Making our own meat

We got a beefer calf, Jack, from an auction (the same day we picked up Rosie) and a piglet from the piggery down the road.

Jack was only a couple of months old and a tiny little thing. We let him off the trailer into the paddock and he went crazy. He went for the fence (just recently electified), hit the fence 4 times, went through it and was gone. We stood on and watched about $300 run flat out into the distance. We did take chase, but to no avail, it was right on dark and he took off through the back paddock and through the next fence, no roads or gates. We called on the young fellow next door to help and he found Jack the next morning, about 10km away.

It took the rest of that day to get Jack back to our place, then another couple of hours to get him in a small shed we had. A small yard had to be built for him, which meant we had to buy feed for him. NOT the way we wanted to do it.

As it turned out, the bit of poor, sandy, weedy land we had couldn't support the few animals we had so ended up having to buy feed for all of them anyway.

The piglet, a runt that was smaller than a cat when we got her, was the only thing we had that didn't have any problems. She (no name this time) was raised on starter pellets, then on leftover milk and kitchen scraps. Grew to an enormous size that even surprised the farmer that sold her to us.

When all was ready, we called in a mobile butcher that did the job on the propery. We had to buy a freezer big enough, 700 litres. With the steer and the pig that freezer was half full of home grown, organic meat.