Close Your Eyes, Rudolph

Farming families who raise and butcher their own meat are eating VERY well in this country. And I mean restaurant-quality, way-better-than-a-grocery-store (choose your animal) filet mignon. It may be in a back room somewhere with a wood-burning stove and a concrete floor wearing a blood-spattered apron, sitting on a cooler because there are no chairs and eating with a toothpick off of a makeshift plate or, even more likely, straight out of the pan (all theoretical, of course ;) But believe me when I tell you that people who handle meat at the source are getting a better product than any of the rest of us. It’s fresh. It’s high-quality. And it’s so tender that a toothless infant could eat it. It’s that good.

I initially met Dave and Lori Sanders by signing up for their deer-butchering workshop through the local community college. After a false start and hours wasted driving around lost in the country because I (and apparently Google, too) am incapable of deciphering rural addresses, we rescheduled for this past Sunday. When I had spoken to him on the phone a couple days before the class, I was disappointed when he said, contrary to the course description, this would not be a hands-on demonstration. As a former psychiatric nurse who has seen just about everything, he didn’t feel comfortable handing a knife over to someone he’d never met before. I pressed him a little and explained that I might be certifiable but I was safe with a knife. He relented somewhat and said he would reconsider once he had “a chance to look me in the eyes.”

Their farm, called Sanders Country Kitchen, is located just north and west of Valparaiso, Nebraska, and is a marvel of one man’s amazing handiwork: Dave built just about every structure on the property himself, including storage buildings, a slaughter house, a meat processing building, a walk-in refrigerator for aging meat, a smokehouse, and a commercial kitchen. When I met him, I realized I had already met him before (and bought his food) at the farmer’s market in Lincoln. The Sanders and their 14-year-old son, Nick, do everything: mushrooms, jellies, jerky, sausage, and eggs. They used to do rabbits but recently sold that business. They work a seven-day-a-week farming life. He left nursing a few years ago and now works full-time on the farm, while Lori still does part-time nursing to supplement the family’s income. They all, including their son, work extremely hard for a life that they happen to love. “It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle,” Lori told me.

Seeing a carcass hanging is a little jarring, even with my high interest in the butchering craft. Today we would be breaking down a female mule deer, the first step of which is removing the hide. The meat has been aging in a cooler for one or two weeks, which breaks down the meat to unimaginable tenderness. It is aged with the hide on so the meat doesn’t dry out. After the meat is aged, it is so tender that you can rip and ruin good meat if you try to pull the hide off, so this is instead done slowly with lots of little cuts with a very sharp knife. After the hide is removed, he wipes the animal down with a cloth that’s damp with white vinegar. This acts like Velcro and does a great job of picking up stray hairs so they don’t wind up in the packaged meat. I have personally eaten summer sausage with deer hair in it (not pointing fingers or naming names here) and it’s not appetizing in the least. So I was pleased to see him taking such care at this step.

Removing the  hide

While the basic technique of butchering is the same regardless of the animal, it had been a while since my hog butchering class, so my memory was not great. Long story short: first the “arms/shoulders” come off, followed by the backstrap (tenderloin), and then finally the hind legs. After these larger parts are removed, the process, again, is mostly the same: remove the bone; clean off fat and “trash” such as membrane, cartilage, and goo; then finally separate the larger piece into muscles or muscle groups, depending on the final product.

Lori helps her husband Dave keep the deer stable while he cuts.

Removing the "backstrap" or tenderloin, which you can see underneath the layer of fat that Dave is pulling back (a sign of a very healthy deer). This is where the big steaks come from.

Shoulder and arm with bone in (top) and after deboning (bottom).

If it will become hamburger, you can simply hack away at it after it has been cleaned up, cutting it into pieces small enough to fit in the grinder. (I had great fun doing that with one of the hind quarters. Dave just set me loose. “See?” he said. “Now you’re a butcher!” That Dave. What a sense of humor.) A bundle of smaller muscles can make a wonderful roast, with all kinds of muscle layers for inserting whole cloves of garlic, herbs, and spices before tying the whole thing up and throwing it in the oven. Smaller whole muscles make great little medallions, while large whole muscles make beautiful steaks, as we were about to see.

Backstraps removed and ready to cut into steaks.

Lunch is almost ready!

 Break time was savored this day while we sampled the fruits of our labor. Lori seared a few of the steaks on the top of a wood-fueled stove, seasoned with garlic and salt. Steak. That was all we had. Best all-protein lunch ever. And as I ate, I couldn’t help but think about how many times I’ve paid a lot of money for steak that was not even close to this good.

Of course, nothing on the farm goes to waste. After as much of the meat as possible had been removed from the carcass, Dave put it in the chicken coop and the chickens were falling all over themselves to clean the bones. I didn't realize chickens could be quite so...carnivorous.

He said it would probably take me about a dozen times before I would have the process memorized. Repetition is key. He offered to let me stay and watch/help on a second deer and, thusly, a 2-hour course became a 3 ½-hour course. The option to exchange free labor for instruction may also be a possibility with the Sanders, so I was pretty happy to establish this connection after previous failed attempts for a similar work-for-education trade with other meat lockers.