We Harvested a Year's Worth of BEEF (on a Wednesday)

Reviewing the Brandon Sheard. It's called Beef Slaughter On Farm featuring Brandon Sheard. Getting a review on how to do this. This is a 410, very powerful gun. 410 shotgun with slug. What's your job today?

I'm watching Henry and helping Ellie with chores.

Oh, that's right. Yes. Okay.

And cooking.

I see. Well, why'd you get up so early? Because I like having a lot of time before I have to do chores. And what's your job today, John? Uh, to help you guys butcher the steers. Josiah, what's your job? Do whatever you say. You know how to process the steer? No. Oh well, you gotta stay right by me then. Your job? To help and do whatever you say. Okay, I got that on tape. Austin, what's your job? To tell the story. There you go, you're the R-rated version. YouTube won't let us show any blood, sorry about that. Y'all ready to kill? I think we can see. All right, boys, the plan is get one down, get it over here, get it skinned, and then start to hang it. Once we start to hang it to get the guts out and have it, then we can bring another one. We don't want to kill two at the same time because we don't know how long this first one will take. We want to stay fresh, but we want to keep as many people working as possible. Some of you who are standing around can keep blood away with constantly spraying. Any questions, comments, derogatory remarks? You want to, uh, kill him and then bleed him, and while he's bleeding, get the track loader over here? Decide you'll be the track loader guy. Let's come right here. Remember, Stud Muffin rolled down the hill.

He's rolling though like crazy.

Okay, okay. I guess there's not much we can do to prevent that. Let's identify who we're gonna get. So that little guy, that little— the dirt— the bigger Jersey down there, okay? That's who we're killing first. Don't let me kill anybody else.

That one's—

that one's the boss. Ready? Messiah, you start the track loader. Like, you're laying on the alfalfa. Gonna flop all the way through. Let's get the forks and some chains on the forks. Um, Jonah, you grab the chains. Are the emotions different today compared to— Oh, there's no, no, no, no shred of tears for these steers. Stud muffin we had for 6— that's a good question because I choked up on Stud. Flat. Okay, boys, boys, you're gonna have to— you're gonna have to kind of get his legs out of the way.

Great.

So much easier than stabbing them. Careful. Oh, we went right into the bone. That's a tender— so sharp. Oh, it is?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's all tendons and ligaments. Yeah, look, we're gonna break this easy. So last time it took us, what, 30 minutes to get his leg off there? I reviewed that, uh, I reviewed the Abones Plus video this morning and realized I need to cut from the armpit sort of direction and right below that knot. It made all the difference. First one down. It is going so much smoother. Like, it just took 20 minutes to get both legs off instead of just one leg. Watching that video this morning, just nailing the right spot made all the difference. Starting to get bright. How do you think it's going, Jonah? Fine. Sam, how are you at water duty? Keeping it hosed, keeping it clean. Skin out of the way. Cut it out of the front first and then let's cut it out back here. Pretty sure we'd pull that barrier off of it. Didn't seem quite right to eat that. I think we'll just get it out of the way when we cook it. This isn't in our tradition, you you know. So we're learning all how to eat this kind of stuff on our own and the internet. You can make a bad mistake here and cut too high here, and then you don't have anything to hold on to. We're going to hold on to this in a little bit. Let me get you started. So see how this, this leg runs here? Oh, you're on a run parallel with that. Yeah, this isn't right. We did it. No, you're right. No, this isn't— this is exactly— we're gonna hang right here, bro. You're so right. I burnt trust, man. I've gone through some trust. That won't break now. It's fine, I got it. Look at that, so much better this time. What was that, man? Just the tendon juice, I guess. Today might be the day we cross the threshold, Jonah. Austin, is that not satisfying or what? Compared to stud, we're gonna get his cheeks out. Put that in a taco too. Well, that one actually needs to be be braised. That's a little tiny cheek. I don't know if that's worth it. All right, we're doing something even if it's wrong. It's just not much cheek there. We keep talking about stud mutton. Well, we harvest this big bull and he was huge and everything was just harder and we were rusty. That's better. I like— that's still moving. It's twitching. Well, Winnie's not gonna have to eat for a while. Maybe Royal either. Okay, we are already hanging in. It's only been 1 hour since we started crushing it, gentlemen. Let's start with the leg. Next time we're gonna skin starting with the legs. Guys, this is filthy. Hey, this is our meat at this point, gentlemen. He saw this while he was down here. This chest bone, wherever this is. You cut flesh with your knife and bone with your bone saw. Who's taking this to Vandale? You or, uh, Annie? How's it going so far, boys? Great. John's dove right in, man. John, you ever done this before? Yes, with stud muffin. Okay, how much easier on a scale of 1 to 10 is this than stud muffin? Probably, um, Sam says 5, 6. Yeah, somewhere around there. Okay, because when he was bloated, it just like pulled. You couldn't cut almost anything. Yeah, and look, this guy, his guts are already falling out. Remember with stud, you can't go any higher. Did you skin your feet? Yeah, I have Gideon skinning the feet. Did you find us a hatchet? Can you find us a hatchet? Ready for the second kill? Smiley won, and Lily, off to the chores. Yep, very important task.

