the freezer. Turn on your freezers and fridges the night before Just make sure everything is working in case you are going to need to urgently borrow or purchase additional facilities! Get a good vacuum packer It really pays not to be stingy when buying a vacuum packer.  Sure you will only use it a few days a year, but when you do use it, you need it to work ALL day until that meat is packed.  We us...

Every year for the last seven years we have raised and killed a steer for beef.  I know this because I can count off the names of each of them, Trevor, Murray, Bruce, Bratwurst, Frankfurter, Romeo... and this year it was Monty's turn, but he was a bit small (being a jersey cross dexter), so we also killed a young heifer recently acquired (we named her Fatty, because she had been in the good paddock, she's a mini hereford cross lowline maybe).  Our butcher doesn't like to come out for animals under 200 kg, so we wanted to be sure it was worth his travel. Little Fatty heifer Monty the jersey/dexter steer - a bit small maybe Having two animals killed on the same day was a challenge and took some planning.  First we had to dig an extra large hole for the inedible bits (head, hooves and guts).  And then we had to figure out how to keep the second animal calm while the butcher was working on the first one.  He likes to shoot one, process it, and then do th...

Every year around winter-time we have one of our home-raised steers butchered at our property by a mobile a butcher.  We fill the freezer with meat, bones and tallow, and we sometimes even keep the hide for tanning.  It is very important to us that, as far as possible, we use the whole beast.  If this is something that you would to do too, here are a list of posts that you may find useful. Butcher day is Cheryl's favourite Butchering tips and tricks Home butcher vs meatworks The pros and cons of using a home butcher compared to sending a steer to an abattoir.  We did send our first steer to be processed, but all the rest have been done at home.  The main problem for us was finding a good butcher, but loading the animal on the truck and preparing all the paperwork was a real pain.  Its much easier for us to have them butchered at home (and I think its better for the animal too) if you can find someone who will do it. Homekill meat - some tip...

There are many reasons to consider raising chickens for meat. The fact that they are small means that they are very easy to butcher, with no specialty equipment required. Even on a small property, you can raise a few chickens, and even better, you can either butcher them all at once, or just do a few at a time as you need them, which is far more flexible than larger animals like beef cattle, which can fill several freezers in one go. one of our cross-bred roosters nearly ready for butchering   If you do decide to raise chickens for meat, you have the option of buying “meat chickens”, or simply butchering chickens from your flock. For the second option, it is better if you can keep a dual purpose breed, so that you have larger hens that also lay well. While culling the old hens will provide you with a few meals , the meat can be a little tough. Ideally you would hatch and raise chicks from your flock and cull the roosters at 4-6 months old. Of course this assumes that...

Romeo was our fifth steer to be butchered on our property by a mobile butcher.  I've written posts before about tips for homekill butchering  and last year I calculated the value of the meat and determined that it was worth raising steers for meat.  It may sound strange, but this was the first year that we really thought about meat quality rather than meat quantity!    Here's what we found out: Cheryl checks the meat quality Prior to slaughter Ensure the animal has good nutrition and access to clean water in the lead up to slaughter.  Green grass is ideal (but not always easy to organise).  ( More information here ) Handle the animal gently with minimum of stress.  If you need to move it to another paddock for the butcher, move it a few days early, with at least one companion, so that the animal is not stressed.   Try to find an experienced butcher.  In some areas there's not much choice, but if you can, find out which butche...

Before we had our last steer butchered I went to great trouble to source an organic sausage mix for the butcher to use.  Ideally I would just make a sausage mix, but there are a few problems with this when you do a homekill beef steer. Yum :) Firstly the butcher doesn't have all morning to fiddle around with bespoke sausage recipes.  He likes to just tip in a premix, add the water and churn  out the sausages.  Secondly, when you have 50 kg of sausages to make, you get ONE chance to get your special sausage recipe to work, otherwise, you ruin all those sausages.  So while I'm all for experimenting with my own sausage recipes, butcher day is not the time to do so!  The alternative to buying a sausage premix was to buy a sausage maker and make our own after the butcher had packed up.  Have you seen a butcher making sausages though?  That is a SKILL that you need to work at.  We have attempted to make sausages before with our auger j...

We got another steer killed a few weeks ago now, and I weighed all the cuts of meat so that I could work out the approximate value of the meat and compare the cost of raising a steer to the cost of buying all the meat from the butcher.   My article has been published on the Farm Style website , which is a FREE online community for small and hobby farmers to learn everything about farming and country living . If you want to know more, head over the Farm Style to  read the the article  and then come back here for comments and questions.  Do you raise steers?  Is it worth it?  Do you have any questions? More about our home butchering here .      

When we have a steer butchered we like to try to use every part of the animal.  We eat the meat and some of the offal, the dogs get the bones and the rest of the offal, we render the tallow and tan the hide.  The only waste is the head, which we bury, so at least it enriches the soil. Tanning the hid is a big job.  This our third hide, so we are getting better at the process every time.  I posted some detailed instructions ( here and here ) when we did the last hide this time last year.  The most important thing to get the hide spread out somewhere safe and dry and covered in salt as soon as possible after the animal is skinned.  If the hide is dried out sufficiently it will last for months, and we have found that it actually improves as it dries.  This hide was in the shed since August, so it was about 5 months, and it was very stiff and dry, which made it easier to work. In the past we have fleshed the hide using a scraping tool, which took seve...