I'm really glad you found what you've been looking for. It's important. Sometimes, it's just a small thing like a really good steak that can give you a smile.

What is (or who is) Sir Bos?

"Sir" is an honorific of respect. From Wikipedia via Google:

Bos (from Latin bōs: cow, ox, bull) is the genus of wild and domestic cattle. Bos can be divided into four subgenera: Bos, Bibos, Novibos, and Poephagus, ...

Genus: Bos; Linnaeus‎, ‎1758‎

Class: Mammalia

Family: Bovidae

Kingdom: Animalia

Hence, the traditional name for a cow, "Bossy".

Do they ship? :O)

Not sure if that was serious given the emoticon, but yes. I think it's a limited delivery area, however. You have to buy a box (minimum order), but I think you can get a single (non-subscription) and if you work it right, pretty much custom to what you want. As I said, I got the one steak from the farm box service. https://kellercrafted.com/pages/mission

It has always existed nearby. For decades. Everywhere. Near me, near you. Could be 5 miles up the road or easily delivered to your door. Finding it is like a lost eyeball contac in a hay field. Usually word of mouth. Hidden small farms that produce for a few high end restaurants or just a few co-ops or classA butchers that will sell locally to nearby neighbors but no websites or on-line communication exist. (phone calls/texts only)

Same with fisherman that have no interest going big business. Just a comfortable local following. A few high end restaurants...dock side purchases only

"just right" is such a calm reflective achievement. It is intuitive. No recipe. No gravy green peppercorn sauce. No need to bathe in gobs of butter...

Most farmers are not social. Not that great at the business side.

2017 we solved chicken/eggs, beef/wild game/ birds, local cheese/goats cheese, lamb....and a produce stand hidden back road but again ...word of mouth. (they supply local groceries)... the farm stand is for the community. Their main income is shipped local grocery. and NYC.

Once you find it, local grass-fed, cook it properly.

I've not had what you describe as 'no flavor' since a grocery steak, foam tray flat-packed, 30 years ago. Blahhh and bland. Even somehow tender has no flavor.

We now have a NewEngland grass-fed farm share...Vermont down to Philadelphia. Mostly HudsonValley farms.

...my blithering above, 'yawn' aside....embrace the small local farmers. I struggled with beef cuts unfamiliar. Near canceled the share but when covid lock-down hit, i embraced the challenge.

My neighbor supplies one NYC steak house. Only sells to us and nearby locals....back door.

Honor system. Drive slow, hit the barn fridge/freezer. No con-tact as they are busy.

No sign at the entrance for sales....black angus grass fed. Grass-finished is often a struggle but usually works out with various winter up and down temps NorthEast.

NYC is surrounded by farmland for miles.

I frankly don't know exactly what the really good grocery store has for beef. They have lovely prime steaks which the menfolk love, but I just think they're greasy. They might have something more like what I like but back when I went in person and could talk to the butcher (whose first language is not English and who is impossible on the phone) I was treating myself to lamb. The flavorless beef ranges from the grass fed at Whole Foods to what they've had at the top butchers. The good grocery has been having chickens like I'd was looking for for years. I think the grower may have been rerouting when the restaurants closed. I can get half a dozen straight from the grower, but prefer t get it at the grocery. It's just far and hard to get to. Much better with Instacart where someone is getting paid to do the driving.

"Local" means something else in the West. We don't have the kind of small farms you're talking about everywhere. There are some. Most aren't accessible or have high minimums. We had good farmers markets. The online farmer's market is fab.

Yuppers, it was a serious inquiry. This was my hopeful face emoticon :O) At other times, that very same emoticon might mean something else. I clicked the link and clicked again to see if they deliver to my little corner of the world in Cali, but got an endless loop of filling out an order first. I'll try again with a different browser. Thanks!

Smiles,

Sooz

"Local" means something else in the West. We don't have the kind of small farms you're talking about everywhere. There are some. Most aren't accessible or have high minimums. We had good farmers markets. The online farmer's market is fab.

I did not see your link above until now. That seems very similar and i expected California to be more forward/advanced in coop farms offering delivery over the East coast. I thought you have been happy with your good local butcher over the years. The difference might be close proximity to the farms.

I like supporting the local farms. Especially the recent no strings attached un-like CSA's have been in the past years. Trial orders, once a month or every three, suspend if out of town. Cancel anytime....

I'm consistenly quarterly. A few friends got in the share early lock-down. Still a long wait-list. Nice to know the local farmers are doing so well. West coast and East. Our veg CSA's are pick-up only still. Deliveries with-in a reasonable radius is so smart. Rather than 75-100 people decending on the farm Saturday between 8am-noon....a two day delivery farm worker person could make some nice tips.

That said, you had a nice steak!, 😜

My father was a farmer, and he was extremely social, as were most farmers that I knew in Texas. I can imagine New England farmers not be social, however, and so I think it probably varies from region to region. I used to work at my father's farm supply store, and so I met a lot of farmers in central Texas.

We are very lucky here in Fresno to have The Market which, in addition to Harris Ranch beef, has their own lable of meats they cut themselves. I don't eat much steak, but when I do I always buy The Market's meat.

I ordered some meat from Omaha Steak and was soooo unimpressed that I will never do that again. And, I've never gotten meat from any other pre-ordered delivery service.

I'm spoiled and I love it!

Farmers among local farmers, very social. At the feed store, the post office that is also a small deli....breakfast sandwiches, lunch deli cold cut sandwiches ...a bookshelf of free magazines and reads....bring some, take some. A chili contest bake off, a chicken dinner at the volunteer firehall next door. Raffels, bake sales. Festivals.

