Year of the Cow

by Jared Stone

  I walk toward the barn. A small lean-to in front houses their farm stand, offering nectarines, fresh eggs, chickens, olive oil, and a few other items. Notably, there is no one here. There is, however, a box with a slit in the top.

  I point at the cash box. Despite the fact that we’re alone, I whisper to Ben, “Dude, I think this place works on the honor system.”

  “That’s awesome. I don’t think you could do that in LA.”

  “Isn’t that how we pay for the subway in LA?”

  “Who pays for the subway in LA?”

  “Touché.”

  The front door of the house opens and a tall, thin man walks out. I wave as I approach, as one only does in the country. “Morning.… Chris around?”

  “I’ll get him.”

  The thin man disappears back into the house. I shove my hands in my pockets and take in the view. Across the road, rows of fat, gnarled trees stretch all the way to the horizon. There is no sound but the wind.

  The door to the house clangs open and Chris ambles out. He’s probably thirtyish but looks younger in a red button-down shirt and jeans. He sports the dirty ball cap of a man who works outside, but he rocks a soul patch like he might have followed Phish once upon a time. At his age, that couldn’t have been too long ago.

  When he sees us, he grins like it’s his default response to the world. “Hey, I’m Chris.”

  “Hey, man. Jared. This is Ben.”

  “Great to meet you guys. Ready to go for a ride?”

  The three of us jump onto a carryall, and Chris shows us around the ranch, very little of which is dedicated to raising cattle. It turns out they don’t raise cattle for their own sake; they do it to produce better fruit.

  Chaffin Family Orchards started about a hundred years ago when its founder, Del Chaffin, bought the land from UC Berkeley, which had an agricultural research station there. The research station grew olive trees, and those trees still stand—I spotted them from the barn.

  Olive trees have needs. They need fertilizer and pruning. The area between them must be kept mown, otherwise grass and shrubbery will grow and choke out the trees. And once every three months, the trees like to be petted and told that they’re pretty. Because they are.

  Most commercial farms handle these needs through chemical or mechanical means. They plant gigantic fields with a single crop—say, peaches. They spray their crop with chemical fertilizers to help the plants grow and hire a guy to mow between the trees to keep out competing plants. The result? A broad expanse of bare dirt growing exactly one species of plant. That’s called a monoculture. (And monocultures are never told they’re pretty.)

  Because from an ecological perspective, monocultures aren’t especially efficient. The system to create them requires huge energy inputs from the grower: for the tractor, the guy who drives the tractor, the fuel for the tractor, and the fertilizer for the trees. It isn’t just an environmental burden on the grower—it’s an economic burden.

  Chaffin Family Orchards does things differently. Rather than hire a guy to mow between the trees, they send in goats. One of the main threats to orchard trees is shrubbery. The goats roam through the field and clear out any shrubbery that would otherwise choke out the trees. They also climb through the lower branches—yes, they’re tree-climbing goats—and keep the lower six feet of branches pruned of green shoots, which would, if they were allowed to bloom, decrease the yield of the tree. Further, the goats fertilize the soil, eliminating much of the need for chemical fertilizer.

  “But,” you may ask, “what about predators?” As was the custom long ago, the shepherds at Chaffin raise and socialize livestock guardian dogs that live with the herd and protect them from coyotes and whatever else might go bump in the night.

  As a result, rather than paying for a tractor, fuel, and extra manpower, the farmers produce an additional crop—chevon, or goat meat. This is in addition to the services the goats provide trimming the trees and fertilizing the soil.

  After the goats, the ranchers send a herd of cattle through the orchard to mow down the grass that the goats leave behind. These cattle further fertilize the orchard while providing another crop: grass-fed beef.

  The steer that I will be taking home once grazed here. Chris takes us to see the current herd—a group of about thirty, reddish-brown, eleven-hundred-pound steers cavorting through century-old olive trees. I try to get closer, but they aren’t having it. They canter off into the distance, weaving behind trees to get away from me. They’re remarkably graceful. Like bovine ninjas.

