Eyeing North Cascades Meats–A Farmers’ Cooperative

A few notes from a meeting I attended in early August, on the newly-forming farmers’ cooperative, North Cascade Meats (also on Facebook here). We have very limited options for USDA slaughter in our area, which makes it nearly impossible to sell meat by the cut to consumers and restaurants. This group intends to change that, by creating a cooperatively-owned USDA slaughter option.

Currently, I only sell lamb on the hoof, to either customers who have it processed by a local custom-exempt butcher, or to customers who can do their own processing. This works for me right now, as I don’t produce that many butcher lambs, and they all sell out. But looking ahead, I am interested in other channels in which to sell lamb, as I increase the size of my herd. And, it would be nice to be able to give out, or sell, samples to people considering buying my lamb. Thus, I have been watching this group with interest for quite some time.

 

The Math of Live Weight to Frozen Cuts in Lamb

I frequently have people ask me how to figure out live- versus hanging-weight, and how much they are paying per pound for their final cuts of meat. It can be very confusing figuring out the whole “weight thing”. I worry that consumers will feel misled and be frustrated if we aren’t transparent with them about how it works.

Case in point- here is an anonymous post on craigslist from a week or two ago, from an obviously disappointed lamb customer. I have no idea who this is, nor do I know the two farmers to whom he/she is referring (but I know from the descriptions neither one is me!).

A lady advertised her lamb weighs 110-120 lbs and the actual hanging weight was 75lbs according to the butcher’s written receipt, and I received about 40 lb of meat. The second time, the other farm processed the whole lamb for me. They bagged and wrapped the box and put in the trunk for me. It weights only 40 lbs from a 100 lb lamb, and visually inspected after I got home – all four leg meat were missing. Buyer beware, so I learned.

So, how does it really work? This person’s example is actually a great one!

 

Lamb Checkoff

The sheep industry in the United States has been on a long decline. Sheep were popular here since the Pilgrims landed, but post World War II, the inventory started to tank. And has been ever since. In recent years, components of the Farm Bill have invested in figuring out why, and how to reverse the trend. This National Academy of Sciences consensus report, written in 2008, outlines an analysis of the problem and indicators of where things look to head in the future.

The Lamb Board was established in 2002, and has been investing significant effort in branding lamb (not the hot iron kind, but rather the marketing kind) to help it make a comeback. Given the beef industry’s powerful Beef, it’s what’s for dinner campaign, at some point, somebody must have realized lamb needs the same marketing oomph. Plus some, because it’s so far off the radar of most Americans, we can’t just encourage them to eat more of it; we really need to re-introduce Americans to the meat to get them to start eating it.

Of course this initiative needs to be paid for. So a law was introduced to tax sheep at the time of slaughter. It’s called the Lamb Checkoff. The beef industry also has a Checkoff program.

 

Ag Tidbits in the News

This and that which I read recently and thought was interesting…

 

More Lamb 101

I had forgotten to write more about the WSU Lamb 101 class until now. After we watched the Halal slaughter demonstration and toured the facility on Friday, we want to Sumner High School for the rest of the class. First, I have to say, I was really impressed with Sumner and their high school! I’m not sure I’ve ever been to the town of Sumner, and honestly, I unconsciously assumed it was some kind of scrubby, low-income suburb of Puyallup. Not so!