B-Day

From Laura -
We are leaving in a few minutes to pick up the meat. I put three coolers in the van and commenced waiting for Steve. Before we head off to the next phase of the Meat Journey I want to also enter into the record the conversation with a woman I will call Mrs. Schultz of GCW Schultz Farms as I was ordering the meat. I think she said that her son is running the farm now, but she handled the ordering process with me. I think things are different here, or at least with Schultz, than they were in Ontario where I got my schooling on ordering Beef. According to Mrs Schultz, if you are ordering a .25 cow you can't specify whether you get the front or the back end, which was an option available to my Ontario friends. (They recommended  the back end by the way, as I told them I had a deep and abiding love of pot roasts). Mrs. Schultz informed me that here you and another entity are splitting a half cow, and the parts are dealt like in a card game. She stated that all the cows are grass fed and finished with corn at the end to bulk them up. The beef contains no hormones or antibiotics, but they are not certified organic. She gave me rough idea of the "hand" I would end up with, which is a combination of steaks, roasts and about 40 lbs of hamburger. Now here is the interesting part. I told her I was excited about ordering and expressed surprise that it was so inexpensive per pound (Roughly $2.25: Cost of meat and processing divided by hanging weight) I will also admit to readers that I did not shop around. However, Mrs. Schultz told me that she had gotten some comments from other Beef producers that she was selling the meat too cheaply. Mrs. Schultz went on to say that in this economy she can't justify raising prices as she already is having some families who are canceling their beef orders as they can't shell out the roughly $400 in one shot that is called for to buy beef this way. In good conscience she can't see charging families substantially more that the meat packing and processing companies pay.  She also went on to say that there can be a substantial price difference depending on which community farmer's market you shop as it is generally accepted that people will pay more in Madison (particularly at the Saturday market) than they will at other markets. I am quite happily giving this woman my money. I realize she may be a great sales person, and I appreciate the effort.

Steve is now ready to go (approximately one hour and 10 minutes after he told me "I just need 10 minutes to finish this email".  In the time I have been 'waiting' I made a batch of waffles, scrambled  a mess of eggs with with chorizo and consumed them, cleaned the kitchen, took out the recycling, swept the driveway, took the aforementioned coolers out to the car, swept the living room and wrote this posting- but that's another blog, isn't it?