Veal and Beef on the Homestead
(Page 2 of 3)
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
If some skim milk is to be used, decrease the amount of whole milk gradually (one pint or less at a feed) and add equal amounts of skim. Warm the skim milk. Do not boil.
RELATED CONTENT
Raising A Steer
During the meat shortage there was a great revival of interest among small farmers, estate owners, and homesteaders in beef for home use.
If your place has enough good pasture (1 acre per steer) and enough good quality hay (2 acres of clover or alfalfa would be ideal), then you might consider raising a steer. Shelter can be simply a three sided shed; if you don't have to carry water, then a steer won't take much time.
A fellow down the road from me who has just about two acres has a steer project underway with a minimum of trouble and investment. He simply went to a dairy with a herd of Holsteins (Brown Swiss and Ayrshires make good beef too; Jersey and Guernsey not so good), bought himself a young male calf, weaned him, and tethered him out in the orchard. He kept the calf on grass all spring, summer, and fall. In October he started feeding some corn he'd grown and at the end of November he had the fatted calf slaughtered. Naturally, if he were going to sell this young steer (he had the vet castrate it) he'd have had to hold the animal for another 9 months or even a year. But for home use this baby steer provided some excellent eating.
What Is "Baby Beef?"
A number of people with small country places have an idea that because their place is small "baby" beef would be just the thing. "Baby" beef are young, well-bred, good quality cattle, often Angus, which are slaughtered at the tender weights of 700 to 1,200 pounds. BUT they are fed grain just as soon as they will take it - the idea being to keep them from losing their baby fat. The part-time farmer who probably doesn't grow much grain, won't find them economical, but of course they do make delicious beef.
How To Put On Fat
Is it practical for the part-time farmer or small farmer to raise an honest-to-goodness beef steer?
From what I've seen in the Northern part of our county I say yes - but he would go at it quite differently than the usual commercial operator.
The whole object in fattening a steer is to make it put on weight. Welllarded beef is the kind that has fine flavor, tenderness, and is good and juicy. Incidentally, the next time a butcher shows you a steak look to see if it has streaks of white running through the red beef. This is fat - and the steak should be good and tasty.
Ordinarily, beef cattle are shipped off the ranches in the West to the Corn Belt where they are put in feeding lots and fed corn and other grains until they are fat enough to slaughter.
