Maggie’s Pork shutdown

So is it right to figure that this will have people building independent butcher shops and contracting small producers?

The money needs to be spread more evenly for services preformed.

Foriegn interests need removed by whatever means expedient.

The price of beef at the counter is too high and price paid to rancher too low.

No.

Would you want to throw your life savings into starting a new business right now? While it may sound good in theory, when you realize you are going to have to pay premium to get quality product (i.e., not the negotiated bulk bottom dollar pricing big companies spend buying thousands of animals) then have the overhead of a lease and have to fight to sell your product to consumers who want to compare your product to prices from WalMart?

Then throw in the regulatory environment our .gov has enacted, and an entrenched system that feeds off of harassing the little guy out of business.

As a small business owner myself, who is struggling to pay the bills and employees, watching my colleagues in the same field who are still getting paid while I took a 50% pay cut during this time - and wouldn't have been able to even accomplish THAT without this government bailout/stimulus - it terrifies me. The .gov and big business all want me to sell out into the corporate market. I'm not sure if I'll be able to sustain my business much longer, and I have 3 of my 6 partners all eyeing retirement in the next few years. Recruiting replacements is going to be daunting, and I wonder if it's not going to be impossible as more and more in my field shift into large corporations and guaranteed paychecks.

I chose the wrong field, sadly.
 
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Sorry you made a poor career choice.

The spirit of entrepreneurship lives on. Some will fail.

Considering your predicament not sure I will seek buisiness advise.

Only thing I can offer is get a good cpa.
 
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Sorry you made a poor career choice.

The spirit of entrepreneurship lives on. Some will fail.

Considering your predicament not sure I will seek buisiness advise.

Only thing I can offer is get a good cpa.

I have a great CPA. And a fabulous office manager. Unfortunately, in my field, it is stacked against the 'little guy' like in so many others, and the lobbying of the multibillion dollar corps leave us out in the cold. I agree, I made a bad business decision to choose this field, but hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans later, there is no going back.
 
My business lasted 7-8 years never made much on paper but never drained the account.

The graft was outstanding.

Eventually big business got jealous and cut into my gig. I could not fight big money.

Those were the days. Lol
 
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One of these days the world will wake up to the fact that America can feed itself with one hand tied behind its back.

Including our craphole cities who could be cut off in a heartbeat.

It's the REST of the world that our grain and meat and crop surplus feeds.

Fuck with us and we can stop exporting food. We can stop exporting energy. We can stop exporting technology. Except to our friends. Who have something we want in trade.

Isn't that how it should be?

And small business runs this country. Not big business. They may think they do. But they are not resilient or quick or nimble enough to deal with change. Entrepreneurs are. When your tractor breaks... IBM won't fix it. A local machine shop will. When WalMart is out of beef... Honeyfieldsmithperdue farms won't fix it. Your local farmer will. Along with your local meatcutter. Didn't know you had a local meatcutter? I guarantee you do. Just most don't know he'es there.

If SHTF in a big way... the employees of 'Big Business' are screwed. Suburbia can't feed you. A law degree from Harvard means nothing when there are ditches to be dug and furrows to be plowed. You are some HR idiot from Microsoft? Well... that leaves you with one option. Manual labor or starve. Or find a skill that people need. Running a %$#ing retarded HR department... isn't a skill that people need. They may want it in 'big business land.' But noone needs it.

Our farmers, energy producers, miners, steel workers, engineers, machinists... people who produce Value Add in turning raw materials into finished products. They will always be needed and valued. Paper traders, lawyers, hedge fund managers, actors, baseball-throwers... they are overhead. They should thank their lucky stars that there are producers supporting their... overhead.

Sirhr
 
being a yankee from NY, how long does it take to process a cow or pig if you dont have a full on facility

what type of saws and tools are a necessity

thanks
We did over 28 Elk last year, 25 the year before, 20 the year before. Same principle, depends on how much you need the "cuts" to survive. We can Hang, skin, quarter and debone a 800-1000lb animal in about 45 min... Ready for the freezer. If you want to be nit picky, and have your carcass aged, get inline for a couple weeks.
 
