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I agree with you Maine Writer, I don't see the gloom and doom in the near future on food and food prices. I do believe in God and read the bible so I know these times will come, but thankfully I won't be a part of that mess. (rapture)
But that being said I see the local food movement as being good for everyone. I have always said, if nothing else, at least these people in the cities growing gardens, putting up cans of food and having a few chickens helps defend farmers from the PETA people and others. And what can be wrong for doing things for yourself.
Is raising your own food cheaper than buying it??? Yep. I raised a cow last year along with my sheep and it cost me $1.01 per pound flat rate. Figuring hamburg is $3.50 per pound, and I got 200 pounds of that, and another 200 pounds of steaks out of my 14 month old bull, meant I saved a lot of money, but my fencing costs and winter feed was non-existent because of having sheep. But you would have to triple my expenses to even break even at hamburg prices...and the nice porter-house steaks I got...well as you can see, it is cheaper to raise your own if you got a few acres of land to pasture one in.
Ive got to ask a couple questions, (95% of what you know, you learn from others and the other 5% is accident, as one fellow put it)
Im guessing that 14 month old bull weighed around 1000lbs?
the cost of the bull, the cost of the feed, and cost to have it cut up was only
1.01lb?
that 1.01 per lb is on the hoof? or the net meat? with the head? hide?
most of the meat was bone in, or boneless? (like a deer, if you bone it out, you yield about 55-60% of carcass weight)
I know many processors, around the state, and if someone calls up and wants a steer, the net amount is around 3.85lb (grain finished and mostly boneless steaks/roasts
Im just curious if it's that frugal (cheap) to grow your own, ???
here is a breakdown guideline of a steer
With an average market (live or on hoof) weight of 1,150 lbs and the average yield of 62.2%, the typical steer will produce a 715 lb. (dressed weight) carcass.
The dressed beef (or carcass) will yield approximately 569 lbs. (further details below) of red meat and trim (take home meat - which includes the average weight of 27 lbs of variety meat: liver, heart, tongue, tripe, sweetbreads and brains) and 146 lbs of fat, bone and loss. This is roughly a yield of 80% from the dressed or hanging weight - this is for a VERY LEAN Beef. A High Quality, USDA Choice Beef will yield approximately 70% of the Hanging or Dressed Weight. The yield on the take home meat weight from the live weight of the (VERY LEAN) steer is approximately 50%.
People will adapt - history has proven that all along.
I think the current interest in CSAs stem from wanting to know where your food comes from all the way from farm to plate. This is a very good thing in my opinion.
Even a small garden can be quite helpful during a period of high food prices. MW made some excellent suggestions for food storage. Sometimes people get so wrapped up in a good idea they think too much about it, and then they throw up their hands in frustration when it doesn't work out the way they thought it would IMHO.
Sometimes, life trips up our best intentions, but researching different ways to store, and actually taking a little time to think about what will probably work best for you individually before diving right into the project is very helpful.
There is a plethora of information from which to draw if someone decides to become more involved in the CSA process.
We keep a small freezer for game and garden. I freeze a lot of stuff. In our long-range budgetary planning, I'll probably dust off the canning stuff and can a few things this year. We will be expanding our garden a bit. I tend to freeze as much as possible first, but we've converted a closet into a pantry, and now I have more storage. My sister and I have gone halves on pigs and cows in the past, and may do so again this year, and I'm going to price out meat from a farm nearby.
Sometimes small things make for big changes.
Life's too short to worry too much about things we have no control over.
To me it's better to educate ourselves and work with what we've got. Here's a good place to start:
... Im just curious if it's that frugal (cheap) to grow your own, ???
From people that we have known who raise their own beef, they rarely end up with beef for any less than what they can buy in a grocery store.
My father likes to get 60 to 80 head of weaner-calves each spring, raise them on pasture through the summer and sell them to feed-lots in the fall. He will keep 2 and put them on corn to butcher. If he sells three sides of beef, he can usually get one side for himself for 'free'. Buying the calves, feeding and medicating them, selling the calves, buying corn, hiring a butcher; all breaks even for him to walk away with one-side of beef.
People will adapt - history has proven that all along.
I think the current interest in CSAs stem from wanting to know where your food comes from all the way from farm to plate. This is a very good thing in my opinion.
Even a small garden can be quite helpful during a period of high food prices. MW made some excellent suggestions for food storage. Sometimes people get so wrapped up in a good idea they think too much about it, and then they throw up their hands in frustration when it doesn't work out the way they thought it would IMHO.
Sometimes, life trips up our best intentions, but researching different ways to store, and actually taking a little time to think about what will probably work best for you individually before diving right into the project is very helpful.
There is a plethora of information from which to draw if someone decides to become more involved in the CSA process.
We keep a small freezer for game and garden. I freeze a lot of stuff. In our long-range budgetary planning, I'll probably dust off the canning stuff and can a few things this year. We will be expanding our garden a bit. I tend to freeze as much as possible first, but we've converted a closet into a pantry, and now I have more storage. My sister and I have gone halves on pigs and cows in the past, and may do so again this year, and I'm going to price out meat from a farm nearby.
