Lau Family Farm Meats available Oct 8
Lori Anne Lau
Lau Family Farm, LLC
Grass-Fed and Finished * No Antibiotics * No Hormone Implants
Oct 8th Cache Valley Gardeners Market 9 to 1 in Logan
Downtown SLC Farmers Market @ Pioneer Park, 8 to 1pm
Oct 15th Idaho Falls Farmers Market 9 to 1 @ Key Bank Parking lot
Cache Valley Gardeners Market 9 to 1 in Logan
In celebration of our 12th year business anniversary all bundles will be 12% off thru Oct 1st. That’s the 4 beef bundles (laufamilyfarm.com/beef-bundles/), and the 3 lamb bundles (laufamilyfarm.com/lamb-bundles/).
We are also offering 12% off a variety of cuts including Beef Brisket, Top Sirloin Roasts, New York, Chuck and Ranch Steaks and Lamb Loin and Rib Chops.
Every wondered what to make with cubed steaks? This recipe was a major HIT at our house over the weekend. http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/steak-fingers-with-gravy/ I cut cube steaks into strips and battered and fried. John liked them with cocktail sauce, Becca with catsup, Tom with ranch. I loved mine with the gravy. Everyone said I had to put this recipe in the newsletter and on the website. It’s that good!
· We are taking deposits for quarters, half and whole beef to be delivered later this fall, winter and into spring. Quarter beeves are $4.75 per carcass lb (approx $775) and Half and whole are $4.50 per carcass lb (approx $1460) plus tax. Deposit is $100 per quarter. Delivered to central location in Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Logan, Ogden or SLC free of charge.
· We are beginning to take deposits for whole and half lambs to be delivered this winter (starting in December). The price is $6 per carcass lb (approx $420 for a whole lamb). Delivered to central location in Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Logan, Ogden or SLC free of charge.
· Its time to start thinking about ordering your standing rib roast (prime rib), rib eye roast, tenderloin roast for the winter holidays. I know it’s just early Fall but we only have two groups of animals being cut before Thanksgiving and some of those will go for larger carcass orders.
Only 2 (possibly 3) weeks of Farmers Markets left in this season already. I can hardly believe it is October already, but the recent changes in the weather are making it seem more fall like every day.
John continues to work on building our new cattle working corral before we need to use it to vaccinate calves and pregnancy check the mother cows. The recent wet weather has him focusing on building the various gates we’ll need, and thereby staying under cover for at least part of the day. He also got part of the triticale and winter wheat seed we hoped to plant in the ground. We need another dry period so he can work the second field we had in mind for spring feed.
I forgot to mention a recent batch of excitement we had a while back in the last newsletter. On the day John and went to look at vehicles we got one of the dreaded calls from the caribou county sheriff’s office. When you own livestock along a county road getting a call from the sheriff is never a good thing. Anyway we had just pulled into the dealership when the call came in and the dispatcher told us there had been an accident at our place. I think John and I were both trying to figure out how the dogs had gotten out of the kennels and on to the road, or who the rams had got on the road. Instead it seemed that someone had gone off the road and had driven thru about 5 of our fences before hitting our holding pen and finally stopping. It is still unclear what made the fellow leave the road and how a truck transitioning from 45 to 35 mph could go SOOO far before finally stopping. Thankfully he made a couple of course corrections that prevented him from hitting our livestock trailer, sheep working corral, or continuing on and hitting the hay stacks and possibly starting a fire in the hay. It is also a blessing that he went thru two tree rows, 5 electric fences etc instead of hitting the corner of the house and ending up in either of the kids bedrooms. Amazingly enough the fellow walked away. John meets with our insurance agent tomorrow but it sounds like they may pay only depreciated value of the fences and panels and posts he hit instead of the replacement value. Either way we have a lot of work to do to clean up the mess and get things so they will hold livestock this winter. Hopefully we’ll have some financial aid in in buying some of the replacement parts we’ll need.
Another big excitement came in the form of someone knocking on the door at 3:27 am to tell us our hay stack was smoldering. This was after we’d gotten multiple inches of rain and we wondered how this could possibly be true but John got dressed and went to investigate. What he found that was some of the hay from the summer of 2015 that we’d had tarped was smoldering where there was a split in the tarp that let rain get into the hay. He spent the next 2.5 hours taking that hay stack apart and placing each of the smoldering bales by themselves. The only tractor available is our oldest one that currently only has one light so that apparently made the job a bit more challenging.
We were recently offered an opportunity to take on a small Belted Galloway herd of cattle from a friend. When we went to check them out in great detail to decide if we wanted them we found some pretty good looking mother cows and sturdy little calves. They have never been intermingled with other cattle, and are quite isolated so they have never been vaccinated. I spoke today to the vet about how we will need to care for them while they go thru the stressful period of joining our herd, changing feed, and being exposed to germs they’ve never dealt with much. I’m excited to see how they will do in our operation and how the introduction of these genetics will help our herd be even more adapted to a forage diet.
Tom seems to have thoroughly enjoyed taking his friend to the Homecoming dance. He and 3 buddies took their dates bowling, taught them to shoot shotguns, organized a very nice meal at one of the homes, went to the dance, and then went and played games at another home until midnight. I heard a great deal about the cake mix waffles they were treated to. When did going to these school dances evolve into whole day affairs?
Becca continues to do extremely well on her cross country team. The team competed in Twin Falls last week against a bunch of much bigger schools from Pocatello, Twin Falls, Idaho Falls etc. Becca came in 11th overall, 1st on her team, and was the 1st freshman in the meet. Every week she’s setting new personal records and is now ranked 8th in the state for her school size division (107th state wide with time of 20:41.3). Her team has finished first in nearly every meet so far so it looks very good for them to qualify for the state meet. We are planning to not go to the very last markets on the 29th and instead will be rooting on Becca (hopefully) at the state meet in Pocatello that day. We are still deciding about the 22nd-we’ll let you know.
My new doctor (actually PA) has a somewhat take on a few of the things I’ve been dealing with for the last few years. We are trying some new things and I think I’m starting to see some benefits in my energy level and disposition. Most everything needs a couple more weeks before it can truly be assessed but since we’ve maxed out our very large annual deductible we’ve decide that this the time to try a few things and run a few blood tests and see what we can gather.
With the recent bumps in the road we failed to really acknowledge that we’d reached the end of our 12th year in business this summer. Whether you’ve been along for this crazy ride since 2004 or you are a more recent member of our clan we thank you. We thank you for looking for something other than mainstream commodity products, and being willing to pay a bit extra for them. We thank you for believing in us, and helping us to put and keep a product on the market that is all that beef and lamb can be-tasty, healthy, well cared for, responsibly managed. A lot has changed in 12 years. We no longer have to explain why someone might want something other than feedlot fed meat. There is still confusion about exactly what grass-fed and grass-finished means but we are no longer introducing the concept to nearly every customer like we were in 2004.
Thank you for trusting us and allowing our family to feed your family for 12 years!
John, Lori Anne, Tom and Becca Lau
Lau Family Farm, LLC
Grass Fed Beef, Lamb & Wool...A Natural Choice
PO Box 337
Soda Springs, ID 83276
208-709-4981 (cell)