Nouveau beef. We've coined that title as a brilliant conversation starter as well as a way to set our beef apart from the rest of Alberta's pride.
Nouveau Beef is born in April and May and live their entire life on our farm, at their mothers side. We don't feed grain. We don't give hormones or antibiotics. We don't "finish" them on grain. Nouveau beef is simply healthy, clean meat.
We take them straight from our pasture to the butcher in the late fall, early winter.
We started thinking that cattle are the only domesticated animal that is fattened for over a year then eaten, after it's of reproductive age. Everything else (pig, lamb, chicken, turkey) is butchered in the fall.
We decided to give it a go. And Wowza! We're glad we did!
Nouveau beef is tender, lean, earthy, healthy, and so versatile! Every cut is tender. Those normally destined for the grinder can take center stage on a table set to impress guests.
Yearlings in the setting sun.
Showing off the double muscles at almost three months
Where does YOUR
Bovine Dine?
Nouveau Beef muscling up nicely on the abundance of grasses. Petey in the background showing off his incredible muscling!
Petey, the Piedmontese. Sire to all our delicious beef!
Our first batch of Petey's yearlings available this fall.
Another beautifully muscled calf for our nouveau beef program!
We've had some interest in bigger cuts and more fat. The more traditional version of beef. So we raise a small amount of yearling beef for those interested. Same program as our Nouveau beef but we keep them over the winter, feeding them locally grown hay and finish them on the summer grass. They're bigger, a bit fattier, tender (Thank you Piedmontese!) and very very delicious! We end up spending a lot of time with these bovines and can feed most of them out of our hands.
For many years we had the traditional breeds of Alberta beef, black Angus cows with a Simmental bull. We liked them but it was just so "normal", we did because everyone does it. Those breeds do very well in our environment and are best for selling to the auction as they perform very well in the feedlot setting.
We decided to see what else is out there. We began experimenting with a few different breeds here and there and have some successful years and some not so successful years. We have always had a very heavily influenced black Angus herd but we'd switch the bull out and began to keep back some of the nicer heifers and build our herd from the inside out.
The last couple years we've gotten into Piedmontese. They're known for their double muscling and tenderness genes! Although they out perform the traditional beef breeds in meat to bone ratio, tenderness, health and flavour, they don't marble up in the traditional way, making them undesirable for the commodity markets.
We rent a Piedmontese bull, we've nicknamed Petey, from Peter at Peony Farms Ltd. Lol!
This is the first year that we're able to offer both our Nouveau beef and our Yearling beef with these Piedmontese genetics!
Watch the miracle of life!