Is buying a 1/4 beef worth it?

[Music] what's up everybody stan here from rocky creek i hope everybody's been doing well it's been a little bit let's go over here let's take care of the animals let's check on everybody it rained super hard this morning so it's a little messy let's check on everybody and let's talk about a few things that we got going on and how we were able to get a pretty good deal to stock up our freezers a little bit on an animal that we are unable to raise here on our homestead so come on what are you doing puppy yummy he's such a good girl he's a good doggie yeah oh oh oh somebody heard it oh beat on his back what are you doing stud you are like a beetle stuck on his back i hear you oh that sun made your fur hot miss olivia how you been girl huh what we see y'all want some food y'all want some food mater hey well you a day late olivia olivia come on he doesn't want to play nice well guys i wish i had an update to give you on some piglets or something with these guys but you know nope got a whole lot of nothing just almost like brother and sister and there's just not much love in the air when olivia has gone in heat he kind of he's like a little bit interested but just not enough to get i guess enough courage to do what he needs to do so i'm thinking once we can reach a point we can get these guys separated you know distance makes the heart grow fonder we'll maybe rekindle that flame but right now i think he just sees her as a friend hanging out and i don't understand it who could resist such a gorgeous lady so guys i'll tell you as we're heading down to the chickens i had actually planned to put a video out the other week last week and i even told mrs rocky creek i was like i got to get a video done this week i know things have been really busy helping chris with his election and then overtime at work and i said hey i got to get a video in i had some time free one day i knew i didn't have anything and well i kind of had a little weird thing going on went on for about two days with my chest and or my heart and i kind of just woke up in the middle of the night one day with our son and when i went to go lay back down it kind of just felt like a lot of tightness like i just had like pressure in my chest i didn't have any other symptoms it didn't even really hurt it just it just felt like quite a bit of pressure um i didn't have a cold or anything that i knew of and the next day it went away but then the next night same thing i got up with my son and the same thing happened again i had a lot of pressure it just didn't feel right i didn't know what it was and it carried on throughout the day i was actually going to break down our garden because the garden's kaputs at this point and i was going to work on clearing all that out and it just it wouldn't go away so i went to our local urgent care i'm not one really to go to doctors much and i certainly didn't want to go to no er because i didn't think i didn't feel like i had any other symptoms but it just it's something i never felt before and so i went to the urgent care and they did a ekg and checked i guess heart rhythm and stuff and there was some stuff on there that they didn't like and so they told me i i needed to go to the er and they gave me a couple aspirin before i went and so i went to the er and that's where i spent my day that day so i was unable to do any filming now on a positive note i was at the er maybe about six hours initial ekg there looked a little bit different but not as bad as the first one and it seemed like the longer i was there whether or not that was related to the aspirin they gave me or not it started to feel a lot better all my blood work and everything came back looking okay according to them and so i thought everything was good to go and so for the next couple days you know life went on like normal but actually just starting up today i kind of noticed i'm starting to get it again so i'm not really sure what's going on with it i'm hoping it maybe you know is just something minor but i'm going to do a follow-up with my local doctor here in about four or five days and maybe we can figure out what's going on with it hopefully it'll just go away on its own but you know i got about two days relief and it's starting to come back again so just want to make sure everything's good you know i don't worry about much thing that hurts or pain but when it comes to your ticker you got to make sure your ticker's good all right enough talking about sad medical stuff or worrying some stuff let's go on down here to the chickens and check on them real quick ladies how we doing i mostly want to check on these ladies because you wouldn't think it looking at the sunshine right now but it was just pouring buckets this morning and so their food had gotten full of water yep see that's what i'm talking about look how nasty that is from all that rain man every nesting box is full you got i am somani there mama hand and french black copper marine these girls have been primed they're laying eggs like crazy you know i researched i am somanis for i got i am somanis and they talked about how their egg production was quite low but i can tell you and maybe it's just because they're in their prime but the two im somani hens that we have i feel like they lay pretty often about equivalent to what i would think like an easter egger would nothing like a rhode island red or bard rock but i think mine are laying better than what a lot of stuff you read so i don't know just ought to share that with you in case you're interested in them but maybe egg production's holding you back i'm having pretty good luck did you just lay an egg we hear you so another thing that we're starting to have going on with the chickens around this time of year is it's starting to cool off so we actually have about half [Music] this guy we're about to start to have about half of our hens are starting to molt um so they're starting to look a little bit rough so combination of the roosters getting them and the mulch some of these ladies are starting to look a little rough but they're just getting ready for the winter time getting their feathers good to go so we're starting to see a lot of transition of that for these guys so if you're brother that was heavy-handed so if you start to notice your chickens in your climate like we are here in kind of the middle part of southeast of the united states where you're starting to head into your fall or maybe even towards your winter you may as well start to notice you're losing a lot of feathers and your egg production may be reducing more likely it's probably your chickens are just starting to go through a molt look for feathers around and they're probably just trying to prepare for those winter months [Music] so guys we're going to get ready to head into the garage and i'm going to show you something that we got recently well really two things i got recently and one was an upgrade from where we were and then the other thing is something that's going to help us out as many of you all know here on our homestead we raise for meat chicken and pork but i don't have a setup or really enough area to properly raise for other types of meats such as beef fortunately i have a friend who gives me