2024 Bulk Beef Orders
posted on
July 30, 2024
Bulk Beef Pre-Orders, 2024
It is closing in on the last few weeks for our bulk beef orders for the 2024 season. We currently have lots of availability for quarters, halves, and wholes from our steer herd that is finishing up on some of the nicest pastures we've seen in 3 years.
You can place a pre-order on our website, putting in a deposit to hold your ownership of one of our steers prior to processing.
How We Raise Our Cattle
Our steers are raised in a low stress environment where we focus on gentle, calm, low stress handling. We move them using flags or step-in posts to create motions that guide them where need them to go. We regularly walk around with them, giving them ear and head scratches, and on occasion brush them down. They love any grooming and skritchies we can give them! We use calm and low toned voices, and work to keep them content. During the winter we give them access to wind breaks, shelters, and straw to bed down on. During the summer and maintaining as natural a diet and lifestyle as possible.
We move them regularly to fresh pasture during the spring, summer, and autumn. During the winter we bale graze using premium quality hay harvested from our fields, high quality bought in hay when available, and if required greenfeed (usually barley) as a supplement for cold weather calories. They are fed a standard mineral ration for high legume forage, usually in a molasses and garlic mixture to minimize flies and maximize mineral uptake.
Our steers are not given hormone supplements, which means they take extra time to finish growing. From calving to finishing we give them three summers on the pasture, taking them to butcher at between 26 and 28 months of age. We give them antibiotics and medications only as an intervention for their health as advised by our veterinarian team. During the summer months we occasionally give our animals fly spray applied on their backs as a prevention for insect borne diseases like pink-eye and to reduce animal stress from pesky flies buzzing about their faces.
We participate in the Alberta On Farm Slaughter program which allows us to do their final moments of life on the farm without the stress and fear that comes from trucking an animal. Each of our animals is prayed over prior to their end of life. They are moved into a familiar setting in our coral, and are killed on farm by a professional who is licensed to do the hard job of taking an animal life. They are killed with a rifle shot to the head, which causes brain death instantly in the most painless and quick manner possible. They are then processed at a licensed butcher shop, hung to dry age, cut, wrapped, and frozen.
You can buy our ethical beef today on our store.
Stewardship and Climate Change
Our family chose to take up farming as a vocation in no small part due to our deep concern over climate change and stewarding the environment for future generations. At the heart of all of our farm enterprises is an ongoing effort to rebuild a complex farm ecosystem that generates food, sequesters atmospheric carbon, presents an aesthetically pleasing landscape, and allows homes for wildlife species. All of the products we sell off our farm have a low to negative carbon footprint. Including our beef. Over the last 10 years we have, on average, sequestered 1000 metric tons of carbon into our soil each year after deducting the carbon emissions of our operations and livestock. How do we know this? We regularly test our soil for minerology, biology, organic matter, and carbon.
The highest carbon output on our farm is currently delivery, not our cattle. One of the ways we have reduced our cattle carbon footprint is to keep our herds to the size our land can support, focus on buying local steers from a neighbour within 10 minutes of our farm, and going to great efforts to manage our pastures in a way that builds soil organic matter.
We are working with a number of studies to verify the longevity of soil carbon, as well as regularly seeking high degrees of validation for our soil carbon testing and verification. When you get animal based proteins from our farm, be it eggs, chicken, duck, pork, or beef you can feel confident that your food choices are helping mitigate climate change and contribute to a better future for our descendants.
Eating food that helps reduce climate change, what could feel better?
Quarters, Halves, Wholes
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading!
One of the reasons we sell in bulk is related to the Alberta On Farm Slaughter program. Under this program you are buying a share of the LIVE animal. We, as the farmers, raise that animal for you and broker the butchering and processing. The nature of the program only allows us to have a maximum of 4 people co-owning a single cow - meaning we are only dealing in quarters, halves, and whole animals.
You can place a deposit for your beef share any time during the year.