Horse won and Smiley won.

The what one?

Horse won.

I want to show you my shirt. Burial is the name of a brewery.

Yeah.

And so like the bum, like this is appropriate for today.

Did you mean that?

Intentionally, yeah. I picked it out. Yeah.

All right, of course.

Lily and I are sweating a little bit. She was really smart. We were having trouble herding. They weren't really wanting to follow us over to the next paddock, and so Lily was really smart. She said, well, what if we got some alfalfa? They were following her, and, uh, we got them over. But then when we turned and we looked back, Vanilla's calf had broken through the fence because we have it turned off so we could get in and manipulate the fences. And finally got them separated. And we're ready to start milking.

She loves her alfalfa.

We just killed the second steer, got him in. First one took us 2 hours, that's with the kill. I think we can do it. Less time on this one. Don? Yeah? You work like you play soccer. Thanks. Your whole heart's in it, buddy. You go hard. Just how you want to get the electricity back onto the steers? Austin, this actually seems doable now. Yeah, 2 hours, we're gonna have this thing in the barrel. The next one will take less than 2 hours because this was a bit of a warm-up. Got the hacksaw feature at Earth's Gym. How's it feel, buddy? No, no need to train today. Soap and water. He's my gopher. You don't like being a gopher?

No.

For the young one, it's the gopher. Looks so much better. Did y'all wash your hands before handling this? Yes. Okay, now we cut it. They don't mind if we, if we have— if we quarter it. Let's quarter it. Watch, and it'll fit. Watch, it'll fit better, and we'll get it in there. We'll be able to put ice. Look, do you see who this is?

Papa.

Yes, but it's gonna just fold in there and just kind of sit up there, Jerry. Guys, we gotta do a better job. Look at this. Hold on. What in the heck? What? Look at all this dirt. Look at this, it's nasty. I think that's from the chain right there. They don't— yeah, hold that chain off. They don't clean, they don't clean this for us. Got them on ice. Oh, don't touch that, that's clean.

Your hand's clean? No.

All right. Go get us some sort of axe or hatchet or something to cut off those hooves. Hey, little man, you want to come silly kill another steer? You're just in time. Look, they take no clothes. They live in the moment. We just did this trick twice right in front of them. Walk up the hill so then they'll follow you downhill. And they'll be facing down. You could even put it on this rock right here. We're getting a big guy now. Maybe he has seen that. Any more feet? And he's probably— yeah, and he's probably not as hungry.

He's gotten the most of all this.

How do you get your kids used to butchering? Well, wear them while you do Do it. Henry's seen countless butcherings already, haven't you, Henry? You're used to it, huh?

Everybody is outside. They've been outside for a really long time. Um, they went out at 5:45. I woke up and saw them in the morning before they left, but Henry was still asleep, so I stayed inside with him, and he just woke up, got outside. Himself, so then I was able to get myself together to get outside as well. Henry is in the stage where he wants to wear the same shirt over and over, so that means I need to get into the stage where when he takes that shirt off, it goes straight to the laundry.

Good morning, beautiful one. He's excited about that. We are doing one. Number two is getting— Jonah just finished gutting it. Number three is being Scanned. Scanning is the bottleneck. It's what's taking the longest out of everything. It's only 10 till 9. Holy moly, and we've already pretty close to getting that second one. We're gonna wash it real good, particularly the arms. Don't spray, don't spray, John.

That is potent smelling. It is definitely the smell of butchering. 10 years ago, let's see, 10 years ago Jonah was 6, so we had a 6, 4, 2-year-old. 10 years ago, a day like this wouldn't have been possible. Now my two boys who are 16 and 14 are doing a lot of the work And Justin is doing the work too, so it's like we have 3 men. The season that we were in, the season of small children. And right now it is like 8:30 in the morning. They started at 5:45 and they already have one completely done. One is about to be strung up and then they just killed the third one. Like, they're gonna be done by like noon. Which is like crazy because like one used to take us all day because we had little kids and I was on little kid duty and on food duty and on house duty and all the duties that come with being a mom with little kids. And Justin was on harvest duty. So I just say that like if you're not in this season of having older kids who are capable, you'll get there. Because I honestly couldn't see it at the time, but now that I'm here, I'm like, wow, this is great!

