Wrangler Dani

Three weeks ago, we had the mobile butcher come out to process two of our steers. It was a gorgeous fall day, 60 degrees with scattered puffy clouds and a slight breeze and the butchers were hearty and kind. We wanted our last two steers to finish eating the rest of our pasture-grass, and so planned to have the truck come back this week.

But last week we got a surprise: an unseasonable snowstorm and a sudden plunge into subzero temperatures. Having acreage and a few cows is not so pristine anymore, when you’re fishing giant chunks of ice out of a frozen stock tank at 7 a.m., or rushing to the feed store to buy hay along with every other surprised schmuck. Getting out of our gravel driveway required four-wheel-drive, Guinness the puppy needed a jacket and Bandit the cat wouldn’t even stir from the garage.

The butcher was supposed to come back on Tuesday, but I called Tuesday morning and his truck had been stuck in the lot, trapped in snow, since Thursday night. He said he’d be here Wednesday, but that came and went with no sign of them. In the midst of all this, it was tempting to feel slighted – after all, we were slogging through snow to keep our cows happy and fed on expensive hay and this was not how our fall was supposed to go.

But country people like our butcher, the rancher we bought the steers from, the sweet ladies at the butcher shop, remind us of grace when life doesn’t go as planned, because out here, we are beholden to weather and animals, who don’t care about our contracts or our plans. We found out that the butcher truck had been called to process four steers at a ranch and when they got there were surprised with seven. Rather than stick to their contracts, the butchers “felt bad for the guy” and processed all seven in one day (to give you an idea, the truck usually only commits to at most six animals in one day, and tries to hit more than one ranch). They showed up at our house at 7 a.m. three days after they were supposed to come, already tired. They refused my offers of coffee or breakfast and went straight to work in bare hands and shirtsleeves,(despite it being 35 degrees and windy) skinning, gutting and quartering the steers on our driveway because the truck almost got stuck again trying to turn around in the snowy pasture. This is the kind of work that I wish everyone could see and the people I wish everyone could know – because despite freezing temperatures, a backlog three days long and the difficulty of driving a truck and trailer down snowy gravel roads, these butchers were kind and sociable, chatting and chuckling with Adam, touching their ball caps at me. These are men who spend their days outside, knee-deep in muck and blood, and yet still come to work with a smile. This is where our beef comes from, the beautiful steak for special occasions or the hamburger in our casseroles. There was a lot of hard work involved in raising these animals, handling cold and heat and fixing irrigation and feeding hay and providing water, in butchering and cutting and wrapping and valuing the meat they give us.

I love the circle of rural life, how men like our butchers remind me to be a bit more neighborly and less rigid. I love how we’re reminded of how little we control, of how powerful weather and seasons can be. I love how people in pick-ups pull over to chat about this crazy weather and the price of hay, how we all slow down because we’re already late, so who cares? I love how the feed store owner gives Guinness biscuits and loads my truck for me and we laugh about a foot of snow in November. I love that we get to provide friends and family with grass-fed beef and a piece of our lives, sharing something so primal and comforting in an increasingly detached and mechanized world.

Today, I’m grateful for our butchers, and the amazing opportunity we have to support local food and local business in our own small way. It’s an honor to call myself a country girl, and I hope I never forget it.

(P.S. We are also selling our beef as an adoption fundraiser – if you’re reading this you probably already got a letter from us, but please let me know if you didn’t and want details! I’ll post more soon…)