The price of beef

The price of beef has been on everyone's mind lately.

According to the USDA, the average price of beef jumped from $8.40 per pound in March to $10.10 by December 2025.

A number of recent articles reflect these concerns:

• Food inflation in America

• RFK Jr. Urges U.S. Ranchers to Ramp Up Beef Production

• The cost of this grocery staple is nearing record highs — and Americans can't get enough

• U.S. Beef Cow Cycle Low Set To Deepen, Keeping Steak Prices High

• Beef Prices Surge As Drought, Aging Workforce Shrink U.S. Herds

• Drought And Costs Shrink America’s Cattle Supply: Beef Prices To Stay Elevated

• U.S. beef industry in crisis: Record prices, shrinking herds and mounting pressures on ranchers

We haven't bought beef in decades since we raise our own, so I wasn't familiar with what kinds of prices people are facing. So in late February, I stopped at the beef department of our local grocery store ... and was appalled.

Ball-tip steak, choice grade, $9.99/lb., $13.24 for the package:

Beef top sirloin, $11.99/lb., $9.83 for the package:

Rump roast, $5.99/lb., $20.73 for the package:

It is for these reasons, among many others, that we're aiming to have one animal a year in our beef pipeline.

Unlike our last homestead where we often had 15+ animals, here we don't have the room to raise more than a handful of cows at a time, preferably fewer. We have limited grazing, so we must accept the fact that we're feeding (or supplementing) our animals the majority of the year.

We butchered two animals recently: Filet in August, and her daughter Mignon in February.

Filet was an older and tougher animal (10 years old at the time of butchering), so we literally had the butchers turn her entirely into ground beef, with the exception of as many cube steaks as he could produce. This is the receipt for Filet's processing costs:

Mignon was two years old, prime butchering age, and we had the butcher give us the full range of cuts. This is the receipt for Mignon's processing costs:

As you can see, the butcher charged us about $1/lb for processing (a bit less for all cuts except cube steaks, which cost a bit more). Total costs for both butcherings came to $1255.45. Also, we paid the dispatcher (the fellow who comes to our place to dispatch the animal) $160 for each dispatch, a total of $320 for both animals. This brings the total butchering costs for two animals up to $1575.45.

Since I'm currently working on our taxes, I had the opportunity to tally up how much we spent on hay last year. It came to a total of $2500. Divided by five animals (Filet, Mignon, Romeo, Maggie, Stormy), that averages out to $500 of hay apiece. (Clearly this isn't an exact science since some animals are older and eat more, some are younger and eat less, but whatever.)

So add $1000 in hay costs for both Filet and Mignon. Now let's double that for the two years we've had Filet and Mignon, for a total of $2000 in hay costs. This brings the cost of raising the animals to $2575.45.

Let's go back even further and include the purchase price of Filet and Mignon, which was $1500 for the two of them. That brings the overall costs to $4075.45.

Between both animals, we got a total of 1319 lbs. of beef in various cuts. This gives us a total cost of $3.09 per pound of beef, for everything from lowly ground beef to premium steaks. Three bucks a pound.

When we picked up Mignon in February, we had 11 crates of meat.

This filled our spare freezer almost to the brim. (This is why we have back-up power sources for freezers.)

As we were packing this meat away, I took a couple of T-bones and prepared them for us for lunch. It was melt-in-your-mouth delicious, definitely "prime" grade. With the blessing of this much abundance, we can be generous with friends.

Romeo and Stormy are the next animals in our beef pipeline. We'll put Romeo in the freezer next year, and Stormy the year after that. The cost of raising them is even lower because we didn't have any initial purchasing costs, and both their breedings were free. That could conceivably bring the per-pound cost for them down to $2 or less. Meanwhile Maggie will be producing more calves. Her upcoming calf will be a heifer, but thereafter we'll select for steers, which we'll raise for beef.

The blessings of a homestead.

The alchemy of good tea

Many years ago, when I flew with Older Daughter to Ohio to drop her off at nanny school, I had my first opportunity to visit Lehman's Amish Store in Kidron. It's a place I'd wanted to see for years and years and years.

