Beef, It’s What’s For Dinner

We have a bumper sticker on one of our pick-up trucks that says, “Eat Beef – The West Wasn’t Won on Salads”.  And, a friend that says, “I eat what eats salad”.  We are “modern” beef producers that eat a well-balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, chicken, fish, and beef.  We’re not big pork consumers, it tastes good, it just upsets our stomachs.

This week culminated in the delivery of Bridle Bit Beef to our many wonderful customers.  It’s a long process producing good beef.  We have calves on the ground that are now almost a year old and last year we purchased calves that were a year old; thus the term, “yearlings”.  Some of those yearlings stayed with us for another year before being ready for harvest.  Others of them are still with us and will be harvested in July.

There are differences between grain finished and grass finished beef.  A meat scientist can break it down for you very scientifically.  As a producer, what we know is that grass finished steers need to stay around a little longer than their grain finished counterparts.  In our operation both types of cattle are fed on grass pastures and grass hay all of their lives.  We just add a grain ration to the grain finished cattle to add energy and boost the development of intramuscular fat or marbling.  By doing that, the cattle develop faster and finish sooner.  Grass finished cattle overwinter on grass hay, pasture, and a protein supplement and then finish out on good Spring grasses.  We’ve found that to work well in our setting. 

Depending on birth dates, both of these types of steers are very close to two years old.  Some may be a little younger, some a little older, but all will be less than thirty months old at harvest.  Our steers go to small independent processors.  We don’t have the volume to sell to the big packers and so we’ve tried to develop a niche that the small processor helps us fit into.  We like a processor that will harvest, hang, and break our steers.  We especially seek out processors that will hang the sides for at least 14 days.  That hang time does wonders for the flavor of our beef.

The big guys do what the big guys do to feed the world.  They’ve strived for efficiency and they’ve done it.  American agriculture is an amazing group of individuals, corporations, and cooperatives producing an amazing amount of food for a hungry world.  They can’t do what we do and produce the volume of wholesome, safe food that they produce.  We can’t do what they do.  We’re not efficient enough.  We do what we do to give our customers the ability to choose what we think is a more flavorful beef eating experience.  We thank them for choosing Bridle Bit Beef!