all grass beef -- converted sunshine

Farmers Damien and Melissa shared this from southern Virginia:

Hey, Shawn and Beth! I hope all is going well with the rebuild and that things have settled down for you all now. I wanted to share an observation that made me think of you last night. We picked up our first homestead dairy cow from the butcher last night. She’d been a fantastic servant to us for the 4 years that we had her and she served us right up until the end. If it wasn’t bearing calves or providing milk it was raising the 2 other calves we have now and keeping them in line when we weaned them from their mamas and finally of course providing us with beef herself. I remember you telling me in October how much more respectful it is to bring your livestock to the butcher than wait for them to fall over in the pasture and then have to dig a hole big enough for a 1,000lb  animal and let them go to literal waste in the field that they spent the previous years improving. 

When we picked up the 600lbs of meat from the butcher, he remarked on how it was immediately evident this was a pure grass fed cow because of the color of the fat on the meat being so yellow. He’s used to seeing beef with white fat, a sign of grain fed cattle. As I stared at the color of the fat, I recalled you and Shawn talking about how livestock harvest sunlight and turn it into milk and beef. There, staring me right in the face was the proof of that assertion as I saw the same color of sunlight beaming back at me in the yellow of the beta-carotene in the meat. I’ve attached a couple of pictures. We’ll have a feast of beef this winter and with each meal, we’ll think of Marigold, our first family milk cow and all the sunlight she turned into food that fed our family. 

Thank you, Damien and Melissa!