Our Bulk Beef Purchase for 2010

We picked up our bulk beef purchase from the beef purchased on the hoof last year.  Each year we buy a calf then a friend of ours raises it for us.  When the cow reaches a certain weight it is ready for the abattoir's.  We usually split the cow with 3 other couples with each getting a quarter but this year decided to keep half for ourselves.  Going to pick up the meat is always a pleasant drive through the beautiful countryside.  You would think I would tire of traveling through the countryside  since we live in a rural area but I don't.  Ontario has some of the prettiest country roads you will ever see!

We try to arrange to pick the meat up on a cooler spring day because the abattoir's is about a 45 minute drive from us and we don't want any thawing problems on the way home.  Before we left to pick up the beef we cleaned out the larger freezer moving everything to the smaller freezer. 

We ended up with 340 lb of dressed beef.  The beef came cut to our specifications then wrapped in butter's wrap and frozen ready for the freezer.  Most of the meat fit in the larger freezer, filling it to the brim to the point one of the baskets won't fit in!

The remainder of the beef went into the smaller freezer that really does need to have the frost removed from the sides.  The smaller freezer is also stuffed leaving little room for any extra but it is a bit deceiving as there are two turkeys and two hams that are taking up a fair amount of room.  There's also two bags of cheese sticks that will be used for entertaining this Saturday. 

This may seem like a lot of meat but it isn't for our family.  Most meals are home cooked from scratch, do a fair amount of entertaining, and our kids are home a couple of weekends each month.   Our family is not getting any smaller.  The only problems with getting this much meat at one time is I have little freezer room to take advantage of any good sales and there isn't the room for the pig we were going to buy so that will have to wait until later in the year.  At any rate we are well stocked for meat!