Butchering a Cow with @shalomacres

beatitudes8(55)

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#homesteading

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Butchering

Last year around this time I had the opportunity to get together with @shalomacres, @randomstuff and @mericanhomestead and help/learn how to butcher a cow. It was a great learning experience. @beatitudes8 has butchered their share of deer, but never anything as large as a cow.

This year it was time do butcher one of our own cows. A two year old jersey steer. It was the first cow we raised for the freezer so we were very excited about it. @shalomacres arranged time out of his busy schedule to help us butcher our cow at his place using his setup (which is extremely functional and easy).

The first thing we had to do was get the steer to

@shalomacres place, and for that we turned to another friend

@mountainmamma who generously let us borrow their trailer.

After we arrived at

@shalomacres we dispatched the steer and dressed it out. Then hung it from a heavy duty frame using a 2ton block and tackle.

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With all the help we had it didnt take long to skin the animal and start disassembling it into the choice cuts and the cuts we used for ground beef.

The choice cuts we kept were the back-straps(loins) used for steaks a few roast out of the back quarters(back legs) and the tenderloins. The front shoulders, neck ,rib meat and everything else we used to make ground beef, and a lot of summer sausage.

@shalomacres was prepared and ready to go when we got there that morning there is more to the prep work then you would think he made a short post on it. I'll link it here--> preparing for butchering

It only took us about four hours from start until we had all the meat on ice in coolers. Not bad if you ask me, but we didn't stop there instead of waiting until the following day to grind the meat and also make @shalomacres famous summer sausage(for REAL it is FAMOUS)its Delicious!
We went ahead and finished it all that night. It turned out to be a very long night not finishing until around 2am, but well worth it!

I'll make another post about the summer sausage soon. HERE it is!
Thanks again to @randomstuff , @shalomacres, and his family for everything!
If you have never checked out @shalomacres please do so.
He is one of the most knowledgeable homesteaders/people out there no joke! (don't tell him I said that though).
He also has a extensive video list on youtube and an amazing how to DIY Root Cellar series.

Check out and join the Steemit Homesteaders Community.