KOOKOOLAN FARMS
A small, diversified family farm in Yamhill, Oregon, committed to organic farming practices, rotational grazing, grass-based animal husbandry, humane animal handling practices, and producing the healthiest, best-tasting, premium poultry in Oregon.
TURKEY. We raise Red Bourbon heritage breed turkeys, genetically very close to wild turkeys. For 2012 we have only 150 birds, only for Thanksgiving (although obviously you could buy at Thanksgiving and freeze for Christmas). You will be stunned by the taste and texture difference. “Oh! So this is why our forefathers invented Thanksgiving!” Your typical frozen grocery store butterball turkeys are 12-16 weeks old at the time of slaughter. Red Bourbons are 40 weeks old at the time of harvest. Red Bourbons can fly, and prefer to sleep high in the trees at night – even mature males that way more than 20 pounds. Red Bourbons are active foragers, requiring extensive grazing areas. All of these factors make them more expensive to raise, but there is no better meat for Thanksgiving.
Even animals that have been beautifully raised can turn out to taste terrible if the animal is loaded with stress hormones at the time of slaughter -- for example, if the lamb jumps over the retaining fence and races around the pasture for 20 minutes while being chased by a man with a gun – it happens. The animal is loaded with adrenaline and stress hormones, and the meat is loaded with lactic acid, and no matter how well the animal was raised or how carefully the meat is processed, it’s going to be tough and taste terrible. The only responsible action is to reschedule the kill for a different day.
Another scenario is meat that is well raised and well slaughtered, but poorly processed, for example, having ground meat with lots of bone chips in it. This story was told to me by a well-known local
Another scenario is taking an exceptionally good carcass to a disreputable processor who exchanges carcasses – a prime beef carcass can be sold to restaurants who pay extra under the table for the best meat, and a subprime carcass swapped to the original farmer. It happens, farmers talk about it, and talk about which are the most trustworthy processors.
There is no substitute for raising the animal yourself, being present at the time of the kill, being willing to say “this animal is not dying today” if the conditions are not right, and having personal trust in the best local processor. If you can’t do that yourself, you have to hire a farmer to do it for you. You have to have enough trust and rapport with your farmer to be able to ask detailed questions, look the farmer in the eye, and have a good feeling that you’re getting honest answers. There is tremendous variability in the quality of all foods available in all venues, and although high price does not guarantee higher quality, it is absolutely true that the best quality foods do cost more to produce.
All our large animals are pasture-raised and pasture-killed. Our beef cattle and lambs are 100% pasture-raised, meaning they not only “have access” to pasture, they truly spend their whole lives on pasture. They are never in a feedlot, never trucked live to slaughter, and never in contact with any herd other than the small herd they're raised in. We use a licensed mobile slaughtering service that drives right onto the pasture where the animals are; we do not move the animals prior to slaughter. I personally inspect the organ meats of every large animal we slaughter, and so I can assert with absolute personal confidence that the animal was perfectly healthy at the time of slaughter. I am personally present at every slaughter to make sure the animal is calm and the kill is both humane and hygienic. We place our priorities in meat production on quality of life for the animal; sustainable management of soils and pasture; eliminating or minimizing the stress of capture and transportation; a swift, gentle and fearless ending; safe, clean and minimal processing; and a complete absence of chemicals and medications.
We worked 340 full-time days in 2009, typically 12 hours a day. This is almost twice the hours worked in a year compared to when I was a full-time engineering manager at Intel. We have 70% of our net worth, retirement, and savings assets married to our farm business in capital risk. Our income, savings, net worth, home, business ownership, retirement plans, and family stability are all dependent upon the whims of snowstorms, droughts, flooding, predators, poultry disease, and consumer demand – and this is true for every farm family everywhere in
We encourage you to read our customer testimonials, our LinkedIn endorsements, and our sustainability practices.
Our free gift to you with each share of beef or lamb (limit one book per family per year) is “The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook” by Shannon Hays. We are including this book with each share this year – without raising our beef or lamb prices from 2009 – because it contains so much information for getting the best value and enjoyment from your farm meat purchase, including information about the superiority of its nutrition and environmental impact; the differences in cooking, including the importance of lower temperature roasting, faster steak finishing, and using your meat thermometer; great recipes; and great descriptions of cuts and how to use everything in your share. I couldn’t write a better book than this one. It retails for $23 and is also available in our farmstore for separate purchase for $21.
