Why You Should Buy a Beef Share
There are many benefits to buying your beef locally and in bulk. Let’s dive right in to why it might be a great choice for you, your family and friends!
What is a Beef Share?
When you purchase a share from a farm, you are actually purchasing a percentage of one animal - a quarter, half or whole. In exchange for that investment, you typically get the following perks:
Wholesale pricing - You pay for fresh, locally-raised meat at a price less than retail.
Ability to customize - You can choose how you want your meat cut and prepared.
Variety & Options - You get high-end cuts of steaks for special dinners and also meat you can use in daily cooking, such as ground beef. PLUS you can support “nose to tail” processing where you can utilize not only the animals meat, but their organs and bones, which are all included in the cost for your share. Bones and organs are great for soups, broth, your canine and feline friends, and other recipes.
Connection to your food - This is the biggest perk for me! I personally find so much value in knowing where my food comes from - how it was raised, where it was processed and who it came from gives me the confidence that I’m choosing an option that is best for my family. Not only that, many local farms have open door policies where you can actually visit and see where your meat comes from for a true farm to table experience.
Other benefits to purchasing a share include:
Consistency in product - The beef will last you 6 + months at a time and you can expect a consistent flavor, size of cuts and packaging. Not only does this help with recipes but it also guarantees to meet your tastebuds expectations. Did you know that when you purchase ground beef at the store (local grocery or online) you are getting beef from multiple individual cattle mixed together?
Sustainability - By purchasing a share, you are not only setting your family up with a consistent supply of meat, but you are also supporting a local farm and reducing the environmental impact of food processing, transportation and storage. Many local farms employ regenerative practices when raising their livestock and by purchasing from them, you’re also supporting efforts to improve soil and watershed health.
Your Health - All beef is an excellent source of protein, vitamins and minerals and I encourage you to eat the best quality beef you can afford (see note at the end of this post). Health trends either glamorize or condemn certain aspects of how beef are raised, and there are mark ups in pricing for these claims that are mainly profit-driven. This topic is vast and complicated, and is not something I’ll get into in this post. But it’s worth mentioning for your consideration when you look at your options. My advice? Trust your farmer, in fact, know your farmer and decide for yourself if you believe their product is right for you. Don’t rely on the social media influencer, the mainstream media reports, or the idealistic marketing claims to make a decision for you. There is almost always a hidden agenda.
The bottom line is that by purchasing a beef share, you support farmers who are committed to raising healthy and happy animals, which in turn, provides you with a product you can trust.
So now if I have you seriously considering a beef share, what else should you know?
A beef share is great to split with friends! Prior to owning the farm, we typically shared a quarter or half beef with friends. Whether it was splitting it 50/50 with neighbors, or getting a few friends to go in on a share together, it made the upfront investment more manageable, as well as reduced the amount of storage space needed.
Storage space - You’ll need at least a small deep freeze for a quarter cow share - but if you share with friends, you can get away with less space.
Pricing - Beef shares are typically priced based on something called “hanging weight”. This is different from price/lb at the store. Hanging weight refers to the total weight of the animal after slaughter, but before cutting. It includes the weight of the meat and the bones, and does not exactly correlate to the exact amount of edible meat you get. The amount of meat and total pounds you will receive from your hanging weight share will depend on how you choose to customize.
Plan ahead! Most farms will need at least 4-6 weeks notice for a bulk order, sometimes much more than that. Shares can become very limited during certain seasons and also when retail prices go up, many more people look into purchasing bulk.
The convenience is worth it. One of my favorite perks about a beef share is having meat readily available. It’s just one more thing off your grocery list and let me tell you, its so easy to get used to having the benefit of having your beef on hand for whatever recipe your planning to whip up.
So what do you think? Are you ready to try a beef share?
A note about nutrition: While I believe that eating locally is better in many ways, the actual breakdown of nutrients in conventionally-raised, versus grass-fed, versus grass-finished beef has yet to be proven to be significant. So if you can’t always shop local, or shop the highest quality, it does not mean you should simply cut it out completely from your diet. Be wary of claims that state “All XX is bad” and “All XX is better”. It doesn’t work that way, and I’ve realized this first-hand in just my first year of farming.
Something I learned: Nearly all beef is grass-fed for a period of time and the finishing process (on grass, in a feedlot, at a factory level farm) is a farm-specific decision based on the size of the farm, their location (ex: is there grass year round), breed of cattle (nutritional needs) and end-product (flavor, fat content, etc). A lot of the 100% grass-finished beef sold in the US comes from other countries, such as Australia (for an example, look up Butcher Box). Furthermore, there are many loopholes in our system that allow labeling of beef born and raised outside the country to be labeled as “American beef”. This is just one example of how our food system unfortunately is unclear with it’s marketing and you may not even think to read between the lines. That said, I am not saying there is anything wrong with this beef, but if sustainability is important to you, it’s worth considering the environmental impact of sourcing beef from other countries instead of locally.