Meat Crisis

 Crown H Cattle Company was recently in the middle of a meat crisis.  We've read about the loaded cargo ships, circling around ports, unable to offload their containers full of Nutella and Nissans, but in reality, aside from a few gaskets I needed for my truck, the choked out supply chain hadn't affected us too much.  That is, until we butchered our first Beltie steers and realized we were in desperate need of more freezer space.

We'd intended to have Crown H Beltie beef for sale in October.  Our steers were grain-finished for 90 days and were looking fat and delicious.  Regina was grinding away at the Crown H website (crownhcattlecompany.com), and we were ready to start delivering delicious cuts of amazing beef (see: beltie.org for some cool facts about its nutritional value).  We called the butcher September to schedule a time for Frank, our local processor, to come over and were told we'd have to wait until December.  December?  Was the butcher stuck on one of those loaded cargo ships?  The Belties would be hippos by then.  Luckily, there were 2 cut and wrap places in Siskiyou county (and now, there are 3, thanks 5 Marys!) and we we called, and begged, and got our beef squeezed into the books for an October butcher date.  The next step was to pick up another freezer to hold all the beef we would be expecting.

We tried to buy a freezer locally, but the size we needed required an online purchase.  Suddenly, we were in a race to get a freezer delivered before 1000 lbs. of meat arrived at our door.  The freezer lost that race.  We'd also butchered one Hanna Bros. steer, had 5 butchered turkeys, I'd just cut and wrapped my mule deer from buck season, and had decided, on a whim, to buy a lamb; our freezer space was limited to say the least.  When I picked up the Beltie beef there were so many boxes that it took 2 trips with my truck.  We started to panic.  

Regina got on the horn and luckily our friends at Denny Bar had both a giant chest freezer used for their restaurant overflow and an extra upright that only held ice packets and some margarita mix.  We spent a late night shuffling frozen beef around the valley, stuffing it into any and all available freezers.

Luckily, Regina sold three 1/4 shares of beef (our first sales!) which gave us a little room, and
the new freezer finally arrived.  We are ready for the next round of delicious Beltie beef to come our way (check the website, it'll be soon!).  And if we aren't ready?  It's good to have friends with giant freezers.