Hemingway convinces one man to buy local beef.
If one lives alone atop a remote mesa, as I once did, it can be a bad idea to read too much Hemingway. The mesa I lived on, the Mesita de Juana Lopez, is a place of haunting, ethereal beauty. It's far enough from civilization that it was possible to go for weeks at a time with stars, clouds and books as my only companions.
Late one night, all hopped up on Hemingway and red wine, I began to doubt my manhood. I would never be a man, Hemingway made clear enough, until I killed another man by besting him in combat. Not being a ***image1***soldier, a serial killer or a home-defense freak, my prospects for such an endeavor seemed slim. And yet, there was a loophole. With closer reading of Hemingway's brusque, physical language, a technicality appeared to arise: I didn't have to kill a human, I could potentially satisfy my manhood by simply slaying a great beast.
There were many creatures that roamed the mesita, but most of them were small, high-desert creatures. Certainly some were formidable, like rattlesnakes and eagles, but a snake didn't feel like it would count and, honestly, I was afraid that even if I could somehow manage to engage an eagle in mortal combat, I would probably lose. It would pluck my eyes out and my lifeless body would be left, empty-socketed, to become sustenance for coyotes and vultures. Meanwhile, manhood would have eluded me in my short life. ***image2***
No, the only significantly sized beast that I could think of to satisfy the situation was a cow (remember, there was no small amount of red wine involved in this decision-making process). Because there was open range nearby, cows occasionally wandered onto the mesita and I had stood close enough to them to observe their considerable strength and size.
Obviously, just shooting a cow wouldn't deliver macho chops in the same way dusting a clean cartridge into the neck of a snarling cougar would. Also, I didn't own a gun. But I reasoned that if I could take the cow with my sledgehammer, it would be a fair duel. After all, I vaguely recalled learning from a horror movie that cows were killed with hammers in slaughterhouses. I figured if I could swiftly kill a free-roaming cow, a cow in the wild, a
wild cow
if you will, in the lonesome moonlight, Hemingway might approve.
There was one other factor that helped motivate me to pull on some boots and wander off into the night, dressed only in my bright red union suit (complete with ass flap), full-sized sledgehammer tilting me far enough to the right that I had to concentrate in order to avoid walking in circles. It was the idea of food. Even back in those days, before the regional food craze and before books like Michael Pollan's
The Omnivore's Dilemma
, I had become increasingly agitated by my disconnection from the food at my table. I didn't have a garden and, as far as killing what I ate, the closest I had come was pulverizing some chickpeas into a garlicky paste. I love steak and hamburger and loins and roasts, and killing an entire cow would offer plenty of those things, in theory. It did nag at the back of my mind that I didn't really know how to skin, dress and butcher a rabbit, let alone a cow, but I had a sharp knife and a truck full of power tools should it come to that. How hard could it be?
It seemed like I wandered the arroyos and stalked through dark thickets of juniper for hours that night. In retrospect, it was probably no more than a half hour before I got bored, cold and suspicious of an impending hangover and returned to my small cabin. It's a good thing, too. I'm pretty sure New Mexico is one of those states where killing cattle is a far more serious crime than killing people. Also, given the red wine and the weight of the sledgehammer, it's a fair bet that any reasonably dexterous heifer would have shown me what for. Not only that, if I'd gotten lucky and perfectly cracked the forehead of some cow, instead of simply annoying it with a glancing blow, it probably would have ended up like that terrible moment in John Krakauer's book
Into the Wild
, when the cold and starving Chris McCandless kills a big, beautiful elk and then watches in horror as it rots and decays while he is unable to make use of the bounty because of his deficient skill set. Then McCandless dies a horrible and painful death in an abandoned school bus. My nearest neighbors on the mesa were all old hippies, so there were plenty of abandoned school buses nearby, lurking amongst the hills with flat-tired menace. Had I found a cow, my only real options would have been embarrassment, death or a steep fine coupled with potential incarceration; so it's good thing I failed.
Then just this year, I tasted some elk burgers that were delicious enough to make me think maybe if I accompanied someone who actually knew what they were doing, I could go hunting. Perhaps I could finally find a sense of immediate proximity with my food. Perhaps I could finally be something like a man. But you know what the key was to making those burgers delicious? It was to mix the elk meat with some nice, luscious ground beef in order to lend a little fat to the lean and gamey wildness of the elk. I will always need beef, I realized. Because it is apparently both illegal and not so manly to stalk and hunt beef, even with a hammer and potentially backless longjohns, and because I still long for a sense of proximity to my food, I had to look for alternative beef supplies.
Pecos Valley Grassfed Beef solved my problem. Based in Ribera, NM, the operation uses Scottish Highland cattle that are fierce-looking but also reputed to be fiercely intelligent. And with their shaggy, yak-like hair and long, threatening horns, they would stand a good chance against a drunk guy in long underwear who could barely lift his hammer. By raising its cattle on natural grasses instead of corn and grains (and worse), Pecos Valley produces healthy meat with rich, dark color and gorgeous marbling. This small operation also helps reinvigorate formerly overgrazed rangeland, working in relative harmony with the land. It's sold at the Santa Fe Farmers Market and through an innovative system of buyers' clubs.
The buyers' clubs work somewhat like Tupperware parties: One "host" will collect orders for meat and then submit them to Pecos Valley, and once a month all of the members' meat will be delivered to the host for disbursement. (And yes, the host does get a discount for hosting and referring new members.) The meat is more expensive than grocery-store beef, but well worth the extra cost. While porterhouse steaks are pretty pricy ($18.50 for a package weighing 1-1½ pounds), less popular cuts are quite affordable ($8 for a 2- to 3- pound brisket, or $7 for 2- to 3-pound pot roast). A complete price list can be found on the Web site,
www.pecosvalleygrassfedbeef.com
.
If you're interested in bulk, or, like me, in pretending that you actually killed something, it's possible to purchase "wholes" and "halves." And believe me, when I pull half a cow out of my freezer, I'm gonna tell the guys a tall tale about the time I pulled on my boots, got out my sledgehammer and became a man.
Pecos Valley Grassfed Beef
PO Box 668, Ribera, NM, 87560
505-421-4727
www.pecosvalleygrassfedbeef.com
Look for Pecos Valley Grassfed Beef at the Santa Fe Farmers Market (9 am-1 pm Saturday, 519 Cerrillos Road) or call for information about buyers' clubs.
