Meatcutting Week 8: Back to work

After a couple of weeks in Indiana, I was ready to get back to work. Unfortunately, we had not yet caught up with the rush we made before our break. We had enough beef to get us through Wednesday, but Thursday and Friday would find Jeff and I working on a different project.

When Jeff moved his business into our current building, he installed a meat locker system for his customers. Customers could pay a monthly rent on a locker to hold the meat that was cut at our shop. It really helped people that did not have the freezer space to keep the large volume of meat they had ordered. Unfortunately, the idea fizzled. Most people now have freezers specifically for their meat orders. The lockers have sat empty in a large space at the front of our building for over 10 years.

Thursday and Friday, we worked on removing the locker doors and the framing they were installed on. I was hesitant to do the work because I am not the handiest dude, but I put on my overalls and came to work with a positive attitude about changing the look of the shop. Thursday, I spent the whole day using a grinder to cut the steel framing. It was actually fun, but I forgot to wear a mask, so I inhaled my fair share of metal dust. My snot was black for days.

Friday, we removed the locker doors and moved them to a cattle trailer on the property. They are great antique freezer doors circa 1930. We actually found a penciled inventory count of turkeys from Thanksgiving, 1955 on one of the doors. Very cool. We then removed the metal frames and cleaned up the area.

We are going to convert the space into another walk-in freezer with an overhead door entrance. This will allow us to handle larger orders that need to be moved on pallets. That is my segue to the news I got when I returned:

*Jeff is starting to research a shift of our business to a USDA inspected shop. This would allow meat that is slaughtered (we currently have the capability to slaughter, but we would have to be inspected to make it worth our time to do) and butchered at our shop to be sold in a retail setting. There is currently no USDA inspected shop in the area, and ranchers that choose to sell their beef, hogs, etc. through retail outlets must ship their cattle to Boise, ID (3 hrs. away) to be processed.

*If we do make the transistion to a USDA inspected facility, we may have an opportunity to cut meat that will end up in local schools. There is a push in Oregon for locally raised livestock to be available for local school lunches. I am excited about this.

* Since we have entered a slower time of the year for production, I will have the time to start learning the other stations of our operation. This includes preparing the front quarters and using the saw to make final cuts for our orders.

Onward.