That was a good idea. I believe Austin had the idea. Let's bring the other cow up. Let's start on it right next door. And we're just finishing the touches on steer 2. The guts are coming out easy or hard? Hard till just now. You didn't bust it, did you? Try not to bust it. Take your time. No, you didn't. No, you didn't. No, you better be kidding me. He hit the last one and you spend more time cleaning than gutting. It happens though. I certainly hit studs. It's a good looking dark litter right there. How y'all going to do it without getting it dirty? Austin. Austin got a good grip on it, I don't think, does he? They want to put it all in these barrels, which there's room, there's room. Jonah wants to get in the truck all in one pallet. I would have maybe just done those, but hey, got to let them do. Is it going to fall over when he cuts it, John? Yeah, I'm holding it. Okay, here goes. Ready, Austin? What's Austin doing? Keep— oh, you gotta keep that. Oh, see, sorry, the bone. Sam, you weren't holding anything. Oh, it was holding this. This guy's— Austin's getting tired. Okay, we gotta rinse that. Now we're getting it all dirty. Are you guys actually grabbing it this time? Jonah, now we're getting all the outside of the barrel. Try not to say I told you so because I let them do it. How about we get these other two barrels that are here and ready to go? Really? A couple people people on each one and we'll both lift off same time.

No, guys, you guys hold it like a—

What you want to do? All right, you ready?

Let's work smarter and not harder, you know what I'm saying?

Come on, just do it. They outvoted me too, Annie. There we go. You've got to put— you got to put that in first. Try not to get it on the side of the—

the—

the— the— pouring rain. We got them all in the barrels. Ball-sized holes from that hailstorm. Look at that, we finished just in time for the rain. We did 3 steers in the time we did— well, half the time that we did one Stud Muffin, partly because we were rusty, but mostly because Stud Muffin is probably 3 times as big as one of these stairs. We finished out there. We've got plenty of time this afternoon to process the good stuff— the liver, the heart, the tongue. We got some cheeks in there. I'm gonna see— we're supposed to have tacos tonight. I'm gonna see if we can't have beef tongue tacos since that's a thing. You know how to make beef tongue tacos? Pretty soon we're gonna grind some heart and liver together to mix in with our spaghettis or Mexicans. You want some fresh? You want to just fry some fresh?

I don't like fried liver.

Really? No. It's good for you. I don't like it either, but it's so good. It's the superfood. It's the best food in the world for you. On today's episode of Burn It Up Cooking Show, cow tongue. Do I leave the rough tongue on? That's what we gotta do. We remove the skin later after it's cooked for a while. Okay, we put our grinder together. Find the lid for this, bro. Onions peeled. 2 tablespoons salt. We need bay leaves and peppercorns. Off 600 feet to our pantry. Our pantry is in a shipping container right now while we build our homestead dream house. Do we even have bay leaves? We have peppercorns. That's one thing we need. I don't know if we have enough. There's only 2 in here, but how am I gonna get you on here? Come on, he wants to go. Come on. Pretty soon the homestead house will be done and we'll just walk into our big pantry right next to the kitchen. Put the rest of those bay leaves in there. Got in the water. Let's boil them now. Beef tacos on simmer for 3 hours to be done just in time before dinner. Let's do this liver and heart. My idea here is— Gideon, you're kind of in the way here. All right, you kind of are the way. We cut up liver and heart chunks, and we're going to kind of feed them in at the same time. Can you give me a liver in that bigger bowl?

Can you get me a liver?

I'd roll your sleeves up. Okay. All right, are you two ready?

Yeah!

We got our cheeks in a bag. We got this simmering. I'm gonna turn it down a little bit. We've got liver and heart, so get in. Put in 2 livers and 1 heart. That'll give us a good mix. 1 liver, 1 heart. 1 heart, 1 liver.

Yes!

All right, keep it going. We're running it through a meat grinder. It does almost come out— well, it comes out liquid, which comes in handy for making bark. Gideon, you take a tray. Lily, you take a tray. I'll take a tray. There's 4 there. We already got 1 there, tray in the freezer. That should do us till the fall, till we have 2 more steers. Hey, you got your legs on backwards. Are you really switching them?

Yeah.

Okay, other foot, other foot. No, that's right, you're right. Got our 3 trays. They'll freeze flat. Dylan, don't do that. Put that back. Why are we already getting into stuff? They'll burn. Just making our normal Mexican meal for the less adventurous folks. Would you eat tongue tacos?

No.

Remember I was wondering about that. Rough tongue. Look at that, peels right off. Cut the weird stuff off. That was pretty easy. Peeled it or cut it off. We got that. We gotta part it now. Cut this into chunks. Not tasty. It's the tongue, darling. Don't worry. Well, I'm gonna make it tasty.

Well, we have two meats.

You're gonna actually try the tongue? All right. Pressure's on then. I don't think Beauty's gonna like the texture. It's super soft and tender. What do you think of your daughter making a Mexican meal every week?

She's fabulous. I mean, I look forward to when I can take over and I don't have to do—

ow! I don't see any tongue on there.

I know, I didn't get any tongue because I didn't know where it was.

It's right there.

I'll have to come back.

You weren't looking very hard.

Well, I think somebody was standing.

I'll have to come back. You ain't coming back. No, I'm not.

You're not?

And are you eating the cow tongue? Okay, I want to say usually I underestimate the job, but it always pays to aim for the impossible.

It also pays to start at 5:45 AM. Yeah, because by 8 o'clock you had one in the bucket, one down.

Good work, everybody. Must be good. Not one person answered me.

What did you say?