Steak - Mark Schatzker [118]
In reality, numerous points of potential stress lay between a living, breathing cow and a fridge full of steak. I had to load Fleurance on a trailer. She had to endure a highway journey to the abattoir. She had to be unloaded. She had to be moved into the abattoir. And she had to be killed. Anything along the way—a loud bang, a dog barking, the smell of blood—could spook her. I had to engineer a way of getting Fleurance from the farm to the abattoir, and keep her happy the whole way.
By November, Fleurance was living in the barn. Her meals now consisted of hay, apples, and carrots.
And acorns.
Grass-fed purists will tell you not to use acorns as feed. They will tell you that acorns are like grain, an alien food form that will overpower a cow’s rumen and saturate the fat. Grass-fed purists take things a bit far. When aurochs roamed the mature hardwood forests of ancient Europe and Asia, acorns rained from the soaring canopy, and aurochs hoovered down as many as they could find. Lewis and Clark witnessed something like this in person on September 16, 1804, when they were following the Missouri River northwest and came upon a wooded valley where all the animals were going crazy for acorns.
The acorns were now falling, and we concluded that the number of deer which we saw here had been induced thither by the acorns of which they are remarkably fond. Almost every species of wild game is fond of the acorn, the buffalo, elk, deer, bear, turkeys, ducks, pigeons and even the wolves feed on them.
Carla visited a nearby stand of oaks and filled a large wicker basket with acorns. Even Florimonde loved them, though her enthusiasm was nowhere near equal to Fleurance’s. The supply was depleted in less than a week, so Carla called in reinforcements in the form of chestnuts, Persian walnuts, hazelnuts, and peanuts. That summer, Fleurance had eaten sweet potato, broccoli, beets, wild pears, apples, carrots, cooked potatoes, and corn on the cob (not a big hit), but her favorite food was nuts. According to Allen Williams, who does not cross the line into grass-fed zealotry, nuts were fine so long as we didn’t serve too many. Nuts, he said, are lower in carbs and sugar than grains but higher in protein and oils. “Such food sources,” he wrote me in an e-mail, “will be noted in an increased sheen in the hair coat and can certainly enrich the flavor and texture of the meat.” Sure enough, Fleurance acquired a sheen. Judging by her appearance, Fleurance had started using conditioner.
In late October, I sent a photo of the now glossy Fleurance to Allen Williams. “She is getting there,” he said. “I am starting to see some fat deposit in the brisket and across the ribs.” Fleurance’s body was starting to look something like the bodies of the cattle on the walls at Lascaux. She was fleshy. She was filled out. Fleurance was “finished.”
Fleurance’s last day on this world was a cold Thursday in early December. I planned to make it her best. My preparations did nothing, unfortunately, to keep my own cortisol and adrenaline levels from spiking. I didn’t sleep the night before, and when I got out of bed it was too early to eat and I nourished myself with one too many coffees. The sky was still red when I walked up to Carla’s barn. Inside, it was dark, and I stood there inhaling the smell of livestock and stared into the black. After a time, my eyes adjusted and I could make out two fuzzy ears in front of me. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and used the glow from the display as a flashlight. The ears were Fleurance’s. She was waiting for me.
I had brought along four tall tins of Creemore Springs Lager, a pricey but excellent beer brewed just down the road from where we were standing. I poured two cans in a feed bucket and offered it to Fleurance. She stuck her nose in, sniffed, then removed it, unsure.