Ninja Cow Farm LLC

April 15, 2016

Beeeef!!

It’s back in stock.

Freezer full of beef — The beef freezer, finally happy again

Along with pork, chicken, dairy. Pretty much everything, including some items I haven’t even told you about yet (that’s another post.)

This cow had a hot weight of 710 pounds! That’s as heavy as we’ve ever finished one so I can’t weight to see what this beef tastes like. We had a 61% yield which I believe is also the best we’ve ever done so this cow was well and truly finished. The ones behind this one are only getting better so we should have great beef for the summer.

I’ll be pulling all of the pre-orders this afternoon, which means that a lot of what just came in will be going right back out but we are back in business on beef. As a reminder we are closed tomorrow for a party for my kids. If you need to get something, send me an email and I’ll try and find a time to get you in. Probably first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll be open on Monday afternoon for folks wanting to get by, then next week is pretty much already booked. Next Saturday we are still in good shape for appointments though.

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016

Update on product availability

I posted that we were out of so much stuff, we shut down the scheduling book for this week.

Today we have some good news. This morning, thanks to our wonderful chicken farmers, I have an order of fresh chicken being delivered along with a complete restock on dairy products. That means we’ll have unfrozen (till they freeze in our freezers) chicken, along with chocolate milk, cream, ice cream, etc. all on hand for your shopping needs by lunch time today.

Thursday I’ll be on the road most of the day picking up our pork order. We dropped off two hogs last week at the processor. They weighed a staggering combined weight of 688 pounds! I can’t wait to see the size of the pork chops on these suckers.

4 bone pork roast, with herb rub — Beautiful 4 bone roast, ready for the oven

We are also getting in a few of our special order 4 bone roasts on this order. A customer rightly took me to task on why I didn’t have them in stock to start with so I ordered a few roasts for him and for anyone else who is so inclined. They will be first come, first serve. I expect them to go fast, not only because you fine folks will gobble them up but when SWMBO sees them in the freezer she’ll probably grab whatever is left. I’ll make sure to get some from out next hogs going to the processor as well so we can keep some in stock for the next little bit.

We did get a nice surprise that our bacon is going to be ready on Thursday as well. Although we still technically have bacon pieces, we were out of sliced bacon. However come Thursday we should be back in bacony goodness.

On Friday, Lord willing, I’ll be picking up our beef from the processor so we can finally get the beef freezer filled back up. We have three pages of pre-orders so a lot of what comes in will be going right back out. But while I was there I sat down with our processor and booked our schedule out till December. I was able to negotiate two cows per month a number of months for the rest of this year. I think I can meet those numbers for 2016, but we don’t have a concrete plan for how to do it for 2017 yet. However I met with a landowner last night to lease part of their farm, I’m meeting with a customer tonight who has a farm they may want to lease, and I’m still looking at property around us that is available. I’ve also contacted Animal Welfare Approved, to see if we can locate an AWA cattleman who would like to sell weaner calves to us exclusively so we can increase our herd to match the land we hope to secure. We are working as hard as we can to get more beef in the freezer!

April 10, 2016

You’ve sold us out!

No, not to the man. You’ve sold us out of meaty goodness!

Until I can pick up some pork, chicken, and hopefully beef this week, we’ve closed the appointment book for new appointments for this week. We ran out of pork chops at the end of the day on Saturday and with very few steaks and no pork chops, I just decided we needed to restock before we added more new appointments. If you are looking for something, especially pork, shoot me an email and I’ll let you know if I have it on hand and we can manually setup an appointment for you. I do have dairy, most cuts of pork, most chicken still but I just didn’t want new customers coming into a relatively empty store.

Also, we are having a kids party here on Saturday and will have the store shut down this Saturday as well. If you are one of our regular Saturday customers, I’ll be manually adding appointments for first thing in the morning (between 7:30 and 9am). We should be flush on pork, dairy, and chicken at that time with beef about to arrive so we’ll be ready for you.

April 9, 2016

We had a visit from the stork. #3 has a new bull calf, #58

Last Tuesday morning when Vicente went over to our leased farm to feed and check on the cows, he called back to say there was a new calf. I was already scheduled to go look at a new farm that was for sale that day, so I grabbed the new calf gear and ran over to the other farm to see if I could catch the calf.

