We're often asked why we have specific slaughter months, why we don't sell unfrozen beef, sell "more recent" frozen meat, or why our subscriptions run from October to June.
Cattle, like most animals in the wild, spend their spring, summer and fall eating lots of fresh, nutritious grass to build up their fat reserves to make it through the long, harsh winter – when there is not as much to eat. As such, cattle are naturally at their fattiest (tastiest and tenderest) in the fall – just before the winter. This is why farms that are in tune with the natural cycles of the seasons and who grass feed (and grass finish) their cattle, slaughter their cattle in the fall, as we do at Grazing Days, and freeze that meat to sell (and eat!) at other times of the year. This is why, irrespective of when you buy our meats, they will always have been slaughtered between the previous September and December months.
For grain-fed (or 'grain-finished') animals, the bulk of what we find in grocery stores, the season of slaughter of the animals doesn't matter, as animals can be speed-fattened on grain and made unnaturally ready for slaughter at any time of the year – even during the winter and spring when animals in nature would be drawing on their fat reserves to survive.
Currently, the meat we have for sale comes from animals that were slaughtered between September and December of 2019. There is still a fair amount of meat available and we would love to empty our freezers before we start receiving the meat from the animals we are slaughtering this year. Place your order for Order by the Cut meats right here.
Cost Saving Tip:
As that meat becomes older than 12 months, we will clearly label it as such on our website and mark the price down by 20% in order to sell it more quickly. You can save money by keeping an eye on the collection called Hot Deals! (to cook into Hot Meals!) where you can find items that are older than 12 months.
Thanks for your continued support!
On the term "grass-finished" is used to qualify an animal that eats grass at the end of its life and is not 'grain finished' as many beef cattle are. Sometimes, animals are called "grass-fed" even when they are grain-finished, so we feel the need to specify that our animals are both grass-fed and grass-finished (or 100% grass-fed). We are also often compelled to specify that : our animals are pastured, that we practice regenerative agriculture, or mob grazing/rotational grazing/intensive rotational grazing in order to differenciate enterprises like ours that do the work of moving our herds to fresh pasture many times a day (between 2 and 8 times), which involves a lot of our time and a lot of our resources (namely land, temporary fencing and infrastructure to get water to the herd on all of our 370 acres, which is no small feat).
