Did last Thursday and Friday in Texas A&M's "Meat Lab" participating in Texas Beef Council's beef quality class. Very neat...a series of one hour lecture/seminars on subjects ranging from determining yield and quality in live animals to genetics/marbling to a full-blown taste panel where we ran through 8 pairs of samples and learned about beef aging, quality grade and grass-fed/corn fed.

Then we put it into practice by grading two live steers in the pens, following them to the killing floor and observing the entire harvest process to where the halves went into the cooler. Then, we broke into eight teams, went to the cutting room and proceeded to process beef halves that we'd graded earlier in the program into packer primal cuts and then on into the boxed cuts that would go a store or maybe a restaurant.

All free; funded by beef "check-off" dollars paid by producers when we sell calves at the auction barn.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.