Cowpool 2009 (order grass-finished beef in bulk)

Tis the season to cowpool! If you haven’t tried eating local grass-finished beef, I personally know about ten families who highly recommend it.

We get our beef from the Smith family. They have twelve beefs ready to go right now, and we expect to pay about $7.00 a pound for ours. There are a few other grass-fed ranchers in the area who might also appreciate more cowpooling activity. If you know one, get your own group together and work with that rancher. The more the merrier.

If you want to join us this year, or learn more before committing, contact me by Monday December 29th. Use the contact button located in the right sidebar.

Or even better, if you enjoy organizing/sharing and want to start your own cowpool contact me – I’m happy to share what we’ve learned and how we work ours, and I’ll even share my very simple tracking/administrative forms. Again, use the contact button located in the right sidebar to contact me.

This will be our third year cowpooling and it has been a great experience. For those of you who haven’t tried it yet here’s a quick rundown on the joys and challenges.


• Great tasting, grass-finished beef – according to our cowpoolers their dinner guests can’t believe how tasty it is and our experience is the same

• Cowpooling , purchasing through CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) and in bulk from producers like Sod Busters (chicken) insulates family food costs from petroleum price swings – approximately 70% of our 2008 food budget was shielded from price increases associated with petroleum

• The Smith’s grass-finished beef is free of unnecessary hormones and antibiotics, and the cows live happy cow lives

• Cowpooling supports a local farm that provides local jobs

• Buying locally and in bulk means your family can have month’s worth of food on hand

• Cowpoolers and farm families know each other and are interdependent on their local communities

• Cowpoolers learn to cook all the cuts that come from an entire beef-- really delicious cuts that get no love at the supermarket

• Learning to prepare cuts you’ve never cooked with can be scary, but you can learn and it's very rewarding – every one is happy to share what they’ve learned

• Cowpooling can require financial planning because your family pays for an entire year’s worth in one payment (okay two, nominal deposit then full amount just prior to delivery) – our families buy an average of 10 – 40 pounds each, costing something like $70 to $280 for the entire year.

Hope to hear from you, one way or another!