This is a basic marketing question and one that we answer different aspects of every week at farmers markets and other places where we have opportunity to discuss our products and our farm. As I go through the “long” answer I will draw us to a conclusion and reason but I also want to be fair and consistent in saying that many farms follow some of these principles …many are open about the ones they don’t follow and others are really just trying to “pull the wool over your eyes” as they say and make you think that they are like the true “honest practitioner” when they know they are not. Be CAREFUL because there are some who “fudge” the truth. And that is all I have to say about thatJ.
100% Grass Fed & 100% Grass Finished:
No antibiotics, NO insecticides & NO other chemicals on or in our animals. We feed NO grain or feeds made out of grain or grain derivatives (no gluten added to feed, no wheat mids, no brewers spent grain, candy, cookies, paper nor any other of the crap that you see cattle fed in the world) we feed grass and legumes (alfalfa, cow peas, vetch) and brassicas (plants that come from the mustard family i.e. turnips, radishes, they only eat the green part that comes up out of the soil not the bulb). Some of you might ask why legumes & brassicas …first they are traditional types of plants that cattle eat and they are plants that improve the soil that bring forth nutrients from deep in the soil to the top soil and they affix nitrogen so these plants are the method we use to fertilize our soil without chemicals and cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens love them!
Grass Finished:
This is one of the terms that confuse a lot of people …even meat producers because traditionally they cattle farmers/ranchers never worried about “finishing” cattle. Generally, ranchers keep mother cows and bulls because they breed cattle and raise the calves until they are called “yearlings” …not always a year old but can weigh between 6 – 900 lbs not always but generally. When the calves reach this weight, they are sold through the “sale ring” to others who take them the next step to get them into the traditional “confinement” grocery store model. FINISHING cattle is a technical term that means the animal has gained a minimum of 1.7 pounds per day for the last 60-90 days of there life.
This will typically result in a calf having a certain amount of “back fat” and will translate to a finished animal. The real worry for you the consumer is that many grass fed producers use the term to mean that the animal “finished” its life on grass …that is not finished in the “beef” world! Don’t be confused by this. Here at Buck Creek because we take our animals through a “true finishing process” grazing fields that have carefully selected grasses/legumes/brassicas mixes raised under irrigation gives us a consistently finished animal having gained between 3-5 pounds per day that therefore gives us consistently tasting and eating beef.
Why ours taste different than other “grass fed” producers?
Older Animals:
Basically, it goes like this …more age means more flavor but it can also mean tougher meat. Because of the truth in this statement I will say that much of this point and some others are more art than science and why occasionally even we get it wrong but we have been diligent students of the process these last 10 years, yet we do consider the approach artisanal.
Many “old timers” will talk about how beef and chicken taste different than when they grew up… and many, once they taste our beef, will respond that it tastes the way they remember…beefier! Older animals have more flavor because their bodies have had time to mature both physically (bigger, stronger) but also sexually. The bigger more worked bodies have more flavor just like “tougher” cuts of meat (sirloin) has more flavor than a tenderloin because it was “worked” more in the animal’s life but it is also tougher. The sexual maturity actually allows for an animal to be properly “finished”. Think of it this way …my boys when they were 16-18 years old they could eat whatever they wanted and it seems like they never gained a pound but me on the other hand if I look at a piece of cake I gain 5 pounds.
Cattle are the same way…just not thinking about cake; female cattle go through sexual maturity beginning about 15 months and can start really putting on the pounds after 20 – 24 months where their male counterparts generally start around 18 months and really kick-in about 24-27 months. Now in both cases the older they get the more they can really start packing it on, but they will really start getting tougher at 30 months plus. But I will say this… in days of olde (1700’s to about 1945) many cattle were killed at 4 years plus and were considered the very best of their time.
So, for the farmer it turns into a balancing act of when to harvest the animal from a finished prospective but also from a financial standpoint as the longer the farmer keeps the animal the more expense they incur that must be recouped from the customer and quite frankly this is why we charge more than many of our competitors as we keep the animal to 27-32 month old to make sure that we are selling the best flavored and finished beef we can and that many of you expect. Yet many of our competitors harvest animals too young 18-20 months and can therefore sell at lower prices but the quality and taste will typically suffer. This is why “confinement beef” and some of the other “grass fed” producers use grain to get the needed fat …like feeding candy to any age kid, if you feed enough of it a normally thin kid will turn into a chunky one, cattle are no different.
Alkaline Land:
This point is one that comes not really from something that we do but from really where we live and that was decided in 1935 when my grandparents bought our farm. The area we live in is sandy and sandy land is generally more alkaline than darker & tighter land. Farmers in areas where dark land is prevalent …DFW/east Texas area for example have to apply products such as lime to their land to raise the PH level / Alkalinity so certain nutrients become available to the plants from the soil. But because of this the low PH levels also cause the beef to have a different flavor that many people consider “off” or bad tasting.
