Pasture to Plate: Feeding Friends and Family

I'm raising these cattle for my own table and for the people I care about. Here's how that works, and how I'm keeping it legal and transparent.

How beef shares work

The usual route for a small producer is a share of the live animal. You buy part of the animal while it's alive, so you're a co-owner, and it's processed for your household at a custom-exempt processor.

The ground rules, from USDA's exemption guideline and an Oregon State Extension / NMPAN guide that quotes it:

• Custom-processed meat is only for the owners, their households, and nonpaying guests. It can't be sold, traded, or given away, and packages are labeled "NOT FOR SALE" (FSIS guideline; OSU Extension EM 9345).
• All shares must be sold before slaughter, and the processor needs every owner's name before slaughter (OSU EM 9345, citing 9 CFR 303.1(b)(3)).
• The price is for the live animal, by live weight or per head, not by packaged weight. Owners pay the processor directly for slaughter and cut-and-wrap (OSU EM 9345, quoting FSIS).
• Selling packaged cuts to the public generally needs USDA or state-inspected processing (OSU EM 9345). Some states limit shares per animal, and rules differ by state, so I'll confirm my state's rules and my processor's policies before anything changes hands.

What you'll know about your beef

• The animal's record: birth, health treatments, weights, grazing history
• Where it grazed: maps from the Nofence app
• What it drank: the goal is clean water from a self-cleaning trough that moves with the herd, not a pond or a muddy tank
• Who processed it, and when

Timing

Small processors often book months ahead, sometimes longer, especially around fair and hunting seasons (UW-Madison Extension). I'll post harvest dates here as soon as they're booked.

Why it matters to me

This is the hard-core carnivore idea at its most direct: know your animal, know your rancher. More in our mission.