So I saw Scott from PR Meat Co (PRMC from here-on) at the Temescal Farmer’s Market about three or four weeks ago and he took me aside and asked sotto voce if anyone from PRMC had asked me whether I was free Sunday the 12th of September for a three day trip to the ranch whence the name of the company was derived and where all their beef comes from. I had seen Doug the day before so the answer was “yes” and indeed, “yes, I would be joining them.” And that was all I heard about it.
Saturday the 11th, September 11th, I saw Cliff at the Grand Lake Farmer’s Market and asked him about the trip. He was a tad surprised that no one had yet contacted me and told me that Ryan was “da man” given this task. Ryan did later call me and we set up a pick-up time for the following morning. And that was all I heard about it.
Now I did know we were going to be camping and I did know that Cliff and his friend Mike were going to be doing a lot of the cooking but beyond that I had no idea what we were going to be doing beyond what I assumed would be a tour of the ranch. So I packed my tent and sleeping bag and some light clothes, put on my Keen sandals and was ready by the time Ryan showed up.
As we were driving to pick up one of the other guests, a chef from Magnolia in SF named Matt, I learned that we would be getting a tour of the abattoir on a full-operation day. Cool, I thought, hope I have clothes the USDA guys or the Owners won’t be too excited about, too late to turn back now.
The thing you should know also is that the Ranch is up on the Oregon border just Northeast of Weed (California) and Southwest of Klamath Falls (Oregon) on Highway 97 at a rough elevation of 5000ft and that at this time of year it can be pleasantly warm during the day and downright chilly at night so shorts and sandals (what I was togged up in) may not be the most sensible choice of outerwear. The weather can also be aggressive as it is essentially the mountains and while it may be 70 or 80F down in Redding a little over an hour away it may be snowing/raining/hailing or some such up at the Ranch.
We got lucky, it was warm and clear by day and around 45F and clear at night so the raging camp fire was not only lovely to look at but was welcome.
Doug met us here and we transferred our gear into his enormous, manly-man’s truck, a turbo charged, 10L diesel pickup with a roof rack (very shiny and un-used so far) and gauges of all sorts on the dash and up the A-pillar. Pretty cool truck but a little overdone for city and inter-city driving.
Leaving Alexis’ at 11am we made it to the Ranch around 4:30pm after a 45minute lunch break and a 15min coffee break. Total elapsed time without stops about 5 hours.
The Ranch is located in a segment of a valley that gets fresh water from springs all year round and is lush and green where it is irrigated and golden brown and waving where it is not. The pastures back up onto hills covered in pine forests which Prather maintains and periodically selectively logs to keep the fire load down. They get so much water in fact that they have their own hydro-electric plant and sell the power to the grid. This plant has been in operation since around the time of WW1.
I woke up with the sunrise at 7am and rolled out to watch it warm up the colors of the valley if not the valley itself. I relit the fire which still had plenty of embers from the night before and got down to some reading and waiting, waiting for the others to wake up so I could make, and drink, coffee. I had a long wait, almost 2 hours, not surprising considering the beer and scotch and late hour of turning in. The coffee was good and plentiful as was the breakfast: 2lbs of bacon, 2 dozen eggs scrambled with cheese, caramelized onions and heirloom tomatoes from Adriana at Tomatero. There was also toast.
Fishing in the local bass pond followed and all of us nay-sayers who nevverrrr catch fish caught fish as promised by Scott, luckily for Scott. We threw them all back in as the farm-wisdom is that the fish have some sort of parasite at this time of year when the water is warm and thus aren’t good eating. This was fine as Cliff had brought up enough food to feed the nine of us (two more chefs showed up after lunch) plus all the ranch hands/managers and their families and still have enormous quantities left over after two days of gluttony.
After fishing, lunch and the arrival of the last two chefs, Adam and Sean from Gather (Berkeley), we met up with Jim Rickers the general ranch manager back down at the abattoir. After a brief description of the size and locations of the operation and the various things that Prather does to sustain itself we left for a tour of the pasturage and the hay fields some of which have been leased out to friends and family. This latter are currently being used to raise raspberry cane starts, onions and, up until this year, organic strawberry starts.
photo: Prather pasture full of cows. Really.
It should come as a surprise and a shock to all of us that organic strawberries are not as organic as we would like to think. It turns out that except for Prather (and not this year), no one in the strawberry industry uses organic starts. This is because until a few years ago it was deemed impossible to produce starts without fumigating the soil with a seriously nasty poison that over the long term renders the soil utterly inert, dead, dusty and very susceptible to being blown away in the wind. Prather showed that this was not so and made a valiant effort to make their system required by the organic governors of the State but resistance from the start-growers killed this project for now. Presumably you need to raise a certain amount of acres of starts and thus you need buyers for the starts. Since the organic growers aren’t required by law to buy organic starts, which obviously cost a bit more than the non-organic varieties, the business model was flawed and money was lost. As usual these things have to come from us, the end consumers, becoming educated and demanding a fully-organic strawberry to promote the healthier-for-the-soil-and-thus-our-planet approach that really should be the end goal of the organic process.
While we were gallivanting around the valley a giant feast was being whipped up by Cliff and Mike back at our campsite. We were to be feasting on oak-smoked Range Brothers Pork Ribs (6 full racks), a twice smoke Prather beef brisket, creamy potato salad, a tomato salad and all sorts of pot-luck goodies brought by the ranch wives. it was quite a diverse group: ranch managers/hands of various stripes (most with degrees and in some cases multiple masters degrees), their families (two of the wives are teachers, one helps manage the ranch), chefs (yet two more from the SF), me and finally the four PRMC hosts. At the end of an hour and a half there was no food left except for two ribs, and shrapnel pieces of various desserts.
