Maybe you’ve heard that grass fed beef doesn’t taste as good – that it lacks marbling and tastes gamey. Maybe you’ve heard that grass fed beef isn’t local but is shipped from all around the world with all the carbon that such trips create. Maybe you’ve heard that Grass fed beef doesn’t really eat grass out of a field but instead is fed harvested forages in a feed-lot just like factory farmed grain fed beef.
We’ve heard all of those things too, and because we’re in the business, we know that they’re all true for SOME products that are labeled grass-fed or grass-finished. Our promise though is that Marksbury Farm grass-fed beef is different. The fact is that for some grass-fed beef producers, all natural means basically wild with no management. That method certainly is natural but if your beef is raised like deer you shouldn’t be surprised if it tastes like it.
Big business and industrial agriculture have also dipped their toes into the grass fed world. Much of the beef carrying a grass-fed label in stores and the more popular online vendors are using Australian or South American beef. Can you trust label claims from products with a supply chain that long? I don’t know about that but I do know that in that case the label is all you can trust because you sure aren’t going to be able to meet the farmer. The other method factory farming companies have employed is to take a page out of the organic playbook and change nothing about their production methods but simply change the feed that they cart to their feedlots. Technically grass fed? Yes, but I don’t think it’s what most of us have in mind – to be honest, it’s probably not what they have in mind either considering most of their labels are full of misleading pictures of beautiful pasture with cattle on it.
Our very local farmers know how to rotate pastures grazing their herds on a mix of perennial and annual grasses and legumes for the beef to marble. For the few winter months when grass isn’t growing in Kentucky they feed high quality stored hay (either dried or fermented grass and legumes) to keep the animals growing and the local diet gives our beef a life-changing flavor – earthy but not gamey, juicy but not greasy.