grass fed beef

Beef Roasts - Not Just for Cozy Winter Meals

I know beef roasts tend to be known as a classic Winter meal.

Pot roast and potatoes is definitely something we love on a cold Winter evening, but beef roasts are one of my favorite summer meals too.

We tried something new this week and made a super, super simple version of beef barbacoa in the crockpot, added some fun fillers, and it made the BEST burritos!

In summertime we do quite a bit of grilling, but the crockpot is another great way to keep the house a little cooler while still eating an amazing homecooked meal.

Here’s my quick and easy version of summer beef barbacoa burritos!

Ingredients:

  • 1 Grass Powered beef shoulder roast

  • 1 can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

  • 2 cups beef broth

  • 4-6 small potatoes

  • 1 onion

  • Tortillas, rice, quinoa or tortilla chips to create a wrap or bowl

  • favorite toppings - tomatoes, cilantro, radishes, avocado, red onion, sour cream, cheese

Steps:

  1. Add your thawed beef roast to the crockpot with the broth and can of chipotle peppers. If you have a little extra time, add more flavor by seasoning the roast with salt, pepper and a touch of cumin, then brown the roast on all sides in a cast iron skillet. I didn’t brown the roast before adding it to the crockpot, so it’s not absolutely necessary!

  2. Cook the roast on low for 6-8 hours until it shreds easily.

  3. Cut the potatoes into approximately 1 inch cubes and slice the onion into thin wedges. Add enough olive oil to coat lightly and season. I used salt, pepper, and chili seasoning - but smoked paprika, a bit of chili powder, or garlic powder, would all be great options too!

  4. Roast the potatoes at 425 degrees approximately 40 minutes or until they are soft inside and lightly browned.

  5. Prepare your favorite toppings

  6. You’re ready to eat! Layer on beef, potatoes and onions, and all your other toppings and enjoy a locally raised, nutrient dense meal!

If there are leftovers, these will make delicious sheet pan nachos for lunch or dinner the next day :)

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Every Day is Earth Day for Farmers

I was feeling a little guilty that I hadn't planned some sort of special Earth Day service project as a family today, but I realized that we live Earth Day every single day around here.

While spending Earth Day picking up trash or planting trees definitely makes a positive difference in the health of our planet and are for sure important, raising animals the way we do and buying local foods on a regular basis makes a HUGE impact as well!

Here are a few ways buying local, and especially purchasing locally raised grass-fed and pastured meats helps create a healthier planet:

  • Rotationally grazed pastures can sequester as much carbon as forest land. Sometimes you’ll hear that livestock negatively impact the atmosphere with their ahem “toots”, but the reality is that properly managed livestock raised on forage have a POSITIVE impact on the environment by helping to keep the carbon sequestration cycle of grasses moving.

  • Pasture land protects fresh water resources by reducing erosion of topsoil. Bare soil is extremely prone to water or wind erosion when it isn’t continually covered with growing plants. Topsoil is absolutely essential to growing any crops, whether it’s grain crops or pasture forages. It’s estimated that if we continue to lose topsoil at the same rate we have been for the last 10 years that we will not have enough topsoil to feed ourselves in only 60 years. We have to make changes now, there’s no more time to wait.

  • Buying local decreases the amount of fossil fuels needed to transport food products around the world. There is no reason to ship in beef from South America when we have plenty being raised in our own communities. The amount of travelling food does before it hits grocery store shelves is absolutely crazy.

  • When you purchase locally it encourages the continued growth of small grass-based farms like ours. As demand increases for grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, more and more farms like ours will begin popping up to meet the demand. We would love to see many more farms like ours feeding our communities!

Thank you for being part of our mission to not only feed our community high quality food, but also to leave our little piece of the world even healthier than we found it.

Happy Earth Day!

~ Dana

Our 5th Year of Farming - Why This is Actually a Really Big Deal

It’s finally feeling like Winter on the farm!

Eliza and I lit a fire in the woodstove over the weekend. It takes awhile to get the whole house warmed up, but it's nice and toasty now. Wood heat is the best! It's actually been so warm most of the winter we haven't burned much wood because it gets too hot in here. Plus we ran out of hours to cut enough firewood last year, so we've been conserving until we have a day to go cut and split more.

In other news, our family is entering our 5th year of farming!! I know that doesn't really sound like a big deal, but the fact that we've survived this long is actually pretty huge.