Another late night drinking around the fire followed, all the beer was quickly gone and the scotch followed. Then a handle of Jameson’s was discovered in the cabin. The Midnight Bacon Devil paid a visit a cooked two more pounds of bacon over the open flames and Erica made sandwiches for all. Despite the huge amount of food we had already eaten the bacon disappeared pretty quick.
7am the next morning and I popped out of bed to watch the sunrise again which was made more lovely by a thin layer of tule fog on the pasturage. Matt joined me and we sat out in the sun on stumps watching the sun come up. Once a couple more were stirring we headed up to the cabin and made coffee, it was only 7:30 or so this morning. Doug had turned up early to pick up any that wanted to head in early to the abattoir to get a more thorough exposure to the whole process. The rest of us headed down after packing up our gear and loading up Scott’s Excursion (named The Scourge).
This was The Day, the main focus of the trip, the exposure of the end user to the full circle of how and where our steaks and hamburgers come from.
I assumed that we had all read about the blight and pox on society that is the meat packing industry wherein 5000 head of cattle get processed every day in the biggest abattoirs and how the meat packing industry has been consolidated over the years into just a few mega-abattoirs for the most part. These abattoirs, which are responsible for almost all the US-raised beef consumed in the US, have a fairly horrible process that would set off even the most anti-PETA amongst us and work at such speed that horrible accidents happen fairly regularly, the industry has an 80% turn-over rate and meat is easily contaminated thus the periodic recalls of millions of pounds of meat every year. These last being a result of the inability or lack of desire on the part of the packers to label and thus track both the sources of the cattle and the resulting packages.
It was a delight to see the Prather process which is focused from birth to death on an effort to make the cattle’s life a happy one. They are given access to large, fresh green pasturage from day one until up to 3 to 6 months before the end. Each pasture is maintained with a low-density population of cows (see photo above) which promotes a healthy herd and allows for the herd to remain on any one pasture for a reasonable time before they are moved and yet without ruining the pasture itself. Thanks to the abundant water they can easily keep the fields lush and green. There are buffer zones dotted around to provide habitat for birds and other animals and no effort is made to control insects via chemical means or otherwise as the landscape is alive with life and in balance.
When the cattle (predominantly steers) have aged sufficiently (about three years) they are shifted off the pasturage into the feed areas for a slow three to six month fattening process whereby they are gradually fed more grain and less hay to give them a nutritionally-denser feed. The process is slow so that the change in diet won’t upset the delicate digestive balance of the cattle (unlike big feed lots).
The cattle are also kept in “families” for their entire lives which helps to promote a tranquil life for the cattle. Apparently they are social beasts that gain comfort from having their friends around, no real surprises there. The surprise is that this is not a common practice as the cattle are so much easier to handle at any time when treated this way.
Once a week 20 to 25 or so head of cattle are separated out of a herd and led through a weigh-station where the final weight of the steer is verified before the steer is led into one of five or six small pens just short of the abattoir in a section I call The Line. The pens form an alley of sorts that terminates at the abattoir, each pen separated from the next by a gate. This keeps the number of cattle in any one group low so they don’t get excited.
The following morning, after a 24 hour period of water-rations only, the steers are led in groups of five to six up to the stunning room where they are slowly formed into a line and loaded into the stunning chamber one by one. The chamber is around a corner and is physically isolated from the line of cattle by a sliding door which not only serves to restrain the lead steer but also precludes the following steer from seeing what is happening up ahead.
The cattle are each stunned by a quick blow to the skull, located roughly between the ears, by a captive-bolt stunning device that renders the steer brain dead but still alive. This system is used as it is more humane than the electrocution method more typically used. From here the steer (or sometimes cow) is moved into the kill-room where it is actually killed, skinned and eviscerated and finally washed down with an organic cider vinegar wash used as a final agent against e-coli. This process takes about 15 minutes per steer and in this example takes 7 men. After the final cleaning the carcass goes into the chilling room to age for 2 weeks
There is pretty much absolute silence throughout, at least from the cattle. This is also true out in the fields where not much lowing and mooing is heard which is quite unusual and is a result of the of the calm and healthy environment. The men work quietly and efficiently, each knowing his role and getting it done with the least amount of fuss and effort. We probably caused more noise by being there, getting in the way and asking questions.
While all this was going on the cattle from two weeks ago were being removed from the aging room and being cut up into the steaks, roasts, ribs and so on that we see at the store and the Farmer’s Markets. Four men worked this room, one to cut the carcass into primals, two to butcher the primals into the various cuts and one to operate the vacuum sealer and the labeler and occasionally make hamburger or pack shipping boxes with finished product. The speed with which the two butchers deboned and cut was incredible, even so they can only process about five cows a day.
The crews start at 7am and finish around noon when a lunch is served by the ranch.
This time another feast was put together by Cliff and we were treated to a mountain of hotdogs, hamburgers and all the fixins including a homemade chili from one of the managers.
All told a great weekend and yet another example of why organic meat, especially humanely-raised and treated meat is better. I suppose I am as much of a proselytizer of organic food as vegetarians are about their lifestyle. It may be more expensive but eat less meat (supposedly a good thing), buy the high quality meats to support a healthy world (obviously a good thing) and live well.
For comparison sake Darcie and I spend about $60 a week on PRMC meats (our only source usually) and a further $30 to $50 on fruits and vegetables. I rarely break a hundred dollars and we usually have at least one meal with one or two guests. This food covers all our meals for the 7-day week. The things we buy elsewhere are mostly milk, butter, cheese and various grains as most of these items just aren’t available at the market or aren’t very good if they are (except for Massa Brown Rice which is spectacular).
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