You see, new calves are like new human babies. Wobbly and helpless. Except for calves, it doesn’t last very long, not even one day. Calves have to be ready to run pretty quickly to keep up with the herd and get away from predators. Since we touch our cows every day, dealing with new calves isn’t that big of a deal. But at our leased farm, the cows have a much wider area to roam and the moms will often hide the calves until they are a couple of days old. This is a problem because in order to do what we need to do to the calves, we have to catch them, in an open field. Which is pretty much impossible.

Knowing this I bravely headed off to our leased farm and started looking for the calf. He was nowhere to be seen so I finally started working my way away from the herd and back towards the back of the property. That’s when I found mom and calf walking towards me. The mom was #3 which was a surprise. #3 had gotten sick this winter from the bad cold we had go through the herd and she’d never really recovered her body condition. She looked pretty skinny. However the calf looked perfect so kuddos to mom for having such a good calf in spite of her rough winter.

Unfortunately for me this wasn’t #3’s first rodeo so as soon as she saw me she turned around and started walking away from me with the calf in tow. I casually followed behind her pretending I wasn’t there for her, and then angled off, pretending I wasn’t going to go anywhere near her. She then angled off the other way and kept going, not believing me one bit. Once I’d gotten past her, I walked directly behind her and tried to speed up my walk a bit. She of course sped up so I had one option. Wearing boots, heavy work pants, a t-shirt, a button down heavy shirt, and a heavy coat, and carrying about 15 pounds of various gear, I took off running across this field trying not to outrun mom, but the calf. I could only hope he was young enough still that he wasn’t quite at full speed. It looked a lot like this.

Despite being old and non-athletic I managed to put on a burst of speed and catch up to the calf who was not quite up to full speed yet. I scooped him up and hit the ground, being careful to be gentle with him. He immediately hollered to momma who wheeled around and came charging back, all while I’m on the ground with her calf. This is where having gentle cows pays off because she got to me and then stopped, rather than bowling me over. Of course, you don’t know that while she’s charging you but at some point you have to have faith.

Calf with new ear tag — #58, bagged and tagged.

This is as close as I come to a selfie. I had to hold the phone out and do a sorta selfie, which I don’t know how to do but it all worked out. Jr was a bull calf so after this indignity, he got rolled over and I banded him to castrate him.

Momma cow looking at the camera — Momma looks on, not too happy with the whole thing

That’s my view of mom, at my level on the ground. Imagine her charging you in momma protection mode. Thankfully she is a gentle girl, as all of our mom’s are.

By this point, the rest of the herd has shown up to see what is going on so I have quite an audience. In about 2 more hours it would have been too late to catch this calf. He almost had his full mobility so we were lucky to be able to get him when we did.

After this little sideline, I started my day. Just another day on the farm.

April 8, 2016

We have more beef coming

So the last time we went to the processor, we were lucky and were able to process two cows instead of the normal one. At the time it looked like we’d be in pretty good shape till April 11th when we took our next cow. But everyone heard we had beef in and it’s been nonstop in this place ever since. Today, when you open the beef freezer you can hear the echo it’s so empty. We have chuck steak, beef stew, liver, and beef bones for stew. That’s IT. I can’t get this next cow to the processor fast enough. We will have our next cow on the trailer early Monday morning but in the meantime we are painfully short of beef.

We do have a well stocked pork freezer and I just dropped off two huge hogs at the processor on Thursday, so we have more coming. We also just restocked our dairy and I bought all the chicken that my chicken farmer had, period. She couldn’t even go to the market herself because I’d cleaned her out. So don’t despair, we have plenty of meat in the store and we have more coming shortly. But for now, it’s slim pickings if you want beef.

We do have a good list of people who have put in their pre-orders so don’t feel like you can’t come in if you were looking for beef. We can get your beef pre-order down while you are here and then let you know when your order is ready for pickup so you don’t have to try and get here right when the next cow arrives.

April 7, 2016April 21, 2016

Crock Pot BBQ

I stopped by Ninja Cow this past Saturday and was shocked to learn that a lot of customers don’t buy the pork shoulder (aka Boston butt). This is like going to Philly and not getting a cheese steak. I am convinced folks avoid pork shoulder because it can be an intimidating cut of meat to prepare. Let’s remedy that. You don’t need a smoker for this recipe nor do you need to be a pit master in order to get wonderful results. If you can use a crock pot, you can enjoy some of the best BBQ around.

It is important to appreciate that raw pork shoulder is tough and fibrous. It requires low heat over a long period of time to break down the meat and make it tender. Classic North Carolina BBQ utilizes vinegar to assist with breaking down the connective tissue so that you can pull the meat apart (i.e. pulled pork). Whether you cook your shoulder on a smoker, crock pot or in a dutch oven, low and slow is the way to go.

