Adventures in Beef

It's the time of year when our beef order is ready. I had a grand adventure in squeezing him into the freezer. It involved wrestling the water jugs I had frozen in the bottom of the freezer out. I'd done this to help the chest freezer be more efficient and provide a backup should we lose power. Lesson of the day, water jugs with ample space going in will be a MUCH tighter fit once frozen, and significantly harder getting out.  After taking a poll,  the consensus is that it does in fact count as cardio.

Here's our haul

We got 1/4 cow. Our portion was 139 pounds hanging weight. This was the total before processing. This year, I was partnered with someone who opted for more steaks than roasts. I also chose to have most of our ground beef frozen in packs of 8 - 1/4 pound patties. I elected to get bones for broth, big brown bag shown in back. I'd say we ended up with at least 20 lbs there. Most people don't take what they consider "off" cuts, leaving them as our gain.

Our final tally:
• 4 - 1.5 lb packs ground beef
• 8 packs ground beef patties
Roasts
• 1 beef tongue
• 1 eye of round
• 4 sirloin variety
• 2 arm roasts
• 8 packs stew meat
Bone-in cuts -- these are between a steak and a roast and do best in the crockpot
• 6 plate
• 3 shank
• 3 short ribs
Steaks -- ours are cut 1/2 inch thick with 2 per pack. Some will be grilled for a treat. Others will be sliced into strips and used for things like taco and sandwiches
• 3 cube steak
• 6 NY strip
• 2 flank
• 4 sirloin
• 6 chuck eye
Misc items
• 5 portions beef liver -- my mom loves these, so we gave them to her
• 1 oxtail
• broth bones

By getting as much as we could out of our portion, it worked out to be just over $3.50/pound. I can find beef on sale for less, but not at the quality I'm getting. The cows are farm raised, on pasture and hay with a bit of grain over the winter, and well-cared for. We still had 22 packs left from last year. All together, this will be enough beef for us to have it once a week or so over the next year for our family of seven. I won't buy much more beef, if any, beyond this.