access to that so let's show you what we're able to do and i'm going to talk to you briefly about why sourcing beef from a local farmer or somebody in your area may be of a better option for you potentially so first don't be judging my dirty garage i got to work on this but this was an upgrade we had a chest style freezer and i found this upright freezer on craigslist for 150 bucks and so i went out and got it and it works great it's old it's tried and true and it works up top here these are just some wild chestnuts that we've gotten that i need to do something with but the great thing about this vertical freezer is that access to your stuff is so much easier because you got the different shelves and so that way you can get to different things a lot better and it makes life a lot easier so i've kind of got it laid out as such i got what i have left of pork down there and on the next shelf and then up here i've got beef more beef beef beef and then this is going to be what's left of like some deer that i had from last year and this is one thing of some ground pork i have left that this is actually was raised here on our property and processed by a local processor but my pork is getting pretty low you can see i got one set of belly still here i got some chops and some various things pork jowl which is like one of the best things from a pig that a lot of people don't get and a couple boston buds and various things so having a friend who could give me access to beef worked out fantastic i mean look at how good that rib eye steak looks right there i mean this is some good stuff right here i mean we got everything back we got some different roasts and then of course we got our ground beef packaging right here like so so let's talk about it what i end up getting was a quarter of a beef so let's go inside and let's talk about why this was beneficial to do it this way versus to continue to buy beef from the grocery store all right guys so we're going to talk briefly about getting ground beef from your local farm or someone that you know that may raise ground beef if you're not able to raise it yourself and we've been able to do chicken on our own and we've been able to do pork on our own but i'm not set up to where it's beneficial for me based on time or it's also not beneficial to the animal to be raised in a way that's not going to be in their best health and so for me i know somebody personally who has a farm who raises beef and they raise them in the way that i believe it should be done you know they're grass-fed now mine are grain finished right there at the tail end now with that being said though we purchased a half of a cow through them and we split that with another friend of mine from work now my particular friend they raise mostly heifers so the cows that they process typically are not as big as some others may do so all farmers do it differently so check with your farmer on who you're going to work with so you have an idea so your totals could be different either based off of what they charge and of course the size of the animal because a lot of what you pay for is the hanging weight of the animal and then the processing fees are also typically in line with both the weight of the animal or any special things that you have done so mine will give you a basic idea and hopefully it may be of help for you but this will vary greatly depending on each person individually so with that being said our heifer was fairly small for our half we got a total of 288 pounds hanging weight so that equaled out to 144 pounds for me and 144 pounds for my friend our total cost for both the actual cow from the farm and our processing cost was 982 and 8 cents with that being said we turned out to be with the processing was three dollars and 41 cents per pound that's average so three dollars and 41 cents that counts our stakes the fillets the roast the ground beef all of that now to give you a cost comparison we're at three dollars and 41 cents a pound including your prime cuts well i looked up the averages for market pricing for ground beef across the average of the united states for ground beef in your local grocery stores from 2019 up until now the lowest price on average for ground beef for a month was three dollars and 81 cents that was the lowest obviously covet has been involved since 2019 and we've had some influxes and variations in pricing and at one point for ground beef it had gotten up to four dollars and 46 cents a pound depending on your area that was an average so even at the lowest average price of beef for just ground beef this is not getting your steaks and all that as well we were already about 40 cents cheaper per pound across the board so there was a savings in that and then just as it went with our chickens you know i explained how we see there is a savings there when we raise our own chickens you know no it is not all about savings but it's nice to know that you're getting much better quality much more humanely raised much more humanely processed and you're also going to be able to save money if you can get the best of all of it then go ahead and do so so i want to share those numbers with you real quick to let you know that for us sourcing beef yes it is it's a big cost if you're able to do it to spend 980 some dollars for beef all at one time that's the only part that becomes more difficult for you but if you're able to do so or you can find people to split it with you then if you can i highly encourage you to reach out to a local farmer or someone that you know that raises beef and seek about hey how can i go about purchasing from you well guys i hope that information on how we were able to source beef from a friend of ours since we can't raise beef here on our homestead that maybe that was a help for you and you may look into reaching out to somebody to see if that may be of a good benefit for you as well to stock up on your freezer you know the the food supply right now during covet has kind of been all over the place so any way you can find better food security for you whether that's purchasing in bulk or raising on your own i highly encourage you to do so you'll probably get a much better quality and you may very well save money as well along the way so guys i miss being with you all i'm hoping things are going to get normal here very soon i apologize for how this has been i know many of you tell me don't apologize but i hate starting something and then having to sort of back off of it it's just the way my personality is wired but i do appreciate all of you all i appreciate the great dialogue hope everybody's doing great hope everybody has a wonderful halloween and may you all enjoy time with your family and hopefully i'll be here very soon with you all and we'll be back to normal sooner than later thanks guys shall be good [Music]

Channel: Rocky Creek Homestead

Views: 15,135

Keywords: Homesteading, Processing, Raising beef, 1/4 cow, 1/4 beef, 1/2 cow, 1/2 beef, Farm raised, Grass fed beef, Rocky creek, Upright freezer, Psoriasis, Organic, Angus, Farm life, Food security, Harvest, Family, Ground beef, Steak, Roasts, Red meat, support local, farm raised, freezer, vacuum sealed

Id: jEGuyblcxV8

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021