Needless to say, it exceeded all my expectations and I came away deeply impressed.

On that occasion, I made a few small purchases, including a special blend of tea called Bilbo Baggins Breakfast Blend for Older Daughter.

Well, she loved it. She regularly ordered it online ever after (not from Lehman's, but from a different source). The last time she ordered multiple boxes was sometime in November of 2019. By the time she used up what she had and decided to order more, she learned that particular blend had been discontinued.

Bummer.

She was talking about this tea recently, and how much she enjoyed it. Don is always up for a research challenge, so he decided to sleuth out the ingredients of this particular blend. He found it consisted of English breakfast black tea, chai, orange peel, and red clover flowers.

So ... Older Daughter ordered these baseline ingredients and started experimenting. And eureka, she figured out the blend.

Here's the homemade version of the Bilbo Baggins Breakfast Blend tea:

• 1 teaspoon English Breakfast tea

• 1/4 teaspoon chai

• 1/4 teaspoon ("heaping" quarter-teaspoon) of orange peel

• 2 red clover heads

She puts this blend in a tea strainer for a hearty cup of tea. She also adds about half a tablespoon of powdered milk (or a splash of fresh milk) to complete the cup of comfort.

The nice thing about making up a blend like this from its component ingredients is how much cheaper it is. She used some pint canning jars to assemble the ingredients in easy form, and stored the rest of the bulk ingredients in the pantry.

Ah, the alchemy of good tea.

Planting broccoli

For three days this week, we've experienced unnaturally warm March weather, with temperatures in the mid to high 70sF.

This was nothing short of a siren call to get things done in the garden, especially since we had a block of rain and cooler temperatures moving in.

One of the advantages of having the garden fully fenced against deer (at last!) is we can plant with abandon and not worry about things getting picked off all the time.

So I spent a couple of days weeding, topping the beds with compost, raking up last year's leaves, etc. Then it came over me like a thunderclap that it's the ideal time to plant my hands-down all-time favorite vegetable, broccoli.

We really don't have room in the house to do much by way of vegetable starts, so I decided to take a chance and direct-sow them into the garden beds.

But not without a little prep. First, using some of the compost Don brought up a few weeks ago...

...I put a fresh layer on each bed.

Then I dug it in and raked it smooth.

Time to break out the seeds.

Years ago, I got these silly and inexpensive seed spoons that can pluck out tiny seeds of various sizes. I tell ya, these have proven to be worth their weight in gold.

I prepped three beds for broccoli, with plans to plant six seeds per bed in a zigzag formation. To decide on the right pattern and spacing, I stuck a few small sticks in the beds.

Planting eighteen seeds took just a few minutes.

(For those claiming that 18 broccoli plants are too many, you don't understand just how much I love broccoli. I might even plant a couple more beds as well.)

I pulled in some fresh straw for mulch.

Here are all three beds, planted and mulched.

Ah, but I'm not finished. Notice the pile of long white poles on the ground?

Last June, you might recall, I put up a blog post entitled "The Argument for Buying Ahead." Take a moment and go back to read it. Go on, I'll wait.

Now that you're back, I'll explain. Those poles are seven-foot fiberglass poles purchased back when we had money to be used for cloching garden beds. We bought enough to cloche every single bed if necessary.

Unfortunately, these poles turned out not to be the best choice. Bending them is juuuuust a bit more than the fiberglass fibers can handle, and quite often (but not always) they break. If we could do it over again, I would recommend half-inch pex tubing as a nonbreakable cloching alternative. However, since we have so many fiberglass poles, I'll continue to use them and just replace broken ones as needed.

Anyway, my plan was to cloche the broccoli beds even before the plants sprouted. Each bed takes four poles: One at either end, and two in the middle. I start by lining them up on one side of each bed.

Then it's a simple matter to bend the poles and tuck them into the other side of the bed. Since these poles are fiberglass, gloves are critical so I don't get tiny glass shards in my hands.

But what to cloche the beds with? Ah, that was another purchase we made during our "purchasing ahead days" – garden netting. I purchased a bulk amount of seven-foot-wide netting, enough to cloche every single garden bed if necessary.

