Reward Her With Beef!
Obviously this is only significant to local friends.
I've been dithering because Morris Grassfed Beef is doing a fall harvest, which means that I could get a split half of beef if I act fast. However I think we're just not ready for it this year; I'm a little worried about the cost, too, and the average cost of the beef is a little more than I would pay for grass fed ground beef and other cheap cuts. (Mind you, there'd be lots of yummy steaks in there, but I don't HAVE to eat steak; I can get some tasty braising cuts of lamb and goat for even cheaper than ground beef.) So regretfully I am going to pass until next 2011.
However if anyone on my friends list is terribly excited by the concept, I can offer a few cubic feet of chest freezer space, and would reconsider splitting the split half (40-50 pounds of mixed cuts apiece.) I haven't measured the freezer lately (we have been busily freezing flats of berries and jars of soup) but we could probably store 3 cubic feet and could possibly take more. (Which could get the amount of beef you'd need to take immediately down to about half a shelf, which could realistically be cleared out of a standard freezer.) This would require moving fast and you'd have to be available on the pickup day; it probably works best to do that closest to my house if I'm storing the bulk of it, which might put it on an inconvenient weekday morning. (Or if someone is interested, I'll go out and measure it and see if I can actually store the whole order. It is kind of astounding how quickly our chest freezer started filling up once berry season hit, plus we usually end up with extra soup.)
If the money gods smile upon us, I'm going to be looking into this with more dedication next year, with interest in both lamb and beef, and if we can get someone to share then that'll offer more variety. Garden Variety Cheese also offers a cheese share that we're not that interested in (we just do not eat that much cheese so we could only eat a fraction of it), but we're interested in the lamb that goes along with it if anyone would like all or most of the cheese (it IS great, and is a significant portion of the cheese we do eat, but we just don't eat lots of cheese.) We're too late for the 2010-2011 adopt-a-ewe program but are interested in the 2011-2012 season if we can get someone to buy the cheese portion. That's been costing $500 to keep up one of their ewes for the fall/winter season (when they don't produce milk) and they give $600 worth of cheese and meat in spring/summer. We are also likely to get a lamb next summer and could split that.
I've been dithering because Morris Grassfed Beef is doing a fall harvest, which means that I could get a split half of beef if I act fast. However I think we're just not ready for it this year; I'm a little worried about the cost, too, and the average cost of the beef is a little more than I would pay for grass fed ground beef and other cheap cuts. (Mind you, there'd be lots of yummy steaks in there, but I don't HAVE to eat steak; I can get some tasty braising cuts of lamb and goat for even cheaper than ground beef.) So regretfully I am going to pass until next 2011.
However if anyone on my friends list is terribly excited by the concept, I can offer a few cubic feet of chest freezer space, and would reconsider splitting the split half (40-50 pounds of mixed cuts apiece.) I haven't measured the freezer lately (we have been busily freezing flats of berries and jars of soup) but we could probably store 3 cubic feet and could possibly take more. (Which could get the amount of beef you'd need to take immediately down to about half a shelf, which could realistically be cleared out of a standard freezer.) This would require moving fast and you'd have to be available on the pickup day; it probably works best to do that closest to my house if I'm storing the bulk of it, which might put it on an inconvenient weekday morning. (Or if someone is interested, I'll go out and measure it and see if I can actually store the whole order. It is kind of astounding how quickly our chest freezer started filling up once berry season hit, plus we usually end up with extra soup.)
If the money gods smile upon us, I'm going to be looking into this with more dedication next year, with interest in both lamb and beef, and if we can get someone to share then that'll offer more variety. Garden Variety Cheese also offers a cheese share that we're not that interested in (we just do not eat that much cheese so we could only eat a fraction of it), but we're interested in the lamb that goes along with it if anyone would like all or most of the cheese (it IS great, and is a significant portion of the cheese we do eat, but we just don't eat lots of cheese.) We're too late for the 2010-2011 adopt-a-ewe program but are interested in the 2011-2012 season if we can get someone to buy the cheese portion. That's been costing $500 to keep up one of their ewes for the fall/winter season (when they don't produce milk) and they give $600 worth of cheese and meat in spring/summer. We are also likely to get a lamb next summer and could split that.