Premium Grass-fed 1/2 Beef

Grass-Fed Half Cow For Sale 

Our beef is grass fattened. That is a very important distinction from grass-fed. Grass-fed literally just means that the animal ate grass. It tells you *nothing* about the quality of the grass that animal ate, nor whether they were properly "finished" (aka fat) when they were harvested. This very important distinction is why "grass-fed" often and rightly gets a bad wrap. Some it is frankly not good. 

We are very careful to *fatten* our animals on high-quality forage with sufficient sugars to produce a "finish" that while not the same as a grain-fed fat, is actually superior. Grass fat is different fat. It's not artery-clogging fat. It has a different melting point even! It's literally a whole different animal for your body. And that fat is really important for flavor and for tenderness. (What most people call tenderness is actually interstitial fat that provides moisture during the cooking process...)

Technically, tenderness comes from the fineness of the fibers, and that is where our breed selection comes in. Jerseys have the finest meat fibers in the world (along with the NZ Red Devon)! The only reason Jerseys aren't conventionally raised for beef is because they do not produce a lot of beef per animal (so the farmer doesn't get paid well at the sale barn — but one of our founding principles is no sale barn, EVER!). Well-finished Jersey beef is quite excellent.

By buying this beef, you are participating in a new kind of dual-purpose dairy of old, where the dairy cows are allowed to be mothers and raise their own young, even as they produce milk for us, as well. It's a revolutionary system, and we are grateful you are willing to participate in it by buying this outstanding, marbled beef. 

After you order, you will be sent a cut sheet to choose your desired steak thickness, ground and roast amounts, etc. We will help you fill it out. You are getting approximately 168lbs of finished product, depending on how *you* cut it. (If you don't get bones, then your total poundage will go down, but the price doesn't, because you are paying for 1/2 of an animal, and that animal had to stand up and walk... And remember, this isn't a brickyard, and these are living beings. Not every one is the same size.) We will arrange a pickup date that works for you. You will NOT be paying for the processing costs listed on the cut sheet!

You are buying a true half of an animal, processed and packaged into retail cuts. You will be paying $10/lb for the hanging weight of the animal (what is left after hide, blood, guts, head, feet, etc. are off), cut to your specifications. The price includes bones and organs. If you don't want the organs or bones, we will happily accept them back (your loss because bone stock will change.your.life!), but that doesn't change the price per pound of your product because you are literally buying 1/2 of an animal, just custom cut. You will receive an email with a custom cut sheet, and we will help you fill it out. You will NOT pay the processing costs, we do that for you. 

You will be charged immediately $1500 for a deposit. You will pay the balance at pickup, or we will charge your card on file, up to you. Seventy-five percent is the average cut-out weight of one of our animals if you cut it into standard bone-in cuts and kept the soup bones and the organs. That means you will get APPROXIMATELY 75% of the hanging weight back in packaged cuts, if you do a pretty standard cut sheet and keep the bones and organs and fat to render, etc. We have to do it this way because you are buying 1/2 an animal, and that means we charge you a "rail" price, as that is what this way of processing requires by law. 

If you are asking, "what happens to the remaining 25% of the hanging weight and why doesn't it end up in my packages?" The answer is that it's mostly water that evaporates as the carcass "hangs" to tenderize and make cutting it into neat steaks possible. If you feel like that number isn't fair, well, it's the reality of buying a whole animal. FWIW, we lose an even greater percentage when the animal leaves the farm as a whole animal and we don't get the hide, head, feet, blood, guts back. A full 45% of what our farm and efforts raised leaves the farm and doesn't come back, even as compost. It's why your support of us will one day lead to our building our own processing facility so we can keep everything the land gave and give what isn't edible back to the land. 

We will happily accept the soup bones and organs back as a donation to the livestock guardian dogs (they will thank you!!) but you have to buy all of those things as one package because you are not buying meat, but half of an animal that we are processing for you as a service. Part of our service to you is that we pick it up from the processor and pay processing costs. We do that for free, as part of our customer service. So you will not pay the processing costs listed on the cut sheet. We pay those. If you want to pick it up from the processor in Asheboro, you may. Otherwise, we will have it ready for you at our on-farm store. 

YOU MUST TYPE IN ORDER NOTES IN YOUR CART BEFORE CHECKOUT IF YOU WANT BONES, ORGANS AND/OR FAT INCLUDED IN YOUR ORDER. IE: INCLUDE BONES, ORGANS, AND FAT OR INCLUDE BONES AND FAT, NO ORGANS, ETC. IF YOU DO NOT TELL US, IT WILL NOT BE INCLUDED AND DONATED BACK TO THE FARM.

*all deposits are non-refundable*