As well as selling the pork from the last of our Tamworths this month, the time has now come to start thinking about selling our grass-fed Dexter beef for the first time as well.
It’s been a tougher time than I’d expected but our first Dexter steer went off to slaughter at the start of November. The difference with keeping cattle is that they are around for much longer than with our pigs and as a result there is more time to get attached to them.
Despite this we knew what had to be done and a plan eventually came together. The first one had to go off this year which should help to reduce the damage to the fields over the coming winter with one less set of hooves out there. Our second Dexter steer will be kept through until late spring or early summer next year which helps to prevent overloading our freezers with too much meat at once.
The Dexter breed is a native breed which is quite happy with the British climate so ours live fairly naturally and are not housed over the winter. It’s reassuring to know that they have not had (or needed) any special feed or antibiotics during their lives – just grass or hay plus our North Pennines spring water of course.
We have high hopes for the results as we have been told by many people that this will be “the best beef we’ve ever tasted”. This will have quite a lot to live up to though because our pork has got some excellent feedback this year but I’m expecting the beef to be just as good if not better.
The beef will be back by the end of November and, as with our Tamworth pork, the plan is to sell beef selection boxes in 2 different sizes.
