Buying a side of beef is a great way to get great quality, locally grown food at a reasonable price. But is it practical for you? A whole lot of blogs and other sites can help. I've tried to pull a few of them together.
- Stretcher.com takes on the issue of cost savings, and what you really get for your money. Using a formula to compare the cost of farm-raised beef to what the author could find in their local store, Stretcher.com can't point to any significant savings. What Stretcher.com does say is that farm grown beef is of a much higher quality than store bought - it tastes better, and although it's not the right way for everyone to buy, it can definitely work.
- Get Rich Slowly takes a similar approach, saying that "buying a aside of beef can be an excellent deal." Get Rich Slowly does a fantastic job of outlining the advantages of buying beef in bulk (which include superior quality meat, fewer trips to the grocery store, and supporting local business) along with the advantages of buying beef from the supermarket (which include less storage space and less work). It's an extremely useful piece.
- The funnest article I found was at Chow.com, an article by Jason Krause entitled "100 Pounds of Leftovers." Having read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma
, Krause goes ahead and researches farms, buys a deep freezer, buys the meat, and then tries to figure out how he and his wife might eat it all. It's a fun article, well-intentioned and practical.
I'm hoping that one day I will be able to buy a side of beef from a local farmer. I'm sold on the advantages - most notably having to do with the taste of the beef - and I don't mind the extra work figuring out what to do with random organs and cuts of meat. That said, I live in a small house, and there's no space for half a cow, let alone a deep freezer. Maybe one of these days I'll find a neighbor and we'll go in together.