What you will need:

Ninja Cow Pork Shoulder (most of these are 3-4 pounds, which is what the cooking time is based on).
3 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp cumin
3/4 tbsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground mustard
1/4 tsp ground cloves
A pinch or 2 of crushed red pepper flakes
a few dashes of your favorite hot sauce
salt to taste
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp corn starch
(optional) 1 tbsp of high quality hickory liquid smoke. I don’t use this, but feel free to add some if you want a little smokiness.

What you do:

Make your rub. Combined the brown sugar, paprika, cumin, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, ground mustard and cloves. *note that we will be reducing the retained liquid for the sauce and I always recommend adding salt at the very end because what tastes great can become intolerably salty after reducing/concentrating flavor).
Generously apply the rub to all sides of the pork shoulder. You will still have about 3/4 of the rub left over. Retain.
Heat a little olive oil in a large skillet and sear all sides of the shoulder over medium/high heat (about 3-5 minutes). You are looking to caramelize the rub on all sides, but not burn it.
Add the shoulder to the crock pot with the skin side down.
Combine chicken stock, vinegar, a few dashes of your favorite hot sauce, 3 tbsp of your rub, add a pinch or two of cracked red pepper and add to the crock pot. *Note–you can make the sauce beforehand to allow the flavors to meld even more. Also, you will still have some rub left over. I typically use the extra rub to make my own cole slaw to top off the BBQ sandwich. Just add to taste with mayonnaise, a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and stir in your slaw.
Cook on high for 3 hours and reduce to low for 2-3 hours. High on a crock pot is not that hot and placing the skin down will insulate the meat. I typically remove the shoulder at around 4 hours and speed up the process by using a boning knife to free the meat from the bones and cut it in to large chunks. Discard the bones, excess fat and skin at this point as well. The BBQ is ready when you can easily pull it apart using tongs or two forks. You want it tender, but not overcooked into mush. Remove the meat and set aside.
Using a ladle, skim off most of the fat from the retained sauce in the crock pot. Add the sauce to a large pan and bring to a boil on high heat. Reduce for 10-15 minutes. The goal here is to reduce the large amount of liquid into a much more concentrated and flavorful sauce. Use the ladle to continue skimming off fat as the sauce is at a rolling boil. It’s ok if you don’t get it all, but I like to remove most. When the sauce has reduced by 2/3, slowly stir in a corn starch slurry (i.e. 2 tbsp of corn starch stirred into 2 cups of water). Only add about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the slurry at a time because you can easily over thicken the sauce. Keep reducing until the sauce is very viscous and the bubbles pop like magma. Add salt to taste.
Combine the sauce with the pulled pork in the crock pot on the warming setting and enjoy!

PRO TIP–if you are feeding a lot of people or want plenty of left overs, add some of Dan’s already made BBQ to the mix when you combine the finished sauce at the end. I do this every time.

I served this BBQ with fresh-cut potato chips. Do you own a deep fryer yet?!? If so, I also recommend buying a mandolin slicer. It will cost you $20 bucks on Amazon and it is really useful for prep work like cutting potatoes into delicious fresh made chips.

April 3, 2016April 3, 2016

Is beef bad for you, or is it corn-fed beef?

I ran across this post on, of all places, a financial website. I haven’t verified the data myself but a large chunk of it aligns with the data I heard from Dr. Anibal Pordomingo when I was at a grazers school years ago. The Omega 3 vs 6 ratio is real, documentable, and repeatable. You can measure the health decline in the cattle as they are fed a non-natural diet. You can also recover the animals health by putting them back on pasture where they are supposed to be. An unhealthy animal being consumed cannot result in a healthy person.

Link to the post on grass vs. corn-fed cattle.

Cows barely visible in the grass

I think there is a misstatement in the beginning about cattle going from 4-5 years to finish down to 13 months. What is actually correct is that cattle used to be raised to that age before slaughter as they were fully fleshed out and the meat had a more robust quality to it. But they weighed 1100 pounds at 24 months and 1200 pounds at 48 months. They aren’t much bigger years later. Now cows can finish in as little as 13 months in aggressive programs like he references but 24 months is plenty long for our American palate without any outside additions or weird genetics. We routinely finish cattle at 24 months on our farm with no issues and 100% natural. We certainly don’t have any special genetics. Also, after the mad cow BS of years past, we now cannot normally process cattle older than 30 months due to federal regulations so 24 months is going to be the norm regardless.

