lines and rules to sell and serve meat safely to the public. Dan is a specialist in piping and related equipment for water treatment and sewage plants. Tracy, an accomplished artist, found he could make more money in construction but uses his artistic talent in marketing for the various family endeavors. The multi-talented Nathan went to farrier school in Oklahoma at age 17 and still travels extensively to shoe performance and race horses. He trains reining horses, is an excellent musician and bow hunter, and had his own television program, “Wild Extremes,” for several years. The family got into Longhorns originally due to dad’s cholesterol; he wanted lean beef. They got their first ones in 1988, and until 2000, raised Delta Luck y Lady them for beef. “We would divide them up and eat restauthem” remarked Tracy, “and we ate good.” rant that wants to start.” “We decided we were going to upgrade, get some “We put in a walk-in freezer for the beef – better animals with popular genetics. So that’s what we had that much demand for it – and thank we are trying to do – get a nice, springy animal that God, we never ran out. But I did have to buy . we can market in our meat program, but at the ning a skull some animals this year, and a good number ea cl ) ey ok same time, get that horn genetic and produce some Lisa (P of them, so far. But I’ve got others that are coming gentle, good-horned animals with a lot of color. A along now that are not that far off. I’ll have a pretty good lot of our genetics came out of Larry Stewart’s program with lineup of our own, for a little while at least.” sires such as LLL Lucky, Gunsmoke and Maximus ST. Since “The freezer is built into the shop for the construction then, we have also added JP Rio Grande, Sittin Bull and some company, so there is somebody available all the time. The “tuff” stuff from the Bob Loomis program.” shop is right where Mom and Dad lived, and Mom still lives “We put a lot of emphasis on the dam, too, but if a bull there. I am just a couple of hundred yards up the hill. My doesn’t have a name, it is really hard to sell. We just bought brother, Mark, is another couple of hundred yards; my sister half of Cowboy Chex, in partnership with Deer Creek Longis just over on the other side of the woods. Nathan and Dan horns. We will have him half the year, which is good. He will are just down the road. We’ve got other properties where we winter in Texas then spend the summer up here where we’ve run cattle that are all set up with fencing for grazing. Dan lives got good grass during the growing season. What we are hopdown there. So we are all within a couple of miles from the ing to get out of him is a lot of thickness. He is a very thick shop, which makes it handy for pretty much everything.” bull, and he obviously has thrown some good-horned calves but he also throws a good, thick calf. We are hoping to add some body size, not just horns.” “We were out in Belle Fourche, South Dakota last year, antelope hunting, and on the way back – we had 19 or 20 hours to talk – we decided to build a smoker. Well, it went from one “Like everybody else when we started our meat program, thing to another and it wound up being an artwork piece – we said we’ll sell halves, we’ll sell quarters. When people but it does cook good! That hamburger – those thirdwould get their half or quarter, some would say, ‘where are pounders – you smoke those things and you can get a smokemy ribeyes’ –well, you don’t get that many ribeyes off of half ring on them and I think that is the most tasty, the best of a cow. We had people that we felt like they thought we hamburger you can make!” shorted them. So we learned real quick – don’t sell quarters, “We have gotten a lot of customers off of that smoker – don’t sell halves, don’t sell wholes – sell it by the pound. You we smoked burgers like for our local sheriff when he was runwant 20 ribeyes? Come and buy ribeyes, get however many ning for office this past spring; we have done some charity you want. We did it that way for a long time.” benefits like for the high school girls basketball team. My two “Of course, with the hamburger, we started out with the girls play for the local high school, so we donated a bunch of quarter-pounders. But with them being as thin, and with burger and went up there and smoked it. We actually had peolonghorn beef being as lean as it is, a quarter-pounder, you ple from town coming there to the gym just to buy burgers – put it on a grill, you’ve got to be right there flipping those it wasn’t just people who were there for basketball. We raised things over or you’ll dry them out.” a good deal of money for the girls’ basketball team that way. “So we went to halves. Well, halves cook up real great, but That gives us customers, and of course, they love seeing our not everybody can eat a half-pound burger. So then we smoker.” dropped it to the third-pound, and that is just perfect for “The difference between smoking and grilling the meat,” nearly everybody – at least they can eat the majority of it and explained Tracy, “is that in grilling the meat is exposed dinot feel like they’re wasting a bunch. And there are other peorectly to the flame. The smoker has the firebox on one end – ple who can eat more than one. They grill up really nice and it is a reverse flow. There is a metal plate all the way down the still have a lot of moisture in them.” smoker, almost to the end opposite the firebox. That plate “We don’t offer steaks and roasts to the public now. We’ve heats up and the smoke comes back up and over the meat and pretty much gone to just total grind because that makes the then out the stack. We can adjust the flow and temperature – best hamburger. And we only do hamburger. We do onewe can do ribs and butts and the whole nine yards. Mark just pound bulk and one-pound packages of patties. Each patty is won first place in ribs and chicken at one of our county fairs a third of a pound. That seems to work best to make all of our on this thing a week or two ago. He’s a pretty good cook!” customers happy, and we’ve got quite a list of them. We’ve got “We do smoked corn, we do macaroni and cheese, we do a store in town that’s selling them, and we are talking to a --continued to pg.28
Meat Program
September 2014
The Smoker
25