It’s time to renew our farm membership!
We joined Monroe Organic Farm in 2008 – and apparently just in time. Members are grandfathered in at their original price when they joined, which means that for $200, we get a constant, weekly supply of more veggies than we can eat from mid June to late October. Now that I’ve learned how to can, and Owen is morphing into a grade-A vegetable consumer, this is a great thing.
But, before you call me a liar, let’s get to the meat! They’re offering sides and quarters of beef. For the sake of this particular rant, I’m going to assume that our family of two-and-a-half omnivores will not be able to eat two-hundred pounds of beef in a year, and so a side of beef will not be discussed further. But a quarter of grass-fed beef? I’m tempted, even though in order to facilitate this, I’d have to find a butcher, and buy a bigger freezer.
It’s tough to calculate value on this, since cattle vary in size and weight, and you’re not necessarily going to get formulaic X strip steaks, N filets, etcetera. But if I assume that a quarter of beef yields a meager ninety pounds of deliciousness at a cost of $450, which I am not sure covers butchering. That’s $5 a pound without butchering. Let’s say that the butchering fee is $300 – which seems about average in my initial research – ninety pounds of healthy, grass-fed beef is $8.33 a pound, and that includes ground meat, roasts, steaks, tips – all of it. That isn’t a bad deal, other than it’s more than the two dollars a pound we used to pay for pre-ground meat. Grass-fed beef at King Sooper’s (which is Kroger) is about eighteen dollars a pound for strip steaks – it seems like you make out pretty well in this deal.
They also do hogs, or as is the custom today, they are called “free range pork”. This pork is more marbled and has a lot more fat – and hence more flavor. It’s only $250 for a half hog – a half hog yields twenty pounds of pork loin, a five pound pork butt, ten pounds of bacon, sixteen pounds of ham, four pounds of spare ribs, and fifteen pounds of pork sausage. That’s $3.50 a pound, pre butchering costs. That would support one hell of a barbecue!
The foodie and hippie in me wants to do it, but this is all ignoring the fact that we don’t have a freezer that can store 160 pounds of meat. Yet. I feel like I should start saving up.
