This year, we had several steemians come over and help us butcher our cow. We had 
We began the day at 6:30 around our kitchen table talking about the plans for how the day was going to go. As we were talking, the lights flickered and then power went out for the whole hillside. Shows what planning will do for you. After the power went off and there was no more Wi-Fi, we decided to start early.
First, we had to kill the cow. This cow was a three and a half year old heifer who never gave us a calf. She was one of the nicest looking cows we owned and it was a shame that we had to butcher her.
After we killed her we had to drag her up to the hoist and to do this we needed the tractor which was in the garage behind our electric garage door which wouldn't open because the power was out. Thankfully we were able to hook up the garage door to our generator and get the tractor out. Without the tractor it would have been almost impossible to get the cow from the pasture to the hoist.
Then we had to take out the internals. to do this we started cutting on the belly side making sure that we did not hit the stomach. After we got the hide and the diaphragm cut(the membrane holding the organs to the cow) it was time to hang the cow on the hoist system we had set up.
After the cow was high enough in the air to get a wheel barrow under we finished off the last cut and the stomach and intestines fell into the wheel barrow. The stomach and the intestines were then thrown onto the burn pile that would get rid of any remains of the cow.
We then had to remove the hide from the cow. The hide was removed all the way down to the bottom of the neck.
Front view
After completely removing the hide from the cow it was time to take off the front legs. The legs on a cow are a lot bigger than they look. Each front leg probably gave us around 40 pounds of meat.
The front legs then went to the garage to be deboned and then put in a cooler to be ground up later. The lower part of the legs are full of tendons so we made those into breakfast sausage along with the rib meat.
Here is some of the sausage before we cooked it to go in the freezer for later use.
Next came the back legs. These are quite a bit bigger than the front legs.
We turned the back legs into mostly roasts and some of it will be ground up into hamburger meat.
Next came the Viking funeral for the parts of the cow we were not able to use like the head, hooves, tail, or stomach. To begin the process we first had to get a big pile of wood for the base so we could then throw the stuff we were unable to use on the pile. Next we lit the pile to get rid of the body so we would have no predators coming to eat the remains or our sheep.
That was about it. every year we get faster than the year before. this year there was no more cow hanging by 11:30 and we were done cutting up the meat by lunch.
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