Here’s an interesting article about buying meat in bulk, including practical tips for those of you who might be interested but don’t know where to start.
The Seminal » Food Sunday: I’ll take half a cow and ten chickens please.
We’re lucky here in Montana — not only is it pretty easy to find a rancher who will sell you part of an animal, we’re one of the few states that still has small local slaughterhouses. Big Ag has managed to kill them in most other states — I have a friend in Colorado who would raise cattle for her family, except that she has to send them to Kansas to be slaughtered, and they have to go to a big feedlot. Here we’ve got some great local slaughter and butcher operations, in part because of out-of-state big game hunters who need their meat cut and packed. We bought a pig in August, and have half a lamb coming sometime this week. We’ve also got elk from one of Chucks’ friends, and another friend of his gave us several big roasts cut from their own cattle. You need a freezer, but if there’s one foodie thing I can absolutely recommend, it’s buying meat from a source you know. You keep an animal out of the industrial food system, you get nice clean delicious meat and generally save some money over what buying organic meat costs you in the grocery store.
