My steer was around 1000 lbs live weight when I sent him and we got 502 lbs of meat back. And with the 28 day hang the meat was incredibly tender. So the longer hang time paid off for us.
@@LedgemereHeritageFarm yeah . Have been raising lamb for a few years and decided to raise a bottle calf for the first time to gauge how difficult it would be to see if it was a viable option for our farm . Like Evan we do a little of this and a little of that.
I just subscribed to your channel a few days ago and I’ve got to tell you your videos are excellent I love the detail and the slow pace and everything, you definitely have a talent for this and it is really cool to see your farm develop , thank you and keep up the good work please !
I always enjoy hearing your breakdown of the costs and how things went. They are real helpful to me in showing me what to keep track of personally in my own enterprises.
Always good to see your friendly, smiling face on a new video, Mr. Evan. I perceive the time is coming when all of that stored food will serve you very well ...
You know exactly what went into the animals and how they were treated whilst alive. Just knowing that makes them taste better. Traceability, Farm to Fork. Worth every penny.
I don’t see any reason to buy special pig feed just to keep track of feed costs, when you know what you’ve got works for all your critters. You know how much you’ve bought (weight wise).. just put a clipboard with a tally sheet next to your supplies and put hash marks for every 5 gallon pail used (for each animal group). Weigh a full pail of feed and use it as an approximation to figure your future or past costs (since you fed them every day x times)… it’s not exact, but should suffice. Don’t waist time and money buying “special feed” when you’re going to get the best price buying bulk corn and processing/mixing it yourself. You’ve already proven it works!
We had a pig farm in the 1990's. Back then the industry average was about 600 pounds of feed to take a 40 pound pig to market weight at about 240 pounds. In those days lean pork was more desirable, I believe market hogs today are much heavier. We never butchered our hogs we always had that done at a local processor. We sold lots of live hogs to customers where we normally delivered the hog to the processor. We had one customer who always had the whole hog processed into sausage. Thanks for sharing this with us.
More talkative than your usually vids maybe but highly informative. The hoof weight to finished product and such was interesting for starters. And personally I never even knew there was such a thing as a fridge/freezer option in the same unit - haven't purchased either in a few years. So yeah thanks for the info and another great video.
Great job!! You sure are going to be very well stocked up. You forgot to touch upon the fact the the frig/freezer will be great to have it on frig mode for the meat to rest once you start butchering your own meat. You can do that for the chickens next time you process them 👍 Happy for you both Corpus Christi TX
Thanks for the video Evan. Really appreciate the day to day life on your lifestyle block. You come across as a real down to earth decent person. Not the typical loud brash in your face American that we see and hear in the media here in Australia. Keep those videos coming Mate ( Australian slang = friend)
That pork shoulder roast will take a long time to smoke but well worth it. It just did 2 roasts and froze a lot of the smoked pork in one pound packages to eat during the winter when it’s too cold to be outside. This past summer, we purchased a 1/4 cow from a local farmer and the meat is fabulous. The average price of the beef was $5 a pound and we haven’t been disappointed. We are considering half a pig next year.
The pigs turned out really well for you and Rebecca and now you are ready for the winter with plenty of pork and the beef is coming, so you will have home grown beef, pork, vegetables and fruits in the freezer. I like the way you have done the pole barn, the dog kennel looks really good and I know the dogs will love it and the rest is coming along also.
Thanks Evan and Rebecca for sharing with us, so glad you both are doing so well with your work on the farm. Stay safe and keep up the good work and videos. Fred. 🙏🏻🙏🏻👍🏻👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻✋🏻✋🏻
Great video, very informative, thank you. You remind me of my other favorite farmer YT channel called Just a Few Acres Farm. Pete in central NYS, has great information and brings joy…you do too…thank you.
JudithB We enjoyed having our own meat from the farm, processed the way we wanted! We had to shuffle our current freezers to get sale turkeys in, plan to cook and can 2 next week! I think we are going to concentrate on hams and pork roasts after Thanksgiving and fill more jars.
I have a steer that I will be sending to freezer camp in September. I am hoping he is not too terribly big by then because I have one old freezer and plan on getting another one soon. I am hoping to can a some of the meat. I have gotten a side of beef before and it filled my freezer.
Example: Bought 3 different types of feed and mixed them together for all the animals. Total cost $800 for 1500 lbs. Pig ate 2 lbs.. per day for the first month, 3 lbs. the second month,, 4 lbs. the third month and 5 lbs. the fourth month for a total of 420 lbs. over 120 days. $800 x 420/1500 = $224 to feed the pig or about $1.87 per day. Or, you could grow turnips and feed those to the pigs.
Informative video for sure. I can't say its one of my favorites but it really is a good one to learn from. Kind of like needing that one college course that you have to have but it's not the most exciting subject... lol We're getting ready to move out to our new property in a few months and will probably be taking a similar journey as you guys, dipping our toes into different things to see what we can and can't do or, more like, what we want and don't want to do. Thanks.
