Yesterday was a really big day for us at Farscape Farm. It was “market day.” Which is just a nice way of saying that we took half our livestock for shechita or slaughter. This might not be a topic which will interest readers; however, it is part of life on a farm that raises animals from meat.
Let’s start at the very beginning of the process. We have a few types of goats, which include milk and meat goats. The meat goats are Boers and Kikos. Boer goats originate from South Africa where they were bred by Dutch farmers and were specifically developed as meat goats because they grow quickly and are very stocky. We also have Kiko goats which originate from New Zealand and are a cross between local feral goats and dairy goats. They can serve dual purpose as both meat and milk goats but are much more substantial than a typical dairy goat like a Nubian or Saanen which have little spindly legs and don’t give the meat production per pound than their cousins the Boers and Kikos.
One of the issues with kosher slaughter is that not everything turns up kosher for one reason or another which is beyond the scope of this blog. Lambs which are more docile, in my experience, have a better “kosher rate,” or percent of your flock that will be kosher after inspection. Now a non-kosher animal is perfectly edible. There is nothing “wrong” with them. But keeping kosher involves strict rules and stringency. For instance, only animals with hooves who chew their cud are kosher. So, a goat is kosher, but an alpaca (who has toes) is not. In any case, our kosher rates typically run 60 – 70% at best. The rest of the meat is sold to people who don’t keep kosher.
This year after spending a lot of time looking at our “kosher rate,” and consulting Dr. Google and other books, we decided to cross breed our Boer male to our Kiko girls and our Kiko male to our Boer girls in hopes of improving our take by getting the best of both breeds of meat goat.
And boy, let me tell you, we were successful beyond our expectation. 12/14 goats were kosher. Was that because of our cross, or because we had very little parasite issues, or both. We expected one of the goats to be not kosher because she was older and a bad mom. So, she was essentially a cull. Which really means that 12/13 kids (all less than 1 year old) were kosher slaughters. That is far and away the best we have ever done. Now we have to repeat that success.
On Sunday, we had the round up. And that is always a chore. Try getting 14 goats all to go in one direction at one time. They aren’t sheep, who follow the leader. They fight you the whole time. We left them in the stock trailer overnight with water and a warm bed of straw. We added in 6 lambs from our local farmer friend, Rick Jones, and off we went at 0600 on Monday morning to one of the two kosher slaughtering facilities in Baltimore. If I forgot how much I hated city traffic, I remembered on Monday. It took 2 hours for a drive that typically takes less than 90 minutes.
Ruppersberger is the oldest meat packing company in Baltimore and opened in 1866. They and my friend Ian Hertzmark, do a great job. But the facility is on Pennsylvania Ave in West
Baltimore. Ever try to take a Ram 1500 with a 25-foot trailer filled with goats and lambs into Baltimore city? And then you need to back your trailer into an alleyway area space? I hate backing trailers and frankly am no good at it. Give me a 40 foot-diesel pusher RV and I’m fine, but put a trailer on it and I’m not so fine. Fortunately, they have a worker named Ebb, who is a whiz at it. So we backed in, fought a couple of goats who thought they were the famous “scapegoats“ mentioned in Leviticus 16 during the Yom Kippur atonement, and got everyone into the facility.
From there Ian and the workers took over and I got the great news that we had a kosher rate better than any other time on Farscape Farm.
Some of this may sound funny, and often it is, especially trying to wrangle goats where they don’t want to go. However, I do not want at all to give the impression that market day isn’t serious and sobering. The animals that we raised from babies are going to be processed into the meat that we eat and sell. And as a farmer, you can’t lose sight of this or become jaded by it. We believe that humans were given dominion of this planet and that eating meat is ok, morally speaking. I know that there are those who disagree with this practice and their opinion is to be respected. Either way, it is not an act we take lightly.
In a few days, my friend Ian will call me with final weights and we’ll figure out how to do the butchering. We will have primal cuts such as whole shoulders, full racks of ribs, loins, shanks and legs. We will also have a few forequarters and for those really adventurous, we’ll sell a couple of fore-saddles. There will also be plenty of halal acceptable non-kosher cuts such as legs and loins of lamb and kid. If you have never eaten kid, I will tell you it’s really great. I really like lamb but love kid. It has a little less of the strong flavor that some associate with lamb. We have a very beef and chicken centric society. Goat is the most consumed red meat in the world and lamb isn’t far behind. So, if you want a taste of what the rest of the world is consuming and you live within delivery distance, check out our website (www.farscapefarm.com) or email me at our website email address (Pops@farscapefarm.com. We will do our best to make it a memorable meal.
