Sidehill Farm News
Halves and Quarters of Sidehill Farm Grass-fed Beef
If you've enjoyed the beef you've picked up in the farm shop and are hungry for more, you're in luck! We are offering our flavorful Sidehill Farm grass-fed beef in bulk - at a bulk price! Here's the chance to stock your freezer with a quarter or half beef, (or a whole beef, if you have a big freezer!) - you will receive a wide variety of steaks like tenderloins, rib-eye, NY strips, and sirloin; chuck, sirloin tip, and round roasts, some braising cuts, and ground beef, shanks, stew meat. Organs are available if you want them.
Quarters are $750 for 100 lbs of beef. ($7.50/lb)
Halves are $145o for 200 lbs of beef ($7.25/lb)
And if a half or quarter isn’t enough for your family, we are offering the option to add on extra 30 lb boxes of ground beef at $6/lb ($180 for the box), and soup bones at $2/lb (random weight boxes).
Here at Sidehill Farm, our beef animals finish beautifully on the sweet summer grasses we have here in New England, and don't need to be force-fed corn in a feedlot in order to develop deep flavor and tenderness. The beef is lean, and full of old-time rich, beefy flavor.
The animals that we raise for beef are treated exactly the same as we treat our milking herd. The calves are raised by their mothers or by nurse cows, drinking milk and grazing fresh green grass. Once they are weaned at 5 months, they are out on pasture full time with their herdmates. The beef animals stay with the herd, grazing certified organic pasture in summer and eating organic hay in winter, until they are 28 to 30 months old, when the meat is nicely marbled and tender.
This year, in addition to our Normande beeves, we will also be including Gus and Kyra’s Red Poll beeves in the mix you will receive. Red Polls are a gorgeous chesnut colored heritage breed of cattle that are always polled (hornless). The breed was developed in the early 1800s in Britain, but is now endangered. They are known for the quality of their grass-fed beef - juicy and fine-grained, with excellent flavor. The beef is leaner than Normande beef, but just as tasty! They are also smaller animals than the Normandes, so the Red Poll cuts will be smaller in size, but you will receive the same total number of pounds of beef. So you’ll get both Normande and Red Poll beef in your half or quarter this year!
Other exciting news is that our beef is now officially certified organic by Baystate Organic Certifiers! We have raised our animals to certified organic standards for as long as we have had cows, but now we’ve taken the plunge, done all the paperwork, written the checks, and now can officially say that the beef is certified organic.
Pickup for halves and quarters will be at the farm, on October 12th - the first Saturday in October. The slaughter date is September 12th, and it usually takes about 4 weeks for proper hanging, aging, and then cutting and wrapping.
If the October pickup date doesn't work for you, we will be sending a second round of animals on October 10th, for pickup at the beginning of November, so just let us know if you would prefer the second round! We will be sending excellent, well-finished animals in both rounds.
We will need a $100 deposit will hold your place on the list. Please send us an email with a quick yes or no as soon as possible, and then have a deposit to us by September 16th - you can send it to the farm mailing address:
Sidehill Farm
58 Forget Rd
Hawley, MA 01339
Thank you for all your support for local farms!
And we are about six weeks into an exciting transition for Sidehill Farm. If you have not heard the news, read our previous blog post: http://www.sidehillfarm.net/news/2019/8/16/the-next-adventure-starts-now We are super excited about this new adventure, and we think you will be too!
