Description
You do not want to miss this unique class where you have hand’s on opportunity to learn how to DIY Beef Butcher at home if you:
- forget to call your butcher and therefore have to feed your beef several months longer than planned.
- like your money and are ready to own a lifelong essential skill instead of real estate on someone else’s calendar
- want to ensure the beef in your freezer is the same one you raised
- want to speak knowledgeably with your butcher about how you’d like your beef cut
- are concerned about your independence and food security
- appreciate life changing experiences.
This two day learning experience will introduce you to the basics of how to process a beef for your own table. You won’t need a lot of expensive, single use equipment. You’ll need a couple of knives, a saw, a chain hoist or tractor, and some know-how.
.The first day of the beef butcher starts with how to kill a grass-fed Hereford steer. You’ll help skin it, remove the organs, quarter, and hang it for aging (as much as you’re prepared to be involved). We’ll talk about safety and equipment as well as technique. In the afternoon we’ll start breaking down quartered beef that has hung and aged for 2-3 weeks already. When we get all that done, we’ll enjoy a dinner with the “offal” parts to experience how to enjoy the less familiar cuts of the beef. This is the part of every Anyone Can Farm Experience class that everyone loves: good food, good company, and the camaraderie of a hard job accomplished.
The second day starts at 9 a.m. with coffee. We’ll spend the day watching and doing to break the quarters into primals into cuts ready to package and freeze. We’ll enjoy a good lunch of, of course, beef. The animal we cut will be a steer we hung two or three weeks prior. We anticipate being done by late afternoon.
Plus, you get to actually do the beef butcher and ask all your questions in real time.
For the investment of what you’ll pay to butcher 1.5-2 cows, you’ll get:
- One and a half days of personalized instruction in a lifelong essential homestead skill
- A handbook with diagrams to help remind you of the specifics later
- Lunch and dinner on Saturday with the Baker’s Green Acres crew
- Access to the Baker’s Green Acres farm to see how we pasture our beef, raise our pigs, and to ask all your questions
- A Beef Butcher’s Box including a cut safe glove, essential knives, and apron.
Total cost of the class is $747. This non refundable deposit of $300 will reserve your spot at the cutting table, with the balance due at the class.
Lodging is available on farm for campers, in nearby McBain, Lake City, and Cadillac. Airbnb also has many hosts in the area.
About your instructor:
Devon Ehlers is experienced in European and traditional American methods of meat curing and sausage making. (Brine/ wet curing, dry curing, salt packing, deli meats and emulsified sausages, smoked sausages, smoked meats and canned meats). He has spent over 11 years in the food and beverage industry while getting a small business administration and management degree from Northwood University, majoring in entrepreneurship. During that time he also worked as a butcher and charcuterie crafter at Randuno in Traverse City, Michigan and is currently the Food and Beverage director and Butcher at Traverse City Golf and Country Club. . Devon has extensive experience with home kill slaughter and butcher for lamb, pork, poultry and beef as the owner and operator of Varken Valley Farms where he raises Katahdin sheep and heritage breed pigs. .
