I thought I’d tell you about our experience with our “micro-herd” (as I like to call it) of beef cattle. Actually, we don’t have a herd of any size right now. For the last four years we raised Dexters as our sole source of beef, which we shared/sold to friends and family. However, last autumn we sold three cow/calf pairs and two steers, which made up the entirety of our herd at the time.

Why? Well, after four years of annually butchering two steers we finally came to the hard conclusion that we just didn’t particularly enjoy the TASTE of the Dexter beef. I mean, we ate it, and we liked it okay, but after putting in so much time, work, love, sweat, tears, yadda-yadda, shouldn’t one love the result? Each time there was a slight “off flavor” and any excess fat had to be cut off, otherwise it lent an even worse gamey flavor to the meat.

Before you ask about their diet- I can assure you they dined on the freshest green mountain grass a cow could want. Plenty of cold spring water. Alfalfa and orchard grass hay in the winter and for the last two years the steers got COB (corn, oats, barley) for a couple months before butchering. After all that… it still wasn’t yielding the best steaks, although the burger was always okay. And any homestead mama worth her salt can slow cook any ol’ hunk of meat long enough and make it taste good, amiright?

Anyways, so we decided to scratch that and go back to our roots and the first cattle we ever owned: Angus. And thus, we can now introduce the latest addition to our homestead: a 10 week Angus/Charlais cross steer. So far, we haven’t settled on a name- except Fiadh calls him, “Mycow”
We’ve got high hopes for world class steaks in another year. In the meantime, we’ll be adding two more steers to the barn this month but have no plans for breeding stock at this time.