BEEF. Our beef is $4.50 per pound hanging weight, and available down to the smallest share we can legally sell: 1/8th carcass (about 50-70 lbs finished; please see the attached Oregon State University publication to understand the laws regarding buying custom-processed meat direct from your farmer). This is a smaller portion better meeting the needs of many of our urban customers. For more details to understand hanging and finished weights and more details about included cuts, keep reading to the bottom of this page.
Our beef share typically includes about 35 to 40% ground beef (packaged in 1.5- or 2-pound packages), 30% roasts (cut three to four pounds each), 20% steaks (1-inch thick and two to a package), and 10-15% assorted other cuts (ribs, shanks, stew meat, fajita meat, round steaks, etc). If you are ordering ¼ or ½ carcass, you may specify your own cutting instructions.
Our beef is raised on a diet of maybe 98% lifetime calories of grass plus hand-fed, locally grown corn during the last 30 days and during cold months when less grass is available in the pastures. The animals enjoy the corn as a treat, and learning to come to humans for the corn also contributes to their very low fear and stress at the time of slaughter. During cold months when pasture grass is of lesser quality, we also supplement with grass hay. Our beef is not certified organic, but the pasture they are raised on has never been sprayed with herbicides or pesticides nor chemically fertilized in more than 30 years. Our corn is locally grown, non-GMO corn but it is not certified organic. The custom processing plant that we use is not certified organic but meat is minimally processed with no chemicals or detergents of any kind are added to your meat, and meat is not irradiated. We will raise only 22 beefs in 2011. NEXT AVAILABLE February 2012, reserving now.
LAMB. 1/2 lamb is about 25 pounds depending on the weight of the individual animal, $8/lb hanging weight corresponding to about $8.50/lb finished weight, and you get everything on the left or right side of the animal. We have our lambs butchered into small chops and steaks, with two small leg roasts and one small shoulder roast. You'll also get a little ground lamb and a little stew meat. You may order your half with or without the liver, heart, and kidneys. Our lambs are raised on a grass pasture that has never been sprayed or fertilized with any artificial anything in more than 30 years. Our 100% grass-fed lambs eat exclusively grass, alfalfa, and mother’s milk, with not even a single grain in their lifetime diet. Next available about May/June 2012, reserving now. I have heard from almost every single customer that it’s the best lamb they’ve ever had.
PORK. Our breeding sows have a protected, clean, deep-bedded, barn in winter, and pasture-based temporary shelters with straw and hay for building their own outdoor nests in summer. There are no farrowing crates on the farm, no wire floors, no manure lagoon, and of course no antibiotics or hormones. The young piglets are raised by their mother until about eight weeks of age.
HEIRLOOM CHICKEN. Our premium, signature, specialty product is heirloom-breed Le Poulet chickens, the same breeds grown under the French “Label Rouge” program. These are grown on pasture in our own orchard, where they eat pasture grass, bugs, dropped fruits, vegetable garden scraps, and custom-milled, no-corn, no-soy, no GMO feed produced locally in Dayton, Oregon, from crops grown within 20 miles. These chickens are allowed to grow to full sexual maturity, processed at 16 weeks old, whole carcass only, $6/lb. These birds have more size variability; finished birds weigh between 3 and 9 pounds. We are striving to get our chick production, both for our heirloom meat and heirloom egg breeds, off the factory farm grid and onto our own farm. In 2010 we plan to hatch about half our own chicks, and buy only half. We use “straight-run” or “unsexed” chicks, meaning that no chicks of the “wrong gender” are sent to the gas chamber. Not available in 2011 due to our increased pasture-raised chickens available through New Seasons Markets, but we do plan to offer these again in 2012.
REGULAR CHICKEN. We also produce humanely raised, chemical- and medication-free, “regular” Cornish Cross breed chickens, pasture-raised, for $4.59 per pound as butchered whole roaster/fryers. Chickens are the same price whether you buy them at our farmstore in Yamhill, at the Hillsdale Farmer's Market, or at New Seasons Markets. Outdoor-raised poultry is in season in
OTHER POULTRY. We have several tiny, sustainable, grass-based partner farms which raise ducks, guinea hens, rabbits, geese, and pheasants, in small batches, offered just a few times a year. These birds are all processed here on our own farm. SOLD OUT FOR 2011
We’re very proud of what we produce. We are not a bargain farm, but we are dedicated to producing the very best meats, using the most humane and sustainable practices, following the spirit of “Nourishing Traditions” and grass-based agriculture as much as we possibly can, and looking for ways to put ever-more Omega-3 and trace minerals into every bite of food we produce. Yes, there are shortcuts we could take to reduce the price by 10% or even 20% -- but decades of a long series of such quality-cost tradeoffs is exactly what got the American commodity/factory food market into the situation it’s in now.