80% of new farms don't make it past the 2 year mark, and only 2% survive to year 5. Isn't that an absolutely heartbreaking statistic?! Thankfully we are part of the 2% that have stuck it out and managed to not bankrupt ourselves yet.

Just in the short time we've been farming I've watched multiple farms around us go out of business or massively scale back for a variety of reasons. Even though the circumstances were all very different for each farm and family, one of the big underlying reasons for changing direction is that it is extremely hard to make enough money to survive without working another job off the farm. Especially with a family to support. It can also be really, really stressful trying to do all the things.

As farmers we are all so incredibly passionate about providing the highest quality foods for our communities, raising our animals humanely, being good stewards of the land and resources, supporting our local economy, building relationships and community that our culture is very much lacking right now, and all the other reasons we are called to this work. We can do so many great things as a small family farm, but at the end of the day no farm is truly sustainable unless it is financially sustainable for the families operating it.

Our food system is in a precarious spot right now. The average age of the American farmer is 55+, which means a huge percentage of our farmland will be changing hands in the very near future. If small farms like ours can't afford to purchase and operate the land (typical cost of farmland in our area is $5,000+ per acre just to give you an idea), it will end up in the hands of developers or investors. Increasingly these are foreign investors.

Our communities need more family farms taking care of the land, but they need to be profitable and financially sustainable family farms so they can stick around for awhile, thrive, save farmland from development, protect and grow safe local food systems, become leaders and mentors for new farmers, support other local small businesses, and provide the healthy food and opportunities for community and connection that all of us need.

My challenge to you as we enter a new year is to support your small local farms as much as possible. Whether you're buying from our farm or others, the majority of your groceries or just a dozen eggs once in awhile, our purchasing decisions today will have a huge impact on what our communities and food system look like in the very near future.

I know it can be less convenient to shop from us and often not your cheapest option. We do our very best to find and create efficiencies to keep our costs low, but we just can’t compete with mass produced and vertically integrated products found in grocery stores. What I can guarantee is you won’t find a higher quality product or one raised with more integrity, passion and purpose.

Thank you for being the hero in our small farm story. We couldn't have made it to our 5th year of farming without you believing in us, valuing what we do, and spending your hard earned food dollars with us. It means so much to our family, and we can't ever thank you enough.

We are just getting started and have so many great things planned for 2020 and beyond. Thank you for being on this journey with us!

~ Dana, Jesse, Eliza & Brynn

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Why Are You Always Out of Bacon?!

If you’ve been shopping with us for very long, you have probably seen the dreaded line through the BACON category on our farmers market signage.

Breakfast is ruined, emotions run high, panic ensues, it’s never fun… and I can assure you we hate it as much as you do!

Our bacon is pretty much amazing. It’s sweet, it’s salty, it’s crunchy, it’s good for breakfast, in a BLT, on a salad, as a midnight snack, the list could go on. It’s basically what dreams are made of, I completely get it.

In a perfect world, we would never run out of any cut, but it’s just not realistic for small farms operating at our scale. Each pig, steer and chicken only has so many body parts!

Part of the bacon challenge is that on a 200+ pound hog, we only get somewhere around 16 packages of bacon. The belly and a little bit of meat from the jaw is the only meat from a hog that can be made into bacon. The majority of a pig is chops, hams, shoulders, ribs and sausage.

As consumers, we are used to shopping the grocery store where every cut is stocked, at all times. We can shop any time of day or night and there will be bacon and pretty much anything else we could imagine, at any given moment, waiting for us to toss it into the cart.

It’s different for small farms. We use and need to sell the entire animal so nothing goes to waste and so we can afford to raise the next batch of animals.

The same concept of cut scarcity is true for beef and chickens too. We tend to run out of cuts like filet, ribeyes and rump roasts very quickly since each animal only has a small amount, but we can’t beef up (ha, get it!) beef production so we always have filet without balancing the demand for the other cuts.

Sometimes we also run out of cuts simply because all of you are amazing and we sell out faster than expected!

It takes 6-8 weeks to raise a batch of meat chickens, 5-6 months before a laying hen starts producing eggs consistently, 6+ months to raise a finished hog, and 2-2.5 years to raise a finished beef steer. When we run out of things, it takes time for us to stock the freezers again.

2019 will be our 4th year farming, and we are continuing to fine tune when we need to have animals processed, how many to raise, and what your favorite cuts are, but we always appreciate feedback about what you like or would like us to offer!