  The cattle will live on this land for most of their life. After sixteen months or so, they’ll be moved to an adjacent pasture for finishing—eating their fill of bright green clover and grass until they come up to harvest weight. At that point, they’ll be taken one at a time to a local processor, quickly stunned into unconsciousness with a bolt stunner, and then slaughtered. The processor—colloquially known as a “butcher”—is an Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) local businessman. And per the AWA standards, the animal should have absolutely no awareness of the event. Afterward, the butcher partitions and flash-freezes the carcass according to Chris’s instructions.

  We leave the herd and wander farther afield to the mobile henhouses, newly arrived to this bit of acreage. After Chaffin sends the cattle through the orchard, they follow up a few days later with chickens. Chickens are omnivores, and they’re at their best when they eat both grass and animal protein in the form of bugs—like the bugs that hatch from the cattle and goat manure. The chickens, in turn, lay eggs in the mobile henhouse that travels around the farm with them.

  “We don’t play Easter morning every day out here,” says Chris.

  Truly free-range eggs, another crop, and the chickens also further fertilize the trees.

  This system of crop rotation means that Chaffin is able to produce each individual crop for less than it would cost if they tried to produce that crop in isolation.

  From a beef-production perspective, this agricultural system has distinct advantages. Cattle raised on pasture evade most of the pitfalls of feedlot cattle—no acidosis, so far less need for antibiotics. No need for protein supplementation, so dramatically reduced risk of mad cow. The cattle eat the lawn, so no need to plant, grow, harvest, and ship corn.

  For the most part, the steers aren’t raised on dedicated, single-purpose pastures, so land use is more efficient as well. Rather than support one crop, each acre supports three or four.

  Finally, and perhaps most important, the cattle are sold directly by the rancher—who keeps more of the sale price—and are sold at a premium, to boot. People will pay more for beef raised this way. I suppose I’m living proof.

  We head back toward the barn, steering the carryall past our cars and up a winding road that crests a tall mesa behind the farm. This is Table Mountain, so named because it’s a mountain that looks like a table. Funny, that.

  Atop the mountain, Chris points the carryall at a small, rain-fed lake. A barbecue grill standing next to it is the tallest object for miles. In the west, the sun is just beginning to dip below the horizon.

  “Damn. Great view. You guys grill up here a lot?”

  Chris grins. “All the time. You guys should come back later in the summer.”

  “Might have to.”

  “You should get into farming, man. Don’t do it for the money, ’cause there isn’t any. But it sure is fun.”

  * * *

  Los Angeles is nine hours from Oroville. The plan is to snag a hotel room for the night and head homeward first thing in the morning. Chris is keeping my steer in cold storage at the ranch overnight, so we’ll pick it up from him right before we leave.

  He suggested we crash at the Gold Country Hotel and Casino. I pull up, and Ben is immediately a fan.

  “Dude! A bear that will eat your dreams.”

  I look to where he’s pointing. Painted on the side of a building, twenty feet tall, is a grizzly bear charging through a dream catcher. The hotel logo, or a masco
t, or something.

  “Gold Country Hotel and Casino—Where Dreams Get Ravaged by Nocturnal Predators.” Sometimes I speak in taglines. “You hungry?”

  * * *

  The top floor of the casino has a steakhouse that Chris raved about. Given the nature of our trip, steak is definitely the plan for the evening.

  We walk in, doing our best not to look like we’ve been working on a farm all day. Management doesn’t blink, and we score a Hollywood booth facing a massive window. After a beer and a lobster bisque, we survey our choices.

  All their steaks are grain-fed, which is expected. Grain-fed steak has more intramuscular fat—in other words, marbling—than grass-fed, and offers the taste and texture to which Americans are accustomed.

  The restaurant’s steaks are also graded Prime by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This grade is almost entirely determined by the degree of intramuscular fat, with Prime being the most desirable and the most marbled (i.e., fatty). Almost all the Prime in the United States goes to high-end restaurants—this intramuscular fat is why people generally find them so delicious. Fat is flavor. Below the Prime designation is Choice and Select, both of which you usually find in supermarkets. These are less fatty than their higher-end counterparts. The grades below Select are the stuff they feed to prisoners and college students.