The post I’m promoting is not an overly long post and it has some good data in it. It’s not a peer reviewed publication, but they aren’t all they are cracked up to be either. To see what I mean, take a listen to this NPR Planet Money podcast about peer reviewed science. I have a distrust of science anyway, especially nutritional science, but wow! I didn’t know it was this bad.

Make sure you pay attention to the last line in the article. What is true for corn-fed cows is true for any corn-fed animal. Are you having tilapia tonight?

April 2, 2016

Cookies on Saturday

The rain hasn’t slowed down our sales on the farm today. Especially for cookies.

Little boy eating chocolate chip cookie — Mmm, chocolate chip cookies!

A pic from one of our customers who stopped by today. This is what he had when he got home.

We still have openings for pickup only, which means you can get some goodies and stay out of the rain. Although it has barely rained here today.

April 1, 2016May 3, 2016

What are my qualifications for being a gunsmith?

I’ve been a shooter all of my life. I spent my youth roaming the farm with a brick of 22s and a rifle. Although my active shooting has waned over the past few years, I’ve put a lot of rounds down range in my life.
I’ve been a gun collector for most of my life. I’ve owned, handled, shot, and taken apart, just about every gun there is. From WWII vintage to modern black rifles.
Some of my certifications
I’ve attended months of classes at the fantastic NRA program at Montgomery Community College. This is one of the finest programs in the US and we are blessed to have it right here in NC.
I continue to take classes, every year, at MCC to keep building my skill set.
I’m a lifelong wood worker with decades of experience.
I’ve been a metal worker for over a decade. I am a MIG and TIG welder. I am also an accomplished machinist.
I have a fully equipped wood shop.
I have a fully equipped metal shop.
I have a fully equipped gunsmithing shop (these are all different shops)
I’ve been in the service business for my entire working career. I know how to take care of customers.

April 1, 2016April 19, 2016

Why is there gunsmithing on a farming blog?

I’m not about to get into the gun debate. It’s the third rail of political topics and just one more that I won’t talk about. Gun policy, abortion, prayer in schools, same sex marriage. You aren’t going to find me debating these topics.

This is a simple topic. Guns are mechanical. Guns are legal. Mechanical devices break, need maintenance, and need upgrading. In order to perform properly, people need trusted mechanics to do the work. I do not know how to work on cars. I do not know how to work on airplanes. I do know how to work on guns, and I’m pretty good at it. And there are more guns in America now than people, which means there are opportunities for people with the skills to do the work.

For a number of years now, I’ve been traveling to Montgomery Community College to take continuing education classes on gunsmithing. Nobody can figure out why, especially the Mrs. I already work 70 hours a week, why take time to learn another trade?

Because farming full time on a small farm doesn’t pay the bills.

Ok, that’s not the only reason, but stay with me.

We are growing a business here. I have my kids working in the business and some day soon, they will be old enough to handle a day’s work without me. At some point, years down the road, they may even come back home and decide that they want to make farming their livelihood as well.

The best thing you can do as a manager is train your replacement to a point where you are no longer needed. The best thing you can do as a parent is to make your children self supporting and successful, where you are no longer needed. It’s fully my intention to do both to the best of my ability. Which means at some point, if I’m lucky, I’m going to be in the way and holding them back.

When that day comes, I’m not going to fight it. I’m not going to be scared to relinquish control (ok, maybe a bit). I’m going to be proud the kids are complaining about the old man being in the way and I hope that they’ll be right. When that day comes, I’m going to go to my shop and work on the guns that are waiting there for me. But you can’t turn on a switch and become a gunsmith overnight. It takes years of training and years of experience. And like our farming business, it takes years to build up a clientele to get to a point where it’s sustainable. So for the last several years, I’ve been building up my amateur gunsmith repertoire. This year, I’m making the step into professional gunsmithing and actually hanging out my shingle as a public gunsmith.

This does a few things. For one, it supports the farm because this is a revenue stream outside of farming. Two, it begins to build a business that I can grow into as I get older and cannot handle the physical demands of farming. Three, it allows me to utilize down time I have now, early in the morning, or between customers, or when the family is out of town and I’m home alone at night.

So if you support our farm, and you support farming, please support our gunsmithing if you happen to need a gunsmith. If you don’t like guns, that’s fine. You won’t see them on your visit. This is a totally separate business.