So, my challenge to you is to try incorporating a wide variety of cuts into your meals. Branch out, try something new! And if you need ideas on how to cook it, send me an email and I would love to help. The end result will be more bacon for everyone! :)

~Dana

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What's Cooking? Beef Roast Edition

In my opinion, the beef roast is a seriously underappreciated cut of meat. Even way back in the day when I have no idea how we ever survived, Jesse and I both could make a decent roast. 

When we first started making the shift to eating grass-fed beef, all I ever heard was how there was no fat, it was stringy, tough, lacked taste, enter all other misconceptions out there about grass-fed beef. So not true! A lean grass-fed roast has excellent flavor without ending up with a pile of fat and a little beef after cooking. It's one of our favorite meals, especially our 2-year-old, Eliza. The kid can eat an impressive amount of beef. 

Not only are beef roasts super delicious, they are incredibly quick to prep and toss in the oven or slow cooker.

Option #1 - Crockpot Roast

This roast is perfect for the crazy Wednesday when life is slightly out of control, you have nothing prepared or thawed and are already late for work. This happens more than I would like to admit. 

Step 1 - run to freezer and pull out roast

Step 2 - take roast out of package and put in slow cooker. Make sure to pull off the thin little paper wrapper. Don't ask why I remind you of this. 

Step 3 - add salt and pepper

Step 4 - cover the roast about 2/3 of the way up with water or beef broth. See rant below about store bought beef broth.

Step 5 - set the slow cooker on low and let it do it's thing for about 10 hours

If you're feeling extra ambitious or have a few minutes to spare, you can add in carrots, onions, potatoes, garlic. If not, make mashed potatoes and a vegetable at dinner time and enjoy! 

Option #2 - Oven Cooked Roast

This roast is a perfect option for a Sunday dinner when you have a little more time to enjoy cooking. It's still not a whole lot more involved, but the couple extra steps make this option a bit more "fancy" than a Crockpot Roast. Plus, the side dishes cook at the same time.

Less time cooking and fewer dirty dishes... a win-win in my book. You will need to plan ahead and let the roast thaw in the fridge for a day or two before cooking. 

Step 1 - using a dutch oven, add a few tablespoons of oil (I typically use lard or butter) and let it heat up. I set the burner on medium. 

Step 2 - take your thawed roast out of the package, pat dry with paper towels, rub salt and pepper onto all surfaces. Course salt is best, but use what you've got on hand. 

Step 3 - once the dutch oven is hot, sear the roast just long enough to make a nice crust, about 2 minutes per side. Don't forget to use tongs and hold the roast up to sear the sides! Or don't. It really will be fine either way. 

Step 4 - Once it’s seared, nestle that delicious roast into the dutch oven and cover about 3/4 of the roast in beef broth (either homemade or store bought - see rant below), water will also work, and add carrots, onions, potatoes, garlic, or whatever else you have on hand. Don't have all those? Just toss in what you do have. You can't screw this up, I promise. Adding a few splashes of dry red wine also adds great flavor!

Step 5 - let the roast cook at around 300 degrees for around 3 hours or until it's nice and tender. The timing will depend on the size of your roast and whether your oven temp is accurate. Mine is a guessing game.

Note - Don't be afraid to adapt or even leave things out of this recipe. I live 25ish minutes from the closest grocery store so for the most part if I'm missing some spice or ingredient the recipe calls for in small amounts, I just skip it and move on. Don't be scared! It will still be awesome.

Ok, short rant on store bought broth. A lot of store bought beef broth has "Caramel Color" as one of it's ingredients, even organic brands. As a person with sensitives to artificial colors, flavor, sweeteners, etc. this is super annoying. So if you're weird about that ingredient like I am, be sure to check the labels and avoid those brands. Rant over.

If you're interested in making your own beef broth, this is my highly non-complex recipe.

Roast your beef bones, sliced shank, beef for boiling, whatever cut you're using in the oven until they are browned. I toss everything in a slow cooker, cover with filtered water, add whatever veggies you have on hand, and let it hang out cooking on low until I have time to strain and package it. Sometimes that's overnight, sometimes it's a couple days.

I don't usually can broth, I just let it cool then put 2-4 cups in freezer bags and keep frozen until I need them. I would also recommend freezing some in ice cube trays for when you only need a small amount, but I haven't made that happen yet. You'll find me bashing a giant chunk of frozen beef broth against the counter to break off a few bits. It works, but it's not pretty. 

Leftover roast can be used on sandwiches, in vegetable beef stew, in tacos, or frozen for later. This is an easy way to cook once then have lots of options for new meals throughout the week!

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Happy Cooking Friends,

Dana