This week we received our lovely side of beef for the year! The co-op this year was much more planned than last year and it was more than twice as large which meant that it was a good learning experience. We went from 7 families and 2 cows last year to 13 families and 5 cows this year!
I sent out an e-mail to everyone who had expressed interest in the co-op at the beginning of January. I told them to be thinking about whether they wanted to be part of the co-op this year and if so how much meat they wanted. I set a deadline for the last Friday of February for people to place their final orders and then I waited.
I heard back from most people pretty quickly wanting to save their spots and several even knew rather early on how much they wanted. I started a list to keep track of people’s names and how much they wanted to order. I sent out a reminder in the middle of February and answered people’s questions as they arose. If several people had the same question, I sent out an e-mail to the whole group in case others had the same question.
On February 27th, two days after the deadline, I had someone downgrade to 1/4 from 1/2. This caused some extreme stress for me because I had set a clear deadline and already had everyone paired up for 5 cows even. I had to find someone to take an extra 1/4 ASAP because I was planning on making the order on March 1st.
Then, on Monday February 28th, my husband was in a car accident. He was riding his bicycle to work when a car hit him and he somersaulted over the front of his bike. We’re still not sure exactly what happened, but thankfully he mostly just got bruised and banged up. Nothing was broken. He’s still rehabilitating and still having some back issues, but at the beginning of March, things were very crazy for our family.
So… I put out the word on Facebook that I had an extra 1/4 cow and a friend of mine replied very quickly to say that she was definitely interested! I was able to take a HUGE sigh of relief at that point (that stress coupled with being woken up that morning by a police call about the accident was really not a good combination…) and made the order a couple of days later than planned, but it still went through pretty much without a hitch.
Then, I made a mistake. Every year there is a multinational event in my town during the first week of April. This event coincides with spring break every year. So… I went and scheduled the delivery day for the Wednesday of the first week of April!
I sent out the e-mail on March 4th to tell everyone what day the delivery would be and was blissfully unaware that the delivery week was both the multinational event and spring break. Then, one week before the delivery, two of the co-op members told me that they were planning vacations during this week. Oh. Okay.
My first thought was “Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner???” I absolutely would’ve pushed the delivery date back a week if anyone had said anything to me within a week or so of my placing the order and sending out the e-mail with the delivery date. But… really… I should’ve remembered myself and this is definitely a lesson that will carry over into next year. NO delivery during the first week of April. Ever again.
Another co-op member had a family emergency and was unexpectedly over on the other side of the country during delivery week and the week beforehand. Other co-op members and my parents came together and we were able to get together enough coolers for another 1/2 cow and enough freezer space to hold 1/2 a cow until they return (which should be sometime today)!
There was one more hitch, but it also worked out fine in the end. We didn’t know the total cost of the cows until the day before delivery. I think our order just completely overwhelmed the processor, but Keri Jo at Grassfed Foods was more than happy to work with me and held my check for several days to make sure we had enough money to cover the big check.
Things I’ve learned this year:
1. Make it clear that if people change their order to a smaller order at the last minute after the deadline, THEY are responsible for finding a person to buy the extra meat. It worked out fine this year, but that was a horribly stressful time for me.
2. Be a bit more clear about what cuts of meat people will be getting. I sent out an e-mail asking if anyone wanted any extra organ meat or if they had any other special requests – also to make sure I’d gotten their special requests written down correctly, and I had a couple of people who thought they would *only* be getting liver (which was definitely not the case!) because that was the only organ meat/special request they had.
3. Make it clear that people who are part of the co-op need to read all the e-mails I send. I don’t send e-mails out for fun and I know that there were several folks who didn’t read them all (they told me they didn’t) and it’s really not productive for anyone if I have to tell the same thing to a dozen people separately instead of being able to know that they read the information that I already sent.
4. NOT schedule the pick up day during Master’s week. Never again!
5. Send out more e-mails during the month before pick-up. I dropped the ball on that partly because of the car accident and because I didn’t have the total cost when I thought I would, but still… there really wasn’t any excuse for not communicating more with everyone as the day drew nearer.
We want to do something special to mark the new side of beef and we are planning to take out ALL of our side (one type of meat at a time) and photograph it for you all so you can see how much of each thing you would typically get with a side of grass-fed beef. It’ll be a few days because our meat is currently covered up with someone else’s side of beef (out of town co-op member), but as soon as they are able to come out here and pick up their meat, we’ll get some pictures and share them with you!
This was a co-op full of learning experiences! It went very well considering that neither I nor Grassfed Foods have done a co-op this large before and I want to thank everyone who participated! A big thank-you also to Keri Jo Rinke and Bob Yoder for facilitating the sale/delivery and for raising the lovely cow that we will be enjoying throughout this year! Also to the processor who had a very busy last couple of weeks to prepare our cuts of meat for us!
~B.
How to Eat a Side of Beef 