Beef Sale Ends April 6th

We love grazing, our cows and our beef and here is some love from our customers:

Arielle Ellis Left This ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Google Review

"Picked up a beautiful order of Short ribs for our family of five. Best Christmas dinner ever! Over mashed potatoes with a Red wine gravy, the ribs were melt in your mouth heavenly and fed us for 3 nights! We are humbled to have such nourishing, inspiring and plentiful meat options available to us from Reber Rock Farm. Every order is a feast!"

Tony Capozzi left this ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Google Review

"I have ordered meat online from a number of small and family-owned farms, and my experience with Reber Rock Farm is perhaps the best I have ever had. I contacted them several times with questions, and each time my questions were very promptly and kindly answered. The meat items I ordered were well-cleaned and packaged and arrived frozen solid - just perfect. They also included a complimentary bottle of maple syrup, which was very much appreciated. That's the kind of service you get when you shop small/family-owned - fantastic, and I will be back for more."

R.J. Ober left this ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Google Review

"If you live within Reber Rock’s delivery area this is some of the highest quality meat you have access to, delivered right to your door. The chicken, pork and beef are all flawless and the delivery is 100% reliable. I’ve been a customer for years and will be for many more!"

Vicky Shen left this ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Google Review

"My family has been enjoying Reber Rock Farm meat for several years. The chicken, pork, and beef products are by far tastier and of higher quality than any other meat we have purchased at our local grocery store. We appreciate the humane treatment of their animals and the stellar customer service. Their maple syrup is delicious as well (and the glass bottles are beautiful). I am impressed with the level of care and quality they put into everything they do, from the raising of the animals to the packaging of the shipment boxes."

Why Grass Fed Beef?

Many people say many different things about the differences between grass fed beef and "conventional" or grain fed beef. To answer this debate for myself I believe the greatest wisdom lies in the natural world around us. The answer therefore lies in the natural patterns of cows and animals like cows.

Cows have evolved over millions of years to be really good at eating grass for food. If we think about it, anything can be food. The question is how well does our body break down the pieces of what we eat and make it into "food" that our body can use to keep us going.

If you and I took a handful of grass from one of our pastures, chewed it up and ate it, our body would not get much energy or protein out of the grass. A cow however, is a member of an animal group called ruminants. Cows and other ruminants have four stomachs! These four stomachs, one of them called the Roman from which they get their name, allow the cow to break down the stubborn parts of grass into food.

This team of four also allow the cow to grow to over 1000 pounds by eating grass which needs no tractor for planting only asking for sunlight and rain.

For me, this is a pretty compelling evidence that a cow is well suited to eat grass. So how did the grass convince the cow to eat it?

If we look back at the history of our continent hundreds of years ago, there were a large ruminants called bison who roamed the plains. Some people estimate there were more than 60 million bison before the railroads cross our country (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). Bison herds were so large one herd could stretch for miles almost as far as I could see.

These large herds were always on the move. Researchers at Yellowstone National Park shown that they're small herds of bison move more than 70 miles every year. One study I read indicated that a single bison would walk more than 1000 miles in a year moving to one area than another and perhaps back to the same first area before moving on.

It's clear to me the large ruminants like bison and cattle have been moving their herds across prairies and pastures for millions of years. It's only recently we came up with the crazy idea to put thousands of these animals in a tight space and feed them grain.

We choose to eat our grass fed beef in our home and raise grass fed beef here on our farm for three reasons: nutrition, animal, health, and ecology.

Nutrition

Nutrition means many things to many people, for me this word's meaning is to nourish. I feel our grass fed beef nourishes my body. Nourishing means.

• Grass fed beef a taste great! Our taste buds are one of them anyways our bodies let us know what is the right thing to put in our body.
• Grass beef is good for our body. There's a lot of evidence to show that the fat beef animal builds in its body when consuming only grass is very different than the fat produced when gaining weight quickly eating grain. This has to do the types of fatty acids in the fat. You've probably heard of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids? Neither is "better" than the other, grass fed beef has been shown to have a balance of these fatty acids that is easy for our bodies to breakdown and use for energy.
• Grass fed beef is nutrient dense! This has become a buzz word in recent years, but I use the phrase literally. With the incredible resources of our son, reign and minerals in our soils our beef animals are condensing that vitality into so many nutrients our body can use in every bite.

