First time raising meat on our own homestead

As brand new homesteaders, learning from scratch as we go along, we have often seemed to ignore the wisdom shared by those far more experienced than us. Top of the list of tips was not to rush into getting animals on the farm.

Instead, we were urged to establish the necessary infrastructure and make sure we were well prepared. This advice was closely followed by: if you do get animals that you intend to eat, don’t name them, unless of course you choose something like ‘Sir Loin’ or ‘T. Bone’.

Now this made perfect sense! We agreed wholeheartedly with the theory of being prepared and properly set up. Having solid fencing, food storage and shelters should have been top priorities! But for us, there was something about having some big farm animals to make it feel like we were actually living on the land and taking steps forward in our homesteading journey.

When we arrived on the farm, we had unexpectedly inherited two lively (and enormous) pigs and 17 hens and roosters from the previous owner but we had very little other experience with our own animals.

So it was with delightful naivete that only weeks later we welcomed Bo-Bo (quickly renamed ‘Beau’), a 14 month old Jersey steer. He was everything we had hoped for: small enough for our younger children to handle and big enough to help us get used to being around larger animals.

We fell in love with his deep brown eyes, his shaggy coat and his knobbly knees. Beau would gallumph down the hill after the ute and stand patiently at his corner waiting for his hay and scrap bucket. He’d moo excitedly if he heard the lawnmower and then pace a well-worn track up and down following Sam vacuuming up the fresh, green clippings.

Beau was calm, relaxing to be around and full of personality… but he had also been bought with the hope that he would one day fill our freezer.

We were now faced with a hard reality: we were committed to raising Beau well, but we knew we couldn’t keep him forever.

As the months went by, we had conversations as a family about ‘when we would need to say goodbye to Beau’. We discovered that farm animals have a funny way of embedding themselves into everyday life because there’s such a rhythm to going out and feeding them, checking their water, rotating them around paddocks and cleaning up after them. They really do feel like part of the furniture!

Maybe this decision was going to be much harder than we had thought.

Our children all had different responses as well and I think this is important to realise and acknowledge. For some, the thought of a freezer full of Beau-meat was exciting and one of the key reasons for moving to the country. Other children didn’t want to talk about it or were struggling with the uncomfortable limbo of knowing it was going to happen but not wanting it to.

Sam and I also flip-flopped a lot.

We discussed ways we could keep Beau. We considered selling him. We were even willing to give him away, knowing he would likely end up on someone else’s dinner table.

We had already processed two of our sheep and both pigs and we’d given away all our chickens to start afresh with some reliable laying hens. Although some of those farewells had been tough, nothing was quite like the decision about Beau. We had already experienced more loss and death on the farm than we had expected. One of our daughters commented that she didn’t want to not have Beau because we’d lost so many animals already.

So we came up with a new plan. We decided to borrow our friend’s ram to hopefully bring in some new lambs before the end of the year and we would buy two new calves and raise them. One as a potential house cow and one for beef.

Enter two sweet little four-legged bovines who instantly became a source of fun, excitement and joy.

Now, finally, we felt ready to move on from Beau. Just having the calves around helped ease the pain.

We knew we didn’t want to wait for him to be too old, and the huge increases in the cost of hay, coupled with a very dry winter meant that our feed bills were getting huge. The cost of calf milk was added on too and so we made the hard call to ring a mobile butcher. Beau wasn’t tagged, so he wasn’t able to leave our property to be processed.

As the day drew nearer, I had more misgivings about our decision. Firstly, I knew it would be really hard for Sam to see Beau being killed. Secondly, a mobile butcher would require our trailer to put the hide and guts in and those were our responsibility to deal with. Thirdly, the coolroom would be on our property for a week to hang the beef and that felt weird. Just knowing our dead cow was hanging in sight… And finally, the butcher wouldn’t be able to give us mince or sausages from the meat – two absolute staples for us as a family!

We kept chatting with other farming families and people who had processed meat before. It was helpful to hear their stories and ask practical questions to guide our planning.

But now we had a big problem. I had also sensed that the children were not completely comfortable with the mobile butcher option but we couldn’t see a way around it.

Sam and I chatted again and we decided to see if there was any chance of Beau being taken to a nearby abattoir. After several phonecalls and some extra paperwork, we were told we could take him off site and that he could be cut up at our local butcher! This was such great news. It resolved so many of our concerns and felt like the final piece of the puzzle. We all felt a sense of relief.

On a Sunday afternoon we gave Beau his last meal, slowly loaded him onto the trailer and said our goodbyes.

No one can prepare you for how it feels to know that you’re sending an animal away to be slaughtered. Knowing he couldn’t stay, knowing he had had a wonderful life, knowing he was going to provide months of healthy, nutritious food for our family was only part of the equation. There was a still a deep sense of grief and loss. Daily I still look for his big, solemn face to meet my gaze at the kitchen window.

And yet… as I write this post, we enjoyed an amazing meal tonight that had come from our very own farm. Raising our own beef was something I never thought I’d be able to do (both practically and emotionally!) but I can honestly say that I’d do it all again.

I’m grateful for the experience. I’m humbled by the privilege of owning and caring for an animal. I’m thankful for the prospect of cooking delicious meals for family and friends. I’m so glad we followed our gut instinct and pursued an option that we were all happy with. I’m at peace with the how, the why, and the when.

Was it easy? No. Was it worth it? A thousand times yes.