First time raising meat on our own homestead

Our homesteading journey began a little over two years ago when we moved to our 50 acre property in the Adelaide Hills. 

The hopes and plans of owning land and raising our own meat had been growing since our children were little, but it took a loooong time to see our dreams become a reality. You can read the story of finding our farm here!

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 advice was not to rush into getting animals on the farm. Now that sounds perfectly sensible if it wasn’t for two things: my impulsivity and the fact that we were greeted on the farm with the previous owner’s animals still there! 

Inheriting animals when we first arrived

Moving to our property was such an exciting adventure. I remember driving down the dirt track and looking out of the van at the views which were now ours. Rolling hills, endless gum trees, pine forests, and blue blue sky.

What we didn’t expect to find when we first arrived were the animals we had asked the previous owner to take with her. 

It turned out that we had unexpectedly inherited two lively (and enormous) pigs and lots of chickens. It was definitely a little bit of a shock – but there there were some real positives too. 

One benefit of this surprise was that it confirmed our desire to try our own farm-raised meat. 

It no longer felt like such a huge step to consider raising our own meat because we could use our surprise pigs to fill the freezer. The good news was that they were already the desired weight and were a great option because we’d get such a lot of meat without the added expense of raising them from birth. 

There were a host of unexpected issues with not really starting from scratch though – this blog post is all about the ups and downs!

Getting properly set up for animals

Every farm and homestead is different, but all our friends with property urged us to get properly set up BEFORE buying meat animals or starting our meat production.

We were encouraged and advised to establish the necessary infrastructure and make sure we were well prepared. This 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. 

So, despite all the best advice, our first year was not filled with preparation, but rather with buying our own animals and having our seventh baby. We knew it would be a lot of work (though no one could prepare us for how much!) and a huge time commitment, but we wanted to just get started. 

Buying our first farm animal

When we lived on a surburban block, our menagerie had never expanded past a cat, a few fish, and chickens. 

In fact, none of us had much experience with homestead livestock or large animals in general! 

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

The reality of tough decisions

As the months went by, we had conversations as a family about ‘when we would need to say goodbye to Beau’. 

This wasn’t just about him being a future meat source for our large family. There were loads of practical reasons why having a growing steer was becoming problematic. 

Firstly, Beau and his side kick Belle the goat had ransacked and stripped our apple orchards not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES! Sam’s patience with their antics was wearing thin! 

Secondly, our decision to do everything backwards and START with animals and then do menial tasks like building fences (!) meant that our delicious grass-fed beef was going to cost us a fortune in hay come summer. We simply did not have enough pasture for Beau and our sheep.

Lastly, we knew that on a farm an animal is either paying its way or it can’t stay. This was probably the hardest reality for me personally. You see, I’d decided at age 10 to stop eating meat. For over 30 years I was a lacto-ova vegetarian (I ate eggs and dairy but no meat or fish products) including through my 7 pregnancies, but our big move to the country had actually been the turning point in my eating journey. I wanted to produce and raise as much of our own food as possible, and try to source food locally. I felt strongly that we didn’t want to rely on store-bought meat any longer. Unfortunately, this meant that Beau’s days were numbered. 

Emotions about processing our first steer

Farm animals have a funny way of embedding themselves into everyday life, don’t they? I’m sure a lot of it is 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 on a small homestead!

It didn’t help that Beau had a specific corner he would stand in.. waiting for someone to visit him, or bring him a sneaky snack. He also had no health issues which was such a blessing.

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

Our children all had different responses to the decision to process our own meat and I think this is important to realise and acknowledge. For some, the thought of a freezer full of Beau-vine goodness 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.

A new plan

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 family milk cow and one for free range 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 was a great way to distract us and ease the pain.

More practical issues!

We knew we didn’t want to wait for him to be too old; we wanted the best quality meat we could get from him. In addition, huge increases in the cost of hay and a very dry winter meant that our feed bills were getting unsustainable. 

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 permitted to leave our property to be processed.

As the day drew nearer, I had more misgivings about our decision to butcher onsite. Firstly, I knew it would be confronting 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 mobile coolroom would be on our property for a week to hang the beef and that felt weird (I was really wrestling with my own emotions as a vegetarian!) Just knowing our dead cow was hanging in sight made the entire thing feel hard… And finally, the butcher wouldn’t be able to give us mince or sausages from the meat – two absolute staples for our family! 

Seeking advice from other farmers

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 (it was actually a comedy of errors as Beau dug his heels in and made it very difficult to load him!) and we said our goodbyes. 

​Coming full circle

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 expect 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. 

We’re already preparing for next year when our next grass-fed cows will be ready for processing. 

But above all, 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.