This was the first time I've had the opportunity to use it. The first thing I did was measure how much each bed required.

Eight-foot beds, two-foot-high cloche hoops, and enough netting to drape generously down each end came out to fourteen feet of netting for each bed.

So I laid out the measuring tape on the porch to fourteen feet in length.

Then I measured out the netting and cut it to length, repeating this step for the three beds.

This draped beautifully over the poles and thoroughly cloched each bed.

I staked the netting down with U-stakes, yet another one of our "buy ahead" purchases a few years ago. We bought a box of 5,000 of these babies and use them all the time.

The stakes puncture through the netting easily. This also might mean it will tear holes in the netting after a while, so I'll have to be vigilant for this possibility.

This is what the broccoli beds looked like when I was finished, all cloched and staked.

Why did I cloche the broccoli at all? It's because broccoli (as well as other cruciferous crops) are highly susceptible to flea beetles and aphids, both of which can decimate plants within days. I speak from experience. It's painful to watch my favorite veggie get eaten down before I have a chance to harvest a single bit of it.

These are flea beetles, tiny jumping beetles that can turn a healthy plant into a lacy skeleton of its former self in a matter of days.

A few years ago, I was watching a gardening video by an Australian gardener who said that 90 percent of gardening pests in raised beds could be controlled or eliminated with the judicious use of net cloches. That was enough for me (in those heady days of having surplus income) to order poles and netting. This is my first opportunity to use the netting.

Last year, I planted two beds with broccoli. The flea beetles got them all. This year I planted the broccoli in different beds in hopes that my favorite vegetable will escape a similar fate.

Time will tell.

Rest in peace, Chuck Norris

Oof, I didn't see this one coming. Chuck Norris passed away yesterday at age 86.

Apparently this took everyone by surprise.

Rest in peace, Mr. Norris.

Oodles of elk

Don and I were walking Mr. Darcy the other evening when we turned around and saw an amazing site on a distant hillside: Elk. Lots of elk. Oodles of elk.

There wasn't any way to get them all in one photo, but I'm estimating there were 75 or 80 animals. Shortly after I took the above photo, something spooked them and they all started trotting downhill.

Unfortunately that put most of them behind an impenetrable barrier of trees, which hid their numbers even more.

I don't expect the elk to be around much longer. As the snow starts melting in the high country, they'll make their way further into the mountains for the summer.

We'll enjoy them while we can.

Home from Italy

The trip home from Italy was ... long. That one word describes it all.

We had everything packed the night before. In the morning, we got up at 3:50 am (local time) and hit the road by 4 am to make it to the airport. Our flights from Naples to Rome, and then Rome to Chicago – while somewhat bewildering because of the language barrier – weren't bad overall.

Unlike our flight to Europe, the return flight was conducted in daylight, and we could see out the window. Much of the trip was cloudy so there was nothing worth photographing. But then ... we flew over Greenland.

I never realized how mountainous the interior of Greenland was. Gorgeous!

The northeast corner of Quebec was very flat and looked marshy, though of course at this altitude it was impossible to tell.

In Chicago, we arrived a few minutes late. This meant we had just a one-hour layover, during which we were required to reclaim our luggage, go through customs, re-check our bags, and then go through security once again. Everything – everything! – seemed to delay our attempts to reach the right gate in time, and of course Chicago is a famously huge airport.

Unlike what a lot of people have experienced this week, the TSA line wasn't especially long. However, Older Daughter got delayed at airport security because the airline-issued water bottle she was given ON THE PLANE was ONE OUNCE greater than permitted while going through security, so she was held back while her bag was searched. She urged me to run ahead to the gate and beg the plane not to leave without her.

So I ran for the gate and did just that, panting. Believe me, I wasn't the only one panting and arriving late. Still, by the time Older Daughter arrived (panting), we were literally the last passengers onto the plane.

We dropped into our seats and caught our breath, glad to be on our final connection at last. And then here's the thing: Apparently there were some complex calculations the pilots had to make concerning the amount of fuel necessary to combat the headwinds we would be facing for the duration of the cross-country trip. Then we had to wait to be fueled. We also had to wait to be de-iced. The delay was originally predicted to be ten minutes, and then it was lengthened and lengthened, with frequent explanations and apologies from the pilot.