Sometimes small things make for big changes.
Life's too short to worry too much about things we have no control over.
To me it's better to educate ourselves and work with what we've got. Here's a good place to start:
Both my wife and I will admit that the years we struggled,without any money, raising a garden because we HAD to do it to get by, without borrowing or going into debt, were our best years. We had all we needed. It was a LOT of work but Good work. We gave our family excellent food and some really great values to pass on to their kids someday. We drove barely legal cars and trucks and repaired them ourselves,cut our own firewood, we never had a vacation, we still entertained the extended family for holidays and never missed a beat. DW made quilts for everyone. Friends got a home grown turkey, a few bottles of maple syrup, some home brew, some pickles, or a couple of chickens. We gave away our surplus veggies at the end of the road and just had a donation jar there. Most times we did not bother with the jar at all. It was a satisfying way to live. We have more money now so we have not HAD to live like that in about 12 to 15 years. If hard times return we're confident we're frugal enough to do it all again and LIKE doing it. We also know we've lived on the edge of poverty all of our lives so sacrificing things is really not a sacrifice to us. We can do without the TV and read. The computer can go and I'll walk to the store for the paper every other day. We'll run one vehicle again. We'll grow another garden, we'll eat more deer meat, trout, fiddleheads, clams, mussels, smelts, crabs, striped bass, wild turkey's and anything else that happens to walk too close to the barn...We'll raise turkey's and chickens again. We'll brew our own beer again, can everything, and cut the wood again. The rest of the world can riot and kill each other....we'll just carry on...as we always have and wait for the dust to settle....
From people that we have known who raise their own beef, they rarely end up with beef for any less than what they can buy in a grocery store.
My father likes to get 60 to 80 head of weaner-calves each spring, raise them on pasture through the summer and sell them to feed-lots in the fall. He will keep 2 and put them on corn to butcher. If he sells three sides of beef, he can usually get one side for himself for 'free'. Buying the calves, feeding and medicating them, selling the calves, buying corn, hiring a butcher; all breaks even for him to walk away with one-side of beef.
Poultry is FAR cheaper to raise. If you can live without the red meat, poultry is the way to go. You get meat and eggs. They can free range most of the time and slaughter is really easy compared with beef critters, sheep, goats or pigs. Rabbit is another excellent, often overlooked, meat source. Extremely easy to raise and has the highest lean protein per pound of flesh than any other animal. Plus they are delicious. You just have to get by the fact they are cute....with the skin on. Rabbit feces is the only feces that does not have to be composted before being introduced into the soil as a conditioner.
From people that we have known who raise their own beef, they rarely end up with beef for any less than what they can buy in a grocery store.
We did pretty well going in on one with one other person. I don't think I'd want the aggravation of a lot of them because they're a pain in the butt (from my personal experience) but you can't beat the quality of the meat IMHO.
Yep $1.01 per pound was what it cost me for that Bull...and no bull either (pun intended). (LOL)
When I calculated my costs, I actually included $125 dollars for the bull even though I actually did not pay for it, the boys just picked a healthy bull-calf from off the dairy farm (family) and raised it 2 months for me on calf-starter. This is the standard price they get for bull-calfs that they start at 2 months of age so hence the reason for that number.
For grain I figured .20 cents per pound, and he got a pound of sheep grain everyday in the winter time, but none in the summer months. I fed out 160 days that year so that figures out to $32 bucks.
There was no need to medicate or anything since he was the lone cow in a flock of sheep where co-grazing takes place, and each sheep is allotted a whopping 2 acres per head, so there is plenty of grazing room. I did pay $40 to have it transported to the slaughterhouse though.
I did have the bull slaughtered at 14 months because he was raising havoc with my sheep fence and I could not have a $300 dollar animal destroying $26,000 dollars worth of sheep fence! I had that done at a custom slaughter house for 50 cents per pound and he yielded 373 pounds. That means the slaughter fee was $186 bucks cut and wrapped @ 2 pound packages, cut 3/4 of an inch thick.
So if you add up those three costs, it comes to $383 bucks, or just over a buck per pound. As stated before though, my fencing costs were none because I ran him with the sheep, and my winter feed is free here because of the dairy farm. So unless you want to calculate your time, property taxes and other non-related stuff, it is cheaper to raise your own then to buy it in the store. I say that because even if a person had to buy hay at $4 per bale, at 1 bale per day, for 160 days, that would only increase your costs to $2.74 per pound. And fencing costs with a single strand of electric fence wire is pretty cheap.
If I was to do it again I would actually reduce my costs. I would not pasture the animal at all, but keep him penned up and feed a heavy ratio of corn silage/grass silage with a big emphasis on the corn silage. I would also slaughter him at the 9 month age and have some better tasting meat for less money in the end I think.
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