“Closest to the bone

Sweeter is the meat

Last slice of Virginia ham

Is the best that you can eat

Don’t talk about my baby

She’s slender but she’s sweet

Closest to the bone

And sweeter is the meat.”

— Louis Jones



If you think about it, seduction and meat go hand in hand (pardon the pun). As described in the song above, it takes something substantial, like meat, to even make a sexual innuendo work. After all, you don’t call a college bar packed to the rafters with sorority girls a vegetable market.



Horn Dog #1: Oooo, look at all of the delicious eggplant in here tonight.



Horn Dog #2: Dude, you’re freaking me out.



What drives meat loving men wild is five on the grill with dual ceramic side burners and a stainless steel roasting spit. For meat loving women and gay men, it’s the Australian hunks in those Outback Steak House commercials. For my mother-in-law, I think it’s Chef Boyardee.



Regardless, meat not only nourishes, it satisfies, something which a carrot, spinach leaf, or beet could never do. Sex is meat, and meat is sex. Carol J. Adams in her book, The Pornography of Meat says just that — only she blames men for sexualizing meat, thus fueling meat consumption and creating a generation of frustrated vegetarians.



Carol needs a steak.

Meet Lee Markholt

Lee Markholt loves meat, but we didn’t discuss sex (I assume he likes that too). Christ, for 15 years, he had a 1,800-pound bad-boy between his legs. Markholt rode the professional rodeo circuit, and at one time, held the number one world ranking for bull riding.



“I had a fair amount of success,” Markholt says. “And only one ambulance ride in all of those years.”



Still a cowboy at heart, Markholt returned home in the early ’70s to raise his daughters when his missus decided she no longer wished to be a mom and wife and flew the coop. Returning to the family farm Markholt called home since a pre-teen, he went into the meat raising business with his brother Bob and started organic butchering before this state even gave out certified licenses. In fact, Markholt sat in the Olympia meetings to hammer out the organic guidelines.

Don’t come a knockin’

Presently, Markholt must load his cows into a trailer hitched to his truck and drive the beasts to Oregon for slaughter in a certified organic facility. The price of gas bums him out. The solution? An abattoir, or slaughterhouse, on wheels, says Markholt. While a portable slaughterhouse meeting organic standards costs more, the effort to stay local still balances in Markholt’s favor.



It may help the customer too. “I’d be able to sell my beef at a lower price because I wouldn’t have all the gas and wear on my truck to pay.”



After three years of lobbying, six months from now Markholt and other local farmers should have their portable slaughterhouse up and running. The Pierce County Conservation District approved purchasing an abattoir on wheels July 22, which they will lease back to a farmer’s co-op covering multiple counties, according to Cheryl Ouellette, aka The Pig Lady. Ouellette raises and sells organic pigs in Tacoma.



For the record, Ouellette loves meat, but I don’t know how pig ladies feel abut sex.

Meat Market

I love meat too. Sorry vegetarians and vegans. But, if it provides you any comfort, I eat mostly organic, humanely treated animals because the thought of consuming a broken down cow carried to the slaughterhouse in a backhoe turns my stomach (similar to how vegans must feel when farmers with dirty hands carelessly hack peas off the vines with machetes — you want the life that’s ended for your nourishment to be respected, right?).

Grocery stores may provide excellent ground for meeting new people, but my pick-up joint takes no lessons from Albertsons and Safeway. I get my certified organic and naturally grown meat from Markholt.



Happy cows frolic in the clover on The Meat Shop’s nine-acre farm — they don’t pump steroids, antibiotics, appetite stimulants, animal byproducts or additives. Cows arrive in the world at Markholt’s Lewis County farm, and then spend their yearling days pasturing on grass and certified organic grain next to the butcher shop at 13419 Vickery Ave. E.



While Markholt sells his beef at the Olympia Food Co-op, Fish Tale Brew Pub and others, I prefer the smell of farm and shop at Markholt’s rustic store — it’s a freshness thing. Organic meat costs more — a porterhouse here rings in at $14.99 a pound while stew meat costs $8.98 a pound and skirt steak $7.98 a pound — it’s worth it.



Markholt also sells organic and natural meats and cheeses from other producers including his nephew who operates a lamb farm in Lewis County.



“I don’t get rich doing this,” Markholt says, “but I really enjoy this life.”



It was good for us, too, Lee.