It is the 'city folk' that stop by disruptive, near demanding a tour of their farms, seeing a sign for local produce and quality meats with small mini shed stores, very friendly...maple syrup ,honey, freezers of pork, beef, chickens, eggs, cheese....then do not purchase a thing.

I'm on a first name basis with my local produce stand farm and the few other we used pre-ciovid. One of our best friends left the city with two todlers after 9-11. Has been farming organic dairy since.... 35 cows is about the minimum for holding on though his cheese business is 'city' successful. As is the maple syrup.

25 yrs ago i had the summer months off and had my niece and nephew for three weeks, four weekends. Under 10yrs at the time. A big garden that year with so much time and energy. They only had consumed fast food their entire lives so far, they had a grand time harvesting potatoes, rhubarb, berries, veg...we set up a vegetable stand they harvested and tended. Road side. Rhubarb mint lemonade....so fun.

To this day, i still get strangers pulling up demanding veg sales. 'CityFolk'. We have it gated now. We like our privacy. I do put out abundance for free occasionally, road side.

Yes, you're right. I meant specifically how far to the farms. California is huge by East Coast standards, and we tend to consider anything south of Sacramento (about 2/3 of the state) "local" to Southern California. When I was a kid, there were active farms within a mile or two, and many more in the neighboring valleys, but that's a long ago memory. Now it's just sprawl. Some city dwellers have gotten permission to grow kitchen gardens on publicly owned plots in front of their homes. People have container gardens. If they have enough more land for it, some even have chickens, but the real farms are a good distance away.

Most of the CSAs here did distribute at schools. I'm not sure about pandemic models. The way it used to work, is that woman who always has to be in charge of things would take delivery from the farm truck in the parking lot, and the local moms/dads and adjacent kidless workers would pick up from her, usually from 7:00-8:30 a.m., or some similar hour. The organic farm box/online farmer's market I've been using delivers to the house overnight, once a week (I think you can get once every other week as well). They have a CSA, but you can swap out for other veg offerings, plus add more, and add the meats, dairy, pantry etc. Cloud Swift used the same service, which started closer to her. It's really great!

Quite a number of the best growers around here do have websites because their natural market is restaurants or small restaurant groups. The big distributors are great for what they do, but for the more hands on things, the pricier foods, direct sales works better. I'm thinking that Keller are probably in this category. I've heard about them, esp., the quality, for years. Anyway, these places have minimum orders similar to what a small restaurant might order, but one can order for a week what they might do for a day. It's a good business model.

I'm sure in farm country, one can similarly get to know the locals and benefit from their knowledge and what they sell on the side. There are some smaller farms. There's lots of agribusiness. Lots. But also some independents as well as the artisanals. But drive an hour in any direction from the ocean and you're still in the metropolitan area and it's all built up or protected wild land. Another half hour and you might find some farming mixed in. It wasn't actually paradise before, but there are lots of parking lots now. Still, the food gets distributed, and much of it is excellent. Many years ago in CF, there was a discussion about produce, and someone told me my opinion didn't count because we just have such good produce here, always. :) I don't mind, but I wish everyone had access to the same riches.

gandad always used to call the cattle bos and bossy ... bossy were the females ...

I had a Bossy Cow, but we called her that because she WAS bossy, definitely head of the herd, LOL, and had nothing to do with Latin!

I think I know what sleevedog means by "not social". I'm social enough with people I know, but have little patience to deal with the public in general. Elery would like to enlarge the garden and sell at the local farmer's markets. I told him I would grow as much of anything that he wanted, but he'd have to man the market stand because I was NOT going to go listen to people tell me all day that my beans aren't straight enough, or the peppers big enough or the tomatoes red enough or round enough and help us all if there might actually be a bug. And that's before they start haggling about price. Much of the time people are not nice and I have no tolerance for it. So, I'd make a lousy salesperson and I have no interest in being one anyway. So, I sell to the B&B across the street and can all I want and give the rest to the neighbors and the food banks.

Plllog, I'm glad you enjoyed your steak. I agree with you on the "prime" beef, I find it generally too greasy and don't care for that. Others will disagree, of course, but that's fine. More for us!

Annie

The issue of small ranchers in CA is complicated by the fact that in the Sonoma County area, where there are many smaller ranches, there is only ONE USDA-approved meat processing plant. It is under sole proprietorship of Marin Sun Farms company. MSF will not accept any steers except those sold to the company - and having the monopoly means they pay less per pound.

This article explains the difficulty small ranchers in Sonoma County have encountered. BARC is trying to collect funds to start up a new co-op meat processing plant in the county, but they are at least a couple of years away from opening up, even if they manage to obtain full funding.

Ranchers Form Co-Op to Address Meat Processing Bottleneck

Just FYI it is illegal to slaughter and process cattle EXCEPT for yourself and your own family. So the ranchers are not allowed to personally process/pkg meat for private sale per Federal law. They can raise the steer and sell the processed pkgs, but they cannot process the carcass themselves if the end result is a financial transaction.

One of our family friends is a rancher up in Port Angeles, WA. Their beef cattle are processed by a tough old guy who is the traveling processor for the area's small ranchers. Drives in with his F350 and spends a day processing a steer for them. They wrap up the parts and stick it in the freezer. Bartering takes place between neighbors as a matter of course, but I'm sure if by chance they do sell some, it would be done on the QT.