  The steaks at the restaurant are also dry-aged for thirty-one days, according to the menu. In dry aging, the beef is hung, uncovered, in a refrigerator for several weeks. This allows moisture to evaporate from the meat, concentrating its flavor, and also allows natural enzymes present within the beef partially to break down the muscle fibers, increasing tenderness. Dry aging is a very good thing.

  In short, the Gold Country Hotel and Casino offers a textbook high-end steakhouse. It’ll serve as an excellent control test for all my beef adventures to come.

  With this comparison in mind, we decide on rib eyes. Medium rare, because we aren’t Philistines. Show me a person who orders a steak cooked past medium, and I’ll show you a person who doesn’t actually like steak. And rib eye is the king of steaks. It’s the steak that people who like steak like liking. Properly preparing a rib eye is frequently considered the pinnacle of the grilling arts.

  Rib eye comes from the appropriately named rib primal. That primal sits on top of the animal and doesn’t do a lot of work moving the animal around. As a result, it’s quite tender and has a fair bit of marbling. The steaks arrive perfectly cooked. Nicely seared exterior, warm red center. Beautiful.

  Here’s the thing about grain-fed beef: It doesn’t suck. The texture is very tender, made even more luscious by the abundant marbling. It tastes every bit like the indulgence that it is.

  If this is a taste—no pun intended—of things to come, in the next year I am going to eat like a king.

  * * *

  After nine hours on the road back to Los Angeles, our beef-laden Prius wheels into the garage of my modest home in the suburbs. My wife, Summer, meets me at the door. She’s tall and freckled just so, with fat rings of auburn hair that she can never quite tame. Right now, her face is trying to decide whether to display “wary” or “excited.”

  “Success?”

  “You could say that.”

  Ben and I unload the car. Box after box, like it’s a clown wagon full of cow flesh. My enormous Rhodesian Ridgeback, Basil (like the herb, not the Brit), sniffs each of them excitedly. She’s a solid hundred pounds and the most food-motivated pooch I’ve ever seen. Even my toddler son knows to clutch his crackers to his chest and hit the deck when she starts sniffing around.

  Ben and I drop the eight massive boxes on the patio in my backyard. I tear one open, revealing two dozen or so neat plastic packages, hard as rocks. Our ersatz meat wagon did the trick.

  Summer surveys the haul. “So that’s it?”

  “That’s it. Four hundred and twenty pounds of grass-fed beef. Dry-aged twenty-one days.”

  “And how much is this setting us back?”

  “Twenty-five hundred bucks. Ish.”

  I see the wheels turning in her head. Doing the math. Mentally carrying the one. Finally, she responds. “Okay. Where did you put the key to the freezer?”

  Our freezer is a 14.7-cubic-foot chest model we picked up at the hardware store with a gift certificate and all our Christmas money. It sits in one corner of our backyard. It’s a beast. And it’s been running for seventy-two hours in preparation for this moment.

  “It’s in the key drawer. With all the other keys,” I reply.

  Summer shakes her head. “I thought so, too. But it isn’t there.”

  “What do you mean? It has to be.”

  “Try again.”

  I rush to the kitchen and throw open our aptly named key drawer. Keys of all shapes and sizes slosh forth in a brass wave. Door keys. Padlock keys. What I believe may be boat keys, for some reason. No freezer keys.

  The freezer is locked and empty.

  I rush back outside. My newly acquired cow is sitting in boxes in the Southern California sun. In June. In the afternoon. Quietly thawing.

  “Shitty shit shit. Summer, Ben, can you guys help me throw some blankets back over these boxes? We have to find that key.”

  Everyone else is moving in slow motion. I zip to the car and grab the blankets. Back to the yard.

  Somehow, the freezer is open.

  Ben slips a flathead screwdriver back into his pocket. “I picked the lock.”

  Like I said, grips solve problems.

  We tear open the boxes and begin to load the freezer. This project isn’t theoretical anymore—it’s as real as real gets. As I open case after case of premium beef, I am apprehensive.

  This is way more beef than I expected.

  * * *

  It doesn’t fit.