In our area of sandy land, we have problems as well in that our land doesn’t hold nitrogen well and it must be added. In most cases in our area nitrogen from petrochemicals are added to the soil BUT we take a different approach as we use the plants discussed earlier (legumes & brassicas) to impart natural nitrogen to the soil that our plants use. The gift of having high PH soil and the proper way of affixing nitrogen in the soil give our beef a better flavor than beef from heavy soils such as those in East Texas.
Proper Choice of Diet
I have really explained several points of this in the points earlier but I would like to touch on one more that many farmers don’t realize or don’t have the ability to choose and it effects the quality of their meat. We plant certain mixtures of plants that our cattle graze on for multiple reasons …partly why ours is an artisanal approach in how they affix nutrients in the topsoil but also because some plants impart a “taste” to the beef that can again be considered “off”. Some farmers don’t realize this and some don’t have a choice in what they plant and graze their cattle on …some are just choosing the plants they do because that is what their fathers planted on the land or it is what is simply what is growing there.
I want to point out one plant in particular that we don’t use with our animals because it imparts taste and that is wheat. We actually us Rye and Barley because neither impart flavor and because they both grow well in our sandy alkaline soil. All of these plants (wheat, rye, & barley) are considered “cereal grains” when they are allowed to “go to seed” but we graze them before they go to seed so that our animals can still be grass fed/grass finished …if a farmer chose to graze them once they seed it would not be grass fed/grass finished beef. I would say this as an FYI… cattle do not like these plants once they produce a seed head as they are quite “sticky” and are uncomfortable for the cattle to eat even if the farmer wanted them to eat them. Long story short …some plants impart an “off” flavor to the meat; we do not use those types of plants.
Proper Dry-Aging
Dry-Aging beef is a very important step especially when you are talking about grass fed/grass finished beef but there is little room for variance, or it turns out wrong and messes up the flavor and eatability (is that a word). Dry aging is a process where meat is cooled to close to freezing and exposed to circulated air to cause enzymes to start breaking down the meat improving tenderness and also drying the meat to improve beefiness and flavor. Over the years we have learned that grass fed is different from grain fed beef when it comes to dry-aging. The proper length of aging time is determined by how much fat coverage an animal has on its body… now grass finished animals will typically have one inch of fat present where grain fed animals can have 3 inches!
That is a big difference and impacts the aging time significantly. It is not uncommon to see grain finished beef aged 30+ days but grass finished cannot endure that length of time. What we have found is that 14 -21 days usually works the best and will give you the flavor and tenderness you are looking for without the imparting of an “off” flavor. Quick note …grocery store beef is typically NOT aged at all! The beef is cut the day after slaughter once the meat is chilled. This practice is common amongst all low-quality meats. Another note …here at Buck Creek we age the whole animal not just the “high-value” steak cuts as others do. Aging improves all the meat and I can promise you that our ground beef is truly Game Changing”.
One Farm / One Process = Constant Flavor / Product
When you buy from Buck Creek Meats you are getting beef that has been finished on our farm with our processes. Many people selling meat these days are simply marketing companies and don’t actually raise any animals as they just purchase meat from contracted sources. The problem that I see is that if you have multiple farms you will have multiple process utilized on many different types of land and grasses of varying qualities. Then you have different aging processes and are the animals finished at all and if so on what? All this leads to different qualities of beef and different flavors every time you open the package and put it in your mouth. With Buck Creek it is all raised on one farm and aged and packaged in one processor …all this adds up to consistency and predictability, it is delicious today and it will be delicious next week!
Free Range = NO Confinement:
People confuse “conventionally raised cattle” with the practice of using feed lots to finish calves and it is a confusion that is wrong and gives farmers and ranchers a bad knock that they don’t deserve because it is not the true picture. Most cows (female mother cattle) and bulls (male cattle) live lives that would be considered free range and for the most part “grass fed” (NOT grass finished) …in non-confinement and they are not subject to chemicals, antibiotics and filth. Where the problem arises is in “confinement finishing” of cattle…feed lots. The confinement of cattle in feed lots gives rise to filth and disease due to overcrowding and diet.
Cattle standing in knee deep excrement and needing antibiotics just to stay healthy is the thing that we are all trying to avoid. Cattle in confinement are where grain/corn is fed as feed damaging the animal and making beef unhealthy. Confinement is basically an unhealthy practice for the animal and for the land, water and air and it is not needed but is a cheap way to feed cattle that many people are willing to ignore and over look so that they can have cheaper beef even if it is damaging and unhealthy. At Buck Creek we never confine cattle in such a manner. Cattle are only ever gathered and penned when sorting, inoculating and marking is needed…what is known as “working” cattle. This practice is for the shortest time possible so to not negatively affect the health of the animal.