Animal health

The foundation of our animal health philosophy is that stress is the primary underlying cause for disease and poor performance. As we dig deeper into what stress means, we learn that it is an animals', inability to cope with stress that is the most significant indicator of health. In fact, there's a lot of evidence to show that this is the case for most species, including humans.

To better understand what coping with stress means for a cow we once again look too the grazing animals, natural environment for clues. Like the bison on the American Plains Romans are always on the move. 

Movement disrupts, parasite, and disease cycles harbored in soil. Movement ensures there's always fresh food to eat and the movement is an important piece to the ecological cycle of grazing and pastures. 

The results are clear. As we've learned the nuances of moving cattle around our farm, we have less and less stress on the animals and consequently little to no health problems. Another way to look at this would be we have healthy animals producing healthy food.

Ecology

The third pillar of grass fed beef is the ecosystem in which we cultivate our food. We believe that production of food must consider all the ways growing food impacts ecology around us. This relates not just to our farm in our pastures, but also to the places and ecosystems we rely on to produce all the pieces of our food puzzle.

For animals, like chickens and pigs who do not have four stomachs, we purchase only organic grain to supplement their pasture based lifestyle. This supports the organic farmers who choose to grow grain without the use of synthetic pesticides and over sides. 

For our 100% grass feed beef the equation is simpler. Cows only need grass, but what do we do when the snow falls and covers our passengers? When the cold weather draws the pasture plants deep into the Earth into dormancy?

Luckily, for us farmers, and for the cows, grass lends itself well to be cut and dried. There are many ways to cut and dry grasses, and generally this process is referred to as making hay. A cow will happily eat hay all winter long until the green grass is waiting for her in our spring pastures.

Unlike grain which always involves some level of soil disturbance, harvesting winter feed for cows, simply involves cutting, drying and bailing hay. At this point technology still asks us either to use draft horses or tractors to make hay. Did you know that our first 8 years on our farm, we use draft horses to cut, ted and rake our hay? 

I'm working on finding or even crunching our own numbers to determine exactly how much fuel it takes to produce a pound of grain versus a pound of hay, but I'm confident to say that it takes way less fossil fuels to produce a pound of beef than it does to produce a pound of chicken or pork. The primary fossil use is tractors to produce grain or hay for these animals.

What about carbon emissions from the cow herself?

I've read a number of articles claiming that it's the methane emissions from a ruminant which are the most significant contributors to the carbon footprint of beef. I wonder why we didn't see significant carbon in our atmosphere when there were 60 million bison grazing the plains of North America?

To me, the answer is clear. The bison were an integral part of the carbon cycle. Grazing animals do emit carbon through their burps and farts. Mostly in the form of methane gas. They also help sequester a tremendous amount of carbon through their grazing. This is a reciprocal cycle.

Perennial pastures through their photosynthesis, pull carbon gases from the air to build their root structures. 

(Nerd alert) Methane gas emitted by ruminant digestion is the by product of digesting the carbon rich leaves of perennial grasses and other pasture/prairie species. This methane rises to our troposphere where it reacts with hydroxyl radicals (OH) in a processes called hydroxyl radical oxidation, which converts the methane into carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide then drifts down into our atmosphere where plants use it in photosynthesis. The result is the respiration of oxygen (O2) and water and carbon is used to build more plant cells. 

When a grazing animal comes along and takes a bite the grass plant responds by shedding some of its roots to mobilize energy reserves and grow new green grass above ground.

The root mass left behind in the soil is mostly carbon. This is the ruminants carbon cycle at work. We need just the right balance of carbon in both our atmosphere and our soils to maintain the ecological balance we all depend on.

So if you take the cow off pasture and feed her grain all she is doing is emitting carbon. However, when you put the cow back on pasture, you create a beautiful cycle of carbon through our atmosphere and into our soils, and all the while increasing fertility and soil activity through her manure dropped onto our pastures.

Collaboration

Our 100% grass fed beef is produced in collaboration with our friends at Asgaard Farm in Ausable, Forks, New York and Snug Valley Farm in East Hardwick, Vermont. here in Reber New York. We are in the process of building our own certified organic 100% grass beef herd.

2025 Grass Fed Beef Sale Ends April 6th