The decisions
What the form actually asks.
These are the choices a processor’s form puts in front of you. The ranges below are common practice, not figures from the register.
- Steak thickness
- Usually three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half. A thicker steak is harder to overcook and slower to thaw. A thinner one cooks fast and dries out fast.
- Steaks per package
- One, two, or four. Package to the number you actually cook at once, because a thawed package does not go back.
- Roast size
- Two to four pounds is common. A larger roast feeds more people but commits you to a longer cook and to leftovers.
- How much becomes ground
- The balance is largely yours to set. Most of what you decline becomes ground beef or stew meat, so asking for more ground means fewer steaks and roasts off the same animal.
- Bone in or boneless
- Bone-in cuts carry weight you cannot eat and flavor you can taste. Boneless cuts weigh less for the same meat and stack better in a freezer.
- Offal and bones
- Liver, heart, tongue, oxtail, soup bones, and marrow bones are yours if you ask for them. Some cut sheets discard them unless you ask.
- Smoked or cured
- Some processors will smoke a brisket or cure a roast. It costs extra and adds time before pickup.
What it costs you
The sheet does not change the price. It changes the freezer.
Your bill was set by the animal’s hanging weight and the farm’s rate before the cut sheet existed. Two buyers can pay an identical rate on identical animals and open completely different freezers, one full of steaks and one full of ground.
The sheet does move the take-home weight. On the worked animal in the hanging weight guide, 197.54 packaged pounds came off 337 hanging pounds, a return of 58.6%. Boning and trimming choices move that number, which is why a farm quotes an expected weight rather than a promise.
Read next: how hanging weight works, whether you are buying a share or a box, and how to size the share.
Before you send it back
Price the cuts you are choosing between.
The register records what Northeast farms publish for each of these cuts. Those are retail prices for buying a cut on its own rather than the blended rate inside a share, but they show what you are giving up when you send a cut to ground.