Lol.....that's not true. My boys show Angus and Red Angus heifers. They are always puppy dogs. The exotic and french breeds are the more difficult to handle. A lot of people think Brahman are stupid. Quite the opposite. They do have a larger flight zone than English breeds, but in a lot of ways are actually smarter.

I can go along with that, but it is because the ones your boys show are handled and almost treated like pets.
 
I’ve been selling a few freezer hogs and a couple freezer beefs every year, a friend and i go in together and basically sell the hog/steer for enough that he and I get a freezer full of meat for free. In the last month I’ve had a pile of people wanting to get in line to buy either one or both. I also have chickens, I used to give all my extra eggs away but now people are offering decent money for those also. IMHO I think we are going to go back to the small specialty shops, butchers, farmers markets things like that. People are scared of buying in the big chain stores with all the people are around and such.
 
I spent a lot of time on my grandparents farm in northern Oklahoma.

The tractor song reminded me of a day on the farm.

Was sitting on my horse next to the tractor grampa was having trouble starting. It turned over and started with a bang.

That started a small rodeo preformance and I thought it was under controll. The old John Deer had a strait stack and no flapper cap.

It shot the coffe can high into the air and yup landed under the horses feet.
Next I went high in the air and the horse ran for a quarter mile maybe more.

After an our of trying to get the horse he rang the tryangle and I came in.
He handed me a bucket with some horse cubes in it and I started accross the pasture.

He called me back took the bucket and shook it making the feed clang

Handed me the bucket and said something about city kids.

Horse came right in. Lol
 
It hasn't been mentioned but the quality of the meat is the real plus. Shop at Walmart you get select or maybe choice. Do your own from a local feeder and you get prime. When you put a well marbled prime steak on the grill you better have a bottle of water handy to tame down the flames.

There is no Prime available in my town of 35,000. I've looked.

The closest I can get is a local butcher who tells me their meat is "top 3% of Choice". I've not been able to tell much difference, myself, except paying the higher prices. When I drive over an hour to get Prime at Costco, I can tell the difference. But the packaged Choice at WalMart looks and tastes pretty much the same as that local butcher's "top 3% of Choice". I don't buy the Select crap.

I did go to that local butcher yesterday and got 4 thick-cut bone in pork chops which I did on the smoker, and a rack of prepackaged vacuum sealed St. Louis cut ribs that look exactly like the Tyson ribs at WalMart, and a couple packages of prepackaged 1/4 lb hot dogs and knackwurst. Altogether, $46. It stung a little bit to support local butchers, when I am paying a premium and half the stuff I get is just prepackaged and not really any different.

I dunno, maybe I'm just asshoe.
 
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Employees should go to smithfield plant, open it up and if China has anything to say about it, hang their overseer on a hook and send him down the lone with the piggies !

Foreigners who close food plants? Don’t get to own food plants. Declare it a strategic asset, auction it to an American company that will run it. Done.

Why do you think there is a company called American Bosch? You think the USA was going to allow Imperial Germany to control magneto production in WWI?
And when this is all over... buy American!!! We don’t need tariffs if consumers say “fuck no” to products made in China. Cut the demand and the product goes away.

We need a GIANT “buy American” campaign when this is done.

Sirhr

The governor shut the plant down when they had a huge out break at the plant...... For the record most of the employees at this plant are refugees brought in from around the globe by Lutheran social services and what not they live 20 people to a house and such so you can see how the cases skyrocketed in South Dakota and then that faggot mayor of Sioux Falls gets on national news and blames gov Noem for all this shit....... Wtf?
 
I’ve been selling a few freezer hogs and a couple freezer beefs every year, a friend and i go in together and basically sell the hog/steer for enough that he and I get a freezer full of meat for free. In the last month I’ve had a pile of people wanting to get in line to buy either one or both. I also have chickens, I used to give all my extra eggs away but now people are offering decent money for those also. IMHO I think we are going to go back to the small specialty shops, butchers, farmers markets things like that. People are scared of buying in the big chain stores with all the people are around and such.
I'm for that idea. I don't know that's the direction it's going to go.
 
