Beef

We killed a cow on Friday. Well, I did not kill it but it was shot in the head and then its throat cut. This is supposed to be the quickest and most humane procedure when doing it at home. In Australia the law permits killing of livestock at the farm when its area is larger than 100 acres. Not sure if I got 100 right but something similar. This is completely  for personal consumption. And each time farm killed meat is served to guests, they need to be informed. Plus it is  not allowed to remove the meat from the farm and take it to a friend's house for example. Since this would most likely be the only time that I see farm slaughter in my life, I decided to attend the procedure. Obviously, we were not close when the heffer was killed but we were asked to stay inside a room and only allowed to peep from the window. It is understandable as they do not like to do this either but it needs to be done. The killing part was not fun but the rest of it was sort of interesting. Once the heffer was dead and drained from blood it was lifted up by its back legs by a tractor and taken to a specific area where it was laid down on a rack type looking bench. First, the feet were cut off from the joints. I got to cut off one with a knife. It is not as bad as it may seem when reading this.It is actually quite ok. We also got an opportunity to skin the cow. I thought I would pass out or not feel good while seeing / doing all this but it all felt like regular meat handling. Strange. We started off at 6.30am and had the meat hanging on hooks in the cold room by 9am. I have some photos and videos which the farmer asked me not to post online. I respect their wishes and keep these private. They do this usually once in every three months and they do really eat a lot of meat.We also got a very educating lesson of what the four stomachs, heart, lungs, ovaries, liver, pancreas etc look like. One of the stomachs was really hard and had these thin layers in it acting as filters - something like a filter in the vacuum cleaner except there were 7-8 of them (maybe more). I was very proud of myself afterwards for being able to do all this and not act like a total fanny! The butcher arrived on Friday and sorted out the meat into pieces. We spent all morning cutting, packing and freezing the beef. The afternoon was devoted to making around 200 rissoles (to be frozen for a party), maybe more. I prepared a meatloaf to be cooked for tomorrow night. Oh, we minced our own meat too! Felt like a factory worker rolling them rissoles for hours...
Tomorrow is a day off and we can go to the beach and enjoy a day by the ocean. Yayy :)