Here are the wings being de-iced:

Eventually passengers were urged and encouraged to deplane for the duration of the delay to stretch our legs, or at the very least to move around the cabin. Everyone took this in good grace and started chatting with fellow passengers, and the plane hummed with conversation. Also, lots and lots of people used the lavatories (which were right behind us, so we should know). The plane was supposed to depart at 3:30 pm, but it didn't end up leaving until closer to 5:45 pm, well over a two-hour delay. At the very least, we didn't have any connections to make. I don't think a lot of people did, which is why everyone seemed to handle the delay without a problem.

After the plane was reboarded and secured, we had to wait for other airport traffic behind the plane to clear before the plane could back away from the gate. Then there was another delay of unknown origin lasting 15 or 20 minutes before we could even taxi to the runway. And of course, there was a long line of planes waiting to taxi.

The cross-country flight was smooth, with the only turbulence hitting as we were descending into Spokane. The delay in Chicago put us in Spokane around 9 pm instead of 6 pm, but oh well. We claimed our luggage and headed for the parking lot.

The moment we stepped foot outside the airport, we were slammed with wind. It was howling at about 50 mph with gusts probably at 70 mph. No wonder the pilots had to calculate for extra fuel. No wonder we hit turbulence as we descended.

At one point, pausing to zip my jacket higher, the wind caught my suitcase (on wheels) and sent it whizzing away. I had to run to catch it.

We got the car loaded up and hit the road. We still had a five-hour drive ahead of us, and we were starving. We stopped for some food and kept driving, switching places when one of us got too sleepy to drive. The wind slammed into the vehicle all the way home, sometimes pushing us onto the side of the road before we were able to correct our course.

We limped home at about 2 am, greeted our grateful husband/father and the frantically happy animals, took late-night showers, and collapsed into bed, having been up and traveling for 30 hours total. Let that sink in: 30 hours of travel to get home.

And this, by the way, is one of the reasons why we're not frequent travelers. To address a European reader's comments on an earlier post:

"It's always a small shock to realize how little you Americans travel. I have been in 10 countries on 3 continents and that is really very mediocre on European standards. I get that your own country is big and there is plenty to see, but it seems to me that most of you still never visit the states that are further away. I mean here in Europe it is very common to pop for a weekend to other country. With foreign language, foreign culture etc. People even have their weddings and anniversaries in other countries."

Aside from travel costs (and remember, Younger Daughter paid for our plane tickets) and livestock obligations, the time and effort and planning to even reach an airport from our remote location is unfathomable by most Europeans' standards. The reasons we live where we live is because we enjoy rural life and living on a homestead, but it comes at a cost; namely, the inability to "pop for a weekend to other countries." Thirty hours of travel is, by no stretch of the imagination, a "pop."

Our Navy daughter has been blessed to experience easy and inexpensive travel to various European and Asian destinations, and we're so happy she's had this opportunity. But for us, this is why we're homebodies.

My concluding thoughts from our time in Italy:

• The Italians live up to their stereotypes, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. They're loud, flamboyant, full of life, enjoy good food, and gesticulate like mad. (This spoof by a comedienne captures their mannerisms exactly.)

• Smoking is much more common. American smoking rates have been declining for decades, so it was a little bit of a culture shock to see the casual use of cigarettes in such high proportion.

• We saw very few disabled people in Italy. Not because they don't exist, but because there appears to be very little public accommodations available to help them get around. In many ways this can't be helped. It's impossible to retrofit centuries of accumulated infrastructure for wheelchair accessibility. 

• Strangers seldom meet your eyes or smile at you on the street. The general attitude is just to ignore you. As an introvert, I found this rather a refreshing change from American friendliness, though it took some getting used to. That said, when directly interacting with people, Italians were uniformly kind and pleasant.

Given the opportunity, would I return to Italy? In a heartbeat. The people were lovely, the cities are stunning, the history is amazing.

Thank you, Younger Daughter, for the trip of a lifetime.