Should a Small Farm Own Its Own Butcher? (Or: Why Crypto-Backed Beef Bonds Are Not in Our Future)

Yesterday morning Jackson and I headed out to the butcher.

We had to go first thing on Monday because we'd missed our Friday pickup while making sure the freshly rebuilt brakes on my truck weren't going to kill us coming out of the Catskill Mountains.

I was excited to take the ride, because this was my first trip out there since my daughter Maggie was born in February.

It was good to be back. It also gave me a chance to think through a question I get asked all the time: why don't we own our own butcher?

The team at our butcher have been absolutely amazing to us over the years, and we've got some very cool products in the works that I got to talk over with them.

Which is why I've had something on my mind ever since we left.

The question every growing farm eventually faces

As we grow this business and become increasingly, modestly successful, there's a natural tendency to start thinking thoughts like…..

"Should we own our own butcher facility?"

This has been especially top of mind lately, because there happens to be one for sale locally and the farm gossip mill is absolutely relentless and I can't go a day without someone bringing it up.

There's a lot of factors that make it an idea worth considering: Risk. Proximity. Cost (our butcher is, by far, our biggest vendor).

The crypto-backed beef bond detour I'm choosing to take

Plus, obviously, the worthiest possible economic activity is Deal Making. Sure, producing delicious and nourishing 100% Grass Fed Beef and helping families stock up their freezers is all well and good. But let's be honest. This farm is MAJORLY lacking in our M&A and Financial Engineering functions. We need to be buying this local butcher by issuing crypto-backed beef bonds. We need to be derivatizing them, selling them to a pension fund operating offshore and using the proceeds to bribe regulators. We need to be so obscenely leveraged that the Treasury Secretary takes my calls. If the failure of our business doesn't pose structural risk to the broader US Economy, then what the $@!% was even the point of all this work?

Sorry. Sorry. I got carried away there. Every so often I watch a clip from the Wolf of Wall Street and start thinking bad thoughts.

Anyway….

Why we don't (and won't) own our own butcher

Here's the thing that businesses seem to forget when they get obsessed with growing and vertically integrating or whatever.

When you want to produce a great product, you need to work with the best people.

Our butchers are experts.

They cut meat all day, every day. They have awesome machinery and decades of muscle memory and the hard earned experience of actually running that business.

I am not a Meat Cutting Expert. Jesse is not a Meat Cutting Expert.

We don't know the first thing about running a plant.

Jumping too early at an opportunity (cool as it may be) just because it's there is a great way to take your eye off the ball and wind up in a debt fueled mediocrity spiral.

What we ARE experts at is getting cattle fat: the pasture, the water, the grass, the rotations, the hay, etc.

We are the best at that.

(For the longer story on what "getting cattle fat" actually looks like at our place, here's the 40+ plants our cows actually eat across the grazing season.)

So we leave the cutting part to our butchers. Because they are also a quality obsessed small business who go the extra mile and take the extra time and have earned our loyalty many times over. (I've written before about why we love our butchers, and I stand by every word.)

What our number one concern actually is

Our number one concern will ALWAYS be shipping your family the best beef we possibly can. That's it. Not building a mini meatpacking empire, or attracting investors, or getting press, or vertically integrating to capture every last cent.

This attitude is, of course, why our beef is so good. Sweating our end of the details relentlessly and working with people who are the best at what they do.

(For the deeper version on why dry-aging at a small butcher matters so much, here's the difference between grass-fed and grass-finished beef.)

If you'd like to taste the result

Right now we are reserving beef shares for August. Our pastures are booming, our cattle are getting fat, and today is a great day to reserve a Beef Share with a free chest freezer here.

P.S. They are going to start making us custom sausages, so I am working on sourcing spice blends made from the cleanest ingredients. This isn't super straightforward, most sausage blends are filled with preservatives and junk, so if you have a flavor request let me know so I can do some research!