She was born and grew up 15 minutes from where I did. Our high school teacher went to school with her and she claims she was a total bitch. Jealously maybe, cause I assume Kristi was really popular, and our teacher obviously wasn't. Lol. She ran a really tight race for Governor against Democrat Billy Sutton last year..the only reason he was Democrat so he could run against her. There was a lot of fake mud slinging going on during campaigning to smear Billys good name, and she lost a lot of respect. She's a career politician and I've disagreed a lot with her with some of her recent decisions.

I gotta say I'm proud of her now to hold her ground and fight for personal freedoms.
Kristi is smokin
 
To the OP, the price of that ham is going to be worth more than your asking. The company that supplies the piglets to the feeders that supply the Sioux Falls Smithfield plant are now digging ditches to bury the new born piglets. And if that ain't bad enough 2 Tyson beef plants and the JBS plants are having staff issues. The Dakota City Tyson plant just shut the gates at 10:00 and are not taking any more cattle. A foreman I know said that so many employees are no shows that they can only kill about 100 per hour, normal is 600 - 800. The virus testing in Grand Island where the JBS plant is located is running 50% positive. A friends mother works at a small locker near Avoca IA said they are booked until October for butchering beef. This is going to be painful for the feeders in our area, and us later.
 
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To the OP, the price of that ham is going to be worth more than your asking. The company that supplies the piglets to the feeders that supply the Sioux Falls Smithfield plant are now digging ditches to bury the new born piglets. And if that ain't bad enough 2 Tyson beef plants and the JBS plants are having staff issues. The Dakota City Tyson plant just shut the gates at 10:00 and are not taking any more cattle. A foreman I know said that so many employees are no shows that they can only kill about 100 per hour, normal is 600 - 800. The virus testing in Grand Island where the JBS plant is located is running 50% positive. A friends mother works at a small locker near Avoca IA said they are booked until October for butchering beef. This is going to be painful for the feeders in our area, and us later.

That all sounds not so good for upcoming meat prices (for us consumers).

Damn.
 
I feel for you guys in the meat business, and anyone who depends on buying meat for consumption. I am grateful / thankful that I am a avid hunter and I don't have to depend on buying meat. Now I can't lie I do buy bacon to wrap around my venison tenderloin when I put it on the grill I better go stock up on some bacon before it's all gone.
 
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Called a local butcher I've been using for several years to get a kill date for 5 hogs, usually he is 3-4 weeks out. He is BOOKED until February 4th! The place I take my steers to can't get me in until MARCH 10th. That kind of caught me off guard, both facilities have been in business for over 50 years and neither of them have ever seen anything like this. I'm going to have some seriously fat animals.
 
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We just butchered a 300 pound feeder last week . Paid $120 from a local farmer and had the meat cut up and wrapped in no time .
Still have a bunch of meat from a hog I shot last year in Ft Benning .
I bought plenty of meat well before the shortage took off .
I don't think we will buy pork in the store ever again .
Buying a whole hog and doing a bit of work , makes far to much economic sense .
 
Pork has been on sale recently.
97 cents a pound for whole pork loins.

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If you have a knife, cutting board, grinder and vacuum sealer there is zero waste and no real knife skills other than strait cuts.

My wife insisted on doing all the work because she wanted to. Only assists were grinder assembly.
 
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One sow can produce between 20-25 piglets per year. It takes about six months to slaughter, but you can fudge that, and appearently that’s what pig farmers did when the slaughterhouses were shutting or reducing. Thanks to the farmers, and in spite a lot of fake news, there is no pork shortage.
 
I have some breakfast seasoning but keep making Bbq burgers, Italian, eggrolls and smoked garlic link type stuff.

Guess I got bored with breakfast sausage.

My wife wanted a bunch of chops this time but I can still grind them if she turns her back.

A lot of the grind is left plain and seasoned as used.
 
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Well a tasty quick thing I had last nite is bbq pork burgers.

Ground pork with your favorite bbq pork rub some sauce, extra garlic and onion powder mixed in.

You have to be gentle with them while grilling and turning.
Basicly the flavors of pulled pork in a burger without firing up the smoker.

An egg and some bread crums help hold them togeather but add no flavor and if just making a few we omit that.

Some buns pickle and onion done.
 
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