Meatcutting Week 7: Hustle to the Holidays

The week leading up to our Holiday shutdown was intense. We all wanted to get out of town ASAP. Jeff, my boss, was heading to Park City, UT to celebrate Christmas with his extended family. I was leaving on the 21st out of Boise back to Indy and Huntington to spend the holidays with friends and family. We made a plan to work the weekend, so we could all leave on Monday, the 20th. Problem was, we needed to have over 30 beefs cut and in the freezer before we left, or they would be hanging too long.

Luckily, my hands were in much better shape, and I was getting faster at breaking down hind-quarters. We had our focus on speed and production, so I really didn't learn much this week. However, there were some cool highlights:

*We were able to cut and freeze 34 whole beefs working Monday-Saturday.

*On Thursday Jeff, Jen, Joanne and I cut, wrapped and froze 9 whole beefs in about 10 hours. Unbelievably, Jeff claimed this was a record.

*On Saturday we sliced, wrapped and froze 9 slabs of bacon and as many hams along with the 3 beefs we needed to finish before we closed the shop.

*I got some really good feedback about my work from Jeff as we shared a Terminal Gravity IPA after we finished work on Saturday.http://terminalgravitybrewing.com/

*I was given a basket of meat, local beers and other food items for Christmas. It included rib steaks, cottage bacon, chirizo, italian sausage, ham, pepperoni sticks and hunter sausage from Jeff's personal stash.

I was very anxious to get home.