  I reassess. It’s supposed to fit. Eight boxes, twenty inches by thirteen inches by eight inches, into a 14.7-cubic-foot freezer, using base twelve calculations. I did the math. Math is logical and reasonable. Math is what makes this not nuts. If I have math, then I haven’t just made an enormous mistake.

  The butcher that Chris hired to disassemble my steer broke it out into two halves, each partitioned differently. One half has been carved to optimize the cuts most suited for grilling and barbecue—steaks, ribs, and the like. The other half makes the most of the roasts and other cuts that need plenty of cooking time to reach their full potential. Both halves of the steer have been divided into dozens of packages of between approximately one and four pounds—though one package, a massive standing rib roast, tips the scales at just over six. And all of these packages, neatly labeled and ready for long-term storage, desperately need a temperature-controlled sanctuary from the Southern California sun.

  I try again. I stack beef cut after beef cut after beef cut into the iron monster that is my freezer, and I still have two of the eight boxes left to go.

  I may have math. But reality has the upper hand.

  This is one of those things you don’t consider when you decide you’re going to buy an ungodly amount of meat. On paper, it’s all so simple. “Oh, I’ll need a big freezer for that. I should go get one.” There, done.

  The reality is that big freezers are just that—big. They operate at enormous scales. And if my math is off, the waste will be similarly enormous. Say, for example, one was to purchase 420 pounds of beef and miscalculate the space required to store it by a mere 10 percent. (Because the packages are irregularly shaped and vary tremendously in size, it’s an easy mistake to make.) That’s forty-two pounds of beef that doesn’t have a home. That’s stressful.

  I glance from my two spare boxes to my still-open freezer and back.

  “It doesn’t fit,” my wife says.

  “It has to fit.”

  “Does it know that?”

  Ben frowns. “We can make it fit.”

  “We have to. Let’s pull it.” I suggest. Ben and I start unloading the 350 pounds of meat that did fit. “We need a plan.”

  Ten min
utes later, an entire exploded cow surrounds us on my patio, each piece swathed in shrink-wrap. Is that moisture on the outside of a couple of the pieces? Can’t be. Shut up, brain.

  Ben thinks. “Big stuff at the bottom?”

  “Maybe. But big stuff is irregularly shaped,” I say.

  Summer frowns. “Little stuff at the bottom doesn’t really make sense.”

  I have a revelation. “Ground beef comes in little one-pound rectangles. Let’s line the floor and sides with it.”

  “We have those weird hanging drawers in the side,” Summer notes.

  “Even better. We can stack all the ground beef at the bottom, and fill those drawers with all the small stuff, and pile all the big stuff in the center.”

  We spend the next fifteen minutes reloading about four hundred pounds of beef. This time, it looks like it’s going to fit.

  It almost does. “Fiddlesticks,” I say, glancing down at my son, Declan, who has wandered outside to watch the beef drama unfold. The word in my head is not fiddlesticks—ordinarily I swear like a Tourette’s-addled sailor. But as Declan has grown, the Kid Censor in my head has become well-oiled and Ferrari-smooth. At nearly two years old, Declan is just starting to learn the fun words.

  “Honey, what’s in the freezer inside the house?”

  “It’s full.”

  “Actually full? Or ‘I need to set boundaries’ full?”

  “Both.”

  Ben squints. “We can make it fit.”

  I survey the remaining pieces. Maybe twenty pounds. “Okay. Beef Tetris.”

  Once again, we unload four-hundred-plus pounds of rock-hard, ice-cold, irregularly shaped beef bits back into their boxes. Quickly—as it’s June, we’re in Los Angeles, and I’m genuinely beginning to worry that I’ve just wasted Dec’s college fund.

  “Okay. First, all the ground along the sides. In the drawers. Everywhere. They’re regularly shaped so we can pack everything in tight. No spaces, no air.”

  Ben nods. “Good plan.” Which is like having James Bond tell you that you can hold your liquor and look good in a tux.

  “All right, so … big stuff in next. Pack it tight. Don’t just toss it—shove it in there. Pack it so tight this guy could walk around and moo if he felt like it.”