They’re not making any more dirt
Karin says this a lot around here because it is true.
They aren’t making any more dirt.
A while back, we wrote about what it takes to keep open ground in agriculture. A lot of you responded to that post, and we think we know why.
If you live here, you see what is happening. A pasture doesn’t stay a pasture just because it has always been one. A barn doesn’t stay a barn because somebody built it 80 years ago. Cattle don’t stay in a field because the view is pretty.
Agriculture has to work.
Somebody has to raise the animals. Somebody has to put up the hay. Somebody has to fix the fence, pay the feed bill, haul the livestock, process the meat, sell the food and buy it.
Take enough of those pieces away and eventually the land becomes something else.
That’s the part people don’t always see.
Nobody Does This Alone
I’ve been cutting meat for close to 30 years.
I didn’t have some grand plan to make a career out of it. I was young, didn’t really know what I was going to do with my life and put my name in to work in the meat shop.
I got the opportunity, learned the work and ran with it.
I’ve worked in grocery stores and butcher shops. I spent about ten years at Wolf Pack Meats at the University of Nevada, Reno. I’ve worked with ranchers, customers, students and a whole lot of livestock over the years.
And if there is one thing you figure out doing this long enough, it’s that none of us operates by ourselves.
A rancher needs somebody to process an animal. A processor needs ranchers with animals. Both of us need customers who want what we’re producing.
You need feed stores, veterinarians, truckers, equipment people, irrigation, water, land and somebody willing to get up tomorrow morning and do it all over again.
That’s how an agricultural community works. It isn’t one ranch. It isn’t one building.
It’s people depending on each other.
Trust Is Part of the Job
This year, we processed more than half of the livestock entries at one of the shows we worked, plus poultry and rabbits.
That’s a lot of animals. But the number isn’t what sticks with me. It’s that all those families trusted us to do it.
When somebody brings you a show animal, especially one raised by a kid, you know there is a whole lot wrapped up in that animal before it ever gets to you:
Months of feeding it.
Working with it.
Getting up early.
Hauling it around.
Getting ready for the show.
Probably a few arguments at home along the way.
Then they hand it over to you.
That means something.
You do the job right because it matters to them.
It’s pretty simple.
At least we think it should be.
The Kids Are Part of This, Too
Karin has been involved with 4-H and FFA since her daughter wanted to raise sheep years ago. That one project eventually helped lead her into farming and ranching full time.
We’ve watched that same thing happen with other kids.
Not all of them are going to become ranchers.
That’s okay.
They still learn what it means to be responsible for an animal. They learn that animals don’t care if you’re tired. They learn that feed costs money. They learn that sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. And they learn that if you sign up to do something, somebody is counting on you to finish it.
Recently, Karin was given a belt buckle in recognition of the animals she has purchased from young livestock exhibitors.
It’s a beautiful buckle.
Karin didn’t buy those animals hoping somebody would give her an award.
She buys them because somebody needs to support the kids doing the work.
That’s how this whole thing keeps going.
People support people.
There’s a Lot Behind the Price of a Package of Meat
We’re also going into an interesting time in the beef business.
People are paying attention to grocery prices. We understand that. We pay grocery bills too. And yes, there will probably always be somebody selling meat for less than we can.
We’re a small operation. We don’t buy thousands of cattle at a time. We’re not running a national packing plant. We don’t have hundreds of stores to spread our costs across.
That’s not a complaint. It’s just how it works.
Small producers have feed costs. Land costs. Fuel. Equipment. Processing. Labor. Packaging. Transportation.
And none of those bills care what beef happens to be selling for at a big-box store this week.
We don’t expect everybody to buy everything from us.
We do think people deserve the chance to know what they’re buying.
Ask where it came from.
Ask who raised it.
Ask who processed it.
Ask why one cut costs more than another.
Ask us how to cook it.
If you’re spending your money on food for your family, those are fair questions.
Local Is Bigger Than a ZIP Code
We talk a lot about local agriculture, but I think sometimes we make the word local too small.
Agriculture has never cared much about lines somebody drew on a map.
Ranchers buy hay from each other. Animals move. Equipment moves. Families work land in different places. People cross state lines to work, graze their livestock, sell cattle, buy animals and help each other.
What matters to us is knowing the people.
Knowing how animals were raised.
Knowing how they were handled.
Knowing who will stand behind the product when somebody has a question.
Carson Valley Meats has always been rooted here, and we are proud of that.
I live here. This is my community.
Karin has spent years investing in kids, working both here and on her family ranch in Newcastle.
And the longer we’ve done this, the more convinced we are that supporting agriculture isn’t about protecting one property or one business.
It is about keeping enough good people in the system that the system can keep working.
A Ranch Is More Than Its Address
The historic Storke Dairy means a lot to us.
When Karin came here, she wanted to make it a working ranch again.
We cleaned it up. We put animals back in the barns and cattle back in the pastures. We cut hay off the fields and fed it to our livestock. We improved the ground and brought activity back to a place that had a long agricultural history before we ever got here.
We’re proud of that work. We always will be.
But maybe one of the things this place has taught us is that agriculture isn’t held together by buildings.
It’s held together by people.
People willing to raise the animals.
People willing to learn a trade.
People willing to teach somebody else.
People willing to buy the kid’s steer at the livestock auction.
People willing to pay a little more sometimes because they understand what it takes to keep a small producer going.
People willing to ask questions instead of assuming.
People willing to keep showing up.
That’s What Keeps a Valley Working
No single program is going to save agriculture.
There isn’t one butcher shop.
There isn’t one ranch.
There isn’t one customer.
It’s all of us doing a little piece of it.
I cut meat.
Karin raises animals.
A kid raises a lamb.
Somebody else grows hay.
Somebody buys that lamb.
Another family buys the meat.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, another pasture gets to stay a pasture for another year.
That’s a pretty good reason to keep doing the work.
Because they’re still not making any more dirt.
— Mike
From Mike’s Meat Counter: Why Does Local Meat Cost More?
Q. Why can I sometimes buy meat cheaper at the grocery store?
A. Scale is a big part of it. Large companies can buy, process and distribute enormous quantities of meat. Small producers can’t operate that way, and we’re not going to pretend we can.
Q. Does a lower national beef price automatically mean your prices go down?
A. Not necessarily. The cost of raising an animal doesn’t change overnight because the commodity market changes. Feed, land, fuel, labor and processing still have to be paid for.
Q. So what am I paying for?
A. You’re paying for the meat, obviously. But you’re also paying for a smaller food system where you can ask questions, learn more about where your food comes from, and talk to the people behind it.
Whether that’s worth more to you is your decision.
Our job is to be straight with you about it.
Have a question for Mike’s Counter? Send us a message or email carsonvalleymeats@gmail.com. If Mike knows the answer, he’ll tell you. And if he doesn’t, he’ll probably tell you that too.