LAWS REGARDING FARM-DIRECT BEEF
Lauren Gwin of Oregon State University has written an excellent consumer publication on laws regarding the purchase of custom-processed meats direct from the farmer. CLICK HERE
MORE DETAILS ABOUT CUTS AND WEIGHTS FOR BEEF
Approximately: Live weight X 0.60 = hanging weight. Hanging weight X 0.60 = finished weight. In other words, a 1000-lb live weight steer will yield about a 600-lb hanging carcass, and about 360 lbs of finished wrapped meat. Typically our live beefs yield 600 to 700 lbs hanging weight but we saw one that surprised us at 900 lbs in 2009!
When buying by finished weight, the processing costs are figured in and included. For custom-processed meats, it's actually not legal for the farmer to sell by finished weight prices. However, we understand that this is the number that enables a customer to compare costs and quality with grocery store meats.
When buying by hanging weight, the processing costs are typically excluded and additional. 2009 beef processing prices from our friends at Frontier Custom Cutting in Carlton are $50 kill + $.46/lb hanging weight to cut and wrap, or about $230 total processing cost for a whole beef. This adds something like net $0.64 a pound to the farmer's quoted hanging weight price.
Assuming 60% live-to-hanging, and 60% hanging-to-finished, these costs are identical: $7/lb finished weight = $3.82 hanging weight plus customer pays processing = $4.20/lb hanging weight with processing included. To compare hanging weight and finished weight quotes for the same 1000-lb live animal: 600 lbs hanging weight for $2522 net price for whole beef (processing included) = $4.20/lb net by hanging weight. 360 pounds finished weight at $7/lb = $2520 net cost for a whole beef. We can estimate your finished weight only after the animal has been killed and we know the hanging weight, about two weeks prior to pickup date. A whole beef requires about 10-12 cubic feet of freezer space; a half beef about 5-6 cubic feet; a quarter beef about 2.5 to 3 cubic feet; 1/8th beef about 1.5 cubic feet. (Incidentally, Costco offers a very nice 7 cubic foot freezer for $199.)
When ordering a half or whole beef, you may specify your own cutting instructions to the processor; we're happy to assist you if you have never done this before, and your free book “The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook” offers guidance through the various options. There's no need to be intimidated by it! (We have heard tale of a city customer getting overwhelmed by the cutting options and just telling the processor: "oh never mind, just make the whole thing into ground beef!" -- although I'm sure it was wonderful ground beef, this is a waste of premium cuts in my mind! When ordering 1/8th beef, your cuts will be predetermined by our standard cutting instructions.
A broadly-representative range of cuts in a full 1,000-lb live weight beef is 440 pounds of finished meat as follows; we divide all of these cuts as equitably as possible across all eight shares.
63 lbs (14%) top round, bottom round, round tip, and rump. These are a combination of roasts and steaks, and we have the less-premium pieces cut into stew and ground meat.
100 lbs (23%) stew meat and ground meat
20 lbs (5%) porterhouse steaks**
10 lbs (2%) T-bone steaks**
50 lbs (11%) sirloin steaks and roasts
4 lbs (1%) flank steak
25 lbs (6%) rib roast
13 lbs (3%) rib steak
25 lbs (6%) short ribs
110 lbs (25%) chuck, pot, cross-rib roasts
11 lbs (2%) boneless brisket
9 lbs (2%) shank meat (we like to cut this for the Italian braised recipe, Osso Buco)
30 lbs kidney, liver, heart, misc (not included in "finished weight")
60 lbs soup bones (not included in "finished weight")
**A note on premium cuts from the tenderloin: possible ways to cut the tenderloin include NY strip steaks, fillet mignon, tenderloin, T-bone, and porterhouse steaks. Only a very small percentage of the whole carcass is tenderloin. Our standard cutting instructions incorporate this premium muscle into the porterhouse and t-bone steaks in order to equitably divide the cuts across all eight shares. If you desire to order a half-carcass, you may specify cutting instructions for this and for all the rest of the carcass as well.
Categorized more broadly still, beef yields approximately:
35-40% ground meat and stew meat
30% roasts
20% steaks
10% miscellaneous
Plus organ meats and soup bones
Thank you for considering our meats. To reserve beef, lamb, or turkey, please email kookoolan@gmail.com or phone Farmer Chrissie at (503) 730-7535.
