Morendat farm: Where beef is ‘aged’

 

The breeding herd at Morendat. Photo/FILE 

In Summary

• The Morendat Farm is past the first turnoff to Naivasha town and not far past the Delamere shop, on the left and across the railway line
• The calves are weaned after seven months; then, until they are at 15 months and of a weight of about 370kg, they are grain-fed rather than grass-fed
• The advantage of grain-fed over grass-fed steers, Tom explained, is that the steak has a distinctive “marbling” of fat throughout the cut – an effect that gives a juiciness and a distinctive flavour

By John Fox

The best beef steak I have ever tasted was at the Hemingways Hotel in Karen. It had something to do with the special Josper oven acquired by the Executive Chef, Barry Tonks, which produces a crunchiness on the outside and a juiciness on the inside. It also, of course, has something to do with the quality of the beef.

Hemingways, like the Fairmont Norfolk Hotel and the Brew Bistro Restaurant, gets its beef from the Morendat Farm near Naivasha. So when I was invited to visit there with two friends, one from the management of the Fairview Hotel and the other from the Serena Nairobi, I quickly said “Yes please!”

It was good to get away from the drizzle and disappointing chill of Nairobi and into the sunshine and warmth down in the Rift. The Morendat Farm is past the first turnoff to Naivasha town and not far past the Delamere shop, on the left and across the railway line. Once we had our tyres and boots disinfected and had been checked through the gate, we found a party from the Sankara Hotel management were ahead of us and about to finish their tour.

WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT MORENDAT?

So what is it that is so special about Morendat?

The farm is owned by the Kenya Nut Company, which also has the Leleshwa vineyard across the road. It is 3,000 acres of acacia woodland and grass – and the pungent aroma of cattle manure took me back to my days growing up on a shamba in East Anglia.

We started our tour from the cosy farmhouse of Tom Dobbler, the Livestock Manager — a Texan, as we were soon to discover, with a passion for ranching, a fund of stories and a dry wit in the telling of them.

“Let’s start at the beginning of it all,” Tom said. He opened the back door of his vehicle and showed us the container with the imported semen that he uses in the artificial insemination of the breeding cows. “You can’t buy quality steers — you have to breed them. I am the dirty old man who stands with his hand up the butt of a cow,” he quipped. “And I have been servicing 800 cows — I am getting tired!”

Then we started our walk, accompanied also by Tom’s assistant, Rosemary, from Kiambu and clearly a convert to ranching. She certainly knows her herd.

“How many calves have we got in there? Tom asked Rosemary, pointing to one of the kraals. “Eighty-nine!” she said, quick as a flash.

Tom explained his cross-breeding policy: 25 per cent local Boran cattle, for hardiness; 25 per cent Simmental from Switzerland, for size and milk yield; 50 per cent Angus from Scotland for the quality of the beef. And black is the favoured colour.
“Aren’t you afraid of declaring your genetics?” I asked.

“Not now,” Tom said. “I think we are well enough ahead of the competition.”

JUICINESS AND DISTINCTIVE FLAVOUR

The calves are weaned after seven months; then, until they are at 15 months and of a weight of about 370kg, they are grain-fed rather than grass-fed. The feed is a mixture of grain and protein-rich lucerne grass. The advantage of grain-fed over grass-fed steers, Tom explained, is that the steak has a distinctive “marbling” of fat throughout the cut – an effect that gives a juiciness and a distinctive flavour.

Tom showed us the graining in the sides of beef that were hanging in the cold stores, where the meat is “aged” for between 14 and 21 days before being shipped off to the client hotels or restaurants.

As for the actual slaughtering, not only for humane reasons, in order to keep the animals calm – because any tension can cause a toughening of the beef – they are led to the slaughterhouse from the kraal one by one.

