Recipes & Notes
From the kitchen and the pasture
Recipes worth the freezer space, guides to buying beef by the animal, and notes from the farm.
Recipes
Cooking that suits pasture-raised beef — low and slow, or hot and fast, and nothing fussy.
10 entries
Pot Roast with Onions and Red Wine
A chuck roast or brisket braised low and slow with onions, carrots, and a splash of red wine. Better the second day.
The Cheesiest Spicy Burgers
Habanero cheddar kneaded straight into the ground beef, cooked hot and fast. Four ingredients, no restraint.
Home-Cured Corned Beef
A brisket brined for a week or two, then simmered with root vegetables and pickling spice until it gives way.
Slow-Cooker Pulled Beef
A round or chuck roast cooked until it falls apart, then finished in barbecue sauce and piled on a bun.
Cucumber Ranch Steaks
Grilled steaks with a cool cucumber sauce — about fifteen minutes from cooler to plate.
Beefy Onion Meat Loaf
Two pounds of ground beef, a can of tomato sauce, and forty-five minutes.
Shepherd's Pie
Ground beef under corn, under mashed potatoes, under cheddar. A casserole dish that feeds a crowd.
Standing Rib Roast
The holiday cut. Roasted over stock, pulled by thermometer rather than by the clock.
The Roasted Red Burger
A burger with roasted red peppers, balsamic portabellas, and a roasted garlic Cajun mayonnaise.
Traditional Pot Roast
Roast, potatoes, carrots, and green beans in the slow cooker — checked by tenderness, not by the clock.
Guide
The practical background: cut sheets, hanging weight, labels, and what makes a grind honest.
7 entries
Understanding Your Cut Sheet
A primal-by-primal walk through the choices on your cut sheet — chuck, rib, loin, sirloin, round, and the bonus cuts.
Does Your Ground Beef Come From “The Mix”?
Supermarket ground beef — including grass-fed and organic — is blended from many animals. Ours never is.
CLA, Good Fats, and Pasture-Raised Beef
Why the fat profile of pasture-raised beef keeps coming up in conversations about whole-food, higher-protein eating.
What “Natural Beef” Actually Means
No confinement, no hormones, no antibiotics, no formulated rations — and why organic certification is not the same thing.
How Grass Makes Beef
The long answer: rumen biology, rotational grazing, soil pH, and why clay in the Champlain Valley behaves the way it does.
What You Get When You Buy a Side
What a hanging side is, why it hangs for at least seven days, what it weighs, and how the pricing works.
What Makes Our Beef Different
Natural, grass-fed, and custom ground from a single animal — plus a straight answer on labels, grading, and marbling.
From the Farm
Short notes from the pastures, the orchard rows, and the reading pile.
7 entries
Another Reason to Buy Vermont Natural Beef
Reporting on growth-promoting feed additives is one more argument for knowing exactly how your beef was raised.
Watching Food, Inc.
A documentary that sent a lot of customers looking for a farm they could name — and what it gets right about the system.
Grass-Fed Beef on the Radio
Public radio coverage of grass-fed beef, and the fuel arithmetic behind feedlot finishing.
Picking Peaches on the Farm
It was not always possible to grow good peaches in Vermont. Milder winters in the valley have changed that.
Stealin' Apples
Every autumn the cattle find the fallen apples under the old trees, and they make short work of them.
Featured in Fences Magazine
The Vermont Farm Bureau's magazine ran a feature on the farm and how we raise and sell our beef.
More Room to Graze
Adjacent grazing land has been added to the farm to keep pace with demand and lengthen pasture rest periods.