Hi..... Evan nice to see you love watching your videos I really enjoy, thank you for showing your video homestead chicken Duck Goose farmer garden 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋 👕🐔🐓🐥🐕🐈🐐🐖🐄🐝🐠🌱🌺🌹🌿🌻🌼🌸🍀🌷🏡🎥👍👍👍
WOW that is alot of meat and all i got is very hungry { lol} i think there is a high number of people doing just what you folks did because then u know what u are really eating.. great videos...
Thanks for sharing. The meat looks great! The bacon looks like it will be a great breakfast delight. It seems like you will save a lot with all that meat and the cost of things going up.
As always a Great Video , its great that you look after the family in the process , and YES this is heaps cheaper than buying from the store , Packet meat from the store is expensive , at least you know what your getting is super fresh and great quality , again just an awesome way of life , it aint easy , but definitely worth it , a huge Hello from Perth Australia
Look at all that meat, it´s very very good to have this for the winter to come, and also know where your meat comes from, nothing extra weird in those, wonderful, I liked to know this even that the costs doesnt match in my country, it is still interesting :)
at our Krogers store in the Houston area, the pork roasts were $0.89/lb last week. Yesterday, we bought beef ribeye steaks at $5.97/lb and we bought a ham and got free turkey at Brookshire Bros grocery. 3 weeks ago I dropped two nuisance feral hogs but I left them for the buzzards. we have a bad feral hog problem in East Texas.
chest freezer with extra temp. control to cut off at 33 deg and on at 36 deg will save a lot of money over an upright freezer in upfront cost and in running cost.
Evan, that is a good thing. I prefer larger hogs to butcher. You get larger hams, picnics and shoulders. The upside to me is you can have one ham cut into steaks, as well as one shoulder, plus have the ones from the other side cut in half. I bought a half a hog at the locker plant this year, I ended up mostly with bacon and sausage, my friend did not want any shoulder roasts, and I forgot to have the picnic cured and smoked. If they did the jowl, they marked it as bacon.
FYI: Fridges and Freezers need to be kept in a heated or cooled space between 50-80 degrees F, recommended to be 60-65. Unconditioned spaces are not recommended because the fridge/freeze has to work harder to keep things cool. Otherwise you are wasting energy, found that out the hard way. Read the manual...
If you know that you are going to have to put the fridge or freezer in an unheated/uncooled space, look for appliances marked as "garage ready". They are set up to operate in wider temperature ranges than a traditional fridge or freezer.
Good advice! And I can't eat commercially produced ag products (Roundup makes me ill) and was so lucky to find a farmer who produces pasture raised, chemical-free beef (I get milk from his dairy) and now his brother is producing pastured pork. I had to buy a freezer, too! It is now almost half-full of beef and I have yet to pick up our half pig! Hope it fits! And the price per pound was much less than what I would pay at my organic food market - so I have not only more meat, but cuts that I could not afford to buy. This amount of meat will last us a year (or more).
We have been raising our own beef for many years. We prefer to take ours strait off of grass to butcher. Seems to have better taste than feeding out for more weight.
Thanks Evan for taking the time to make the cost breakdowns. I can't think of any other homesteader doing this as consistently as y'all. Could you estimate how much your grocer costs are because of everything self-produced? Maybe a rough estimate of savings for what you don't spend on groceries. Your whole 'system' of getting to where y'all are from your first vlogs has been a great inspiration for a DIY lifestyle. Liked to ask for hunting vlog if your inclined to, for this season, just another harvestable resource from the farm. Happy Thanksgiving!
So , you must have a Whole house generator to fall back ON , in case you lose power ! Otherwise , your frozen meat would spoil as well as anything else that was frozen !
If the freezer is full and kept at near zero degrees, the items will stay frozen for a few days if it loses power….if you keep it closed. This is just my personal experience with basic chest freezers.
That was interesting, nice job! You could just weigh a 5 gal. bucket of corn, and keep track of how many you feed your pigs for an end-of-year, per-pound cost of the feed.
Chest freezers are more economical to use whatever country or are you then stand-up ones you can store more food in them specially the big ones I think you need to look into that
Yes, chest freezers are more economical and store more food. But uprights are easier to find what you looking for and take up less floor space. They each have their advantages and disadvantages. Just depends on what you want. If you want a cheap way to store lots of frozen food, the chest freezer is the way to go.
If you want tender meat cut the running space the animal has for the last few weeks of life. The more exercise space they have the harder their muscle stay, Like working out at a gym and your muscles stay hard, same goes for any animal. Love your web site. My husband has followed your poll shed build and made a shop in the middle of ours that's heated. Although yours is beautiful in the building site with the rest of your farm.
I have never heard of a convertible freezer. I'm just curious what brand and model your new one is. I deffently need one. Thanks for sharing. Big thumbs up..........
If you like shredded pork, you might consider canning that pork shoulder. 1 pint per pound and it comes out absolutely delicious. I can mine with nothing else in the jar, just pork. It's great for tacos, pulled pork sandwiches, you name it. Plus it frees up room in your freezer.
