Well the deed has been done. The fat beast grazing in my backyard has been transformed into some top notch beef. My buddy Jon came down for the weekend to give me a hand.
The old 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser got the party started on Friday night. Somewhere around 2 minutes after I pulled the trigger, we realized how enormous cows are. We needed to spin her around 180 degrees
after she fell to be able to hook the gambrel up I had fashioned from some angle iron, a pulley, 1/4 inch aircraft cable, and a come-along winch.
Both of use were pulling as hard as we could, and we could only slide her like 6" at a time. It took about 4 hours to kill, gut, hang, and skin the beast so it could cool overnight. We shot her underneath a large beam in my 3 sided shed that was used as shelter for her. After pulling her up on that, we backed my flat bed trailer underneath, and then lowered the cow down onto the trailer. Drove it up to the garage, and re-hung her from roof truss. Being a structural engineer, I was a little concerned about hanging 800 pounds on my rickety old garage trusses, so I put a couple 2x6's under the joist next to the cow to take most of the weight. It took the both of us 12 hours on Saturday to cut it all up, which actually was quicker than I was anticipating. The amount of fat on a cow is incredible. We froze it all up to be recycled as chicken feed this spring (get my money back out of the stuff), and I am sure there was at least 150 lbs of blubber. I bought a couple of 8' counter tops at Menards, and a laundry sink and fashioned a butcher shop of sorts in my basement. We made bunch of hamburger patties up for summer grilling with garlic and onions ground right into the meat, and then pre-froze them out in garage, and wrapped them up.
The yield wasn't quite as good as I had hoped, about 240 lbs of boneless meat, not including the ribs. Came out to around $2.90 a pound for the finished product, for the price of the calf plus feed. Which is about what you pay around these parts for 1/4's or 1/2 beefs from a local farmer. But doing it yourself is pretty satisfying all around. The hamburger is the best you have ever tasted, almost no grease in the pan when you cook it up. The roasts are real tasty too, nice and lean. The steaks are not as good as what you get at good restaurant, or in the store. I think not being grain stuffed, and no aging probably contributed to that. While it will kill you, eating lots or marbled fat is tasty and tender. But if you marinade them good, they are quite delicious, and probably pretty healthy for you. So I think I will get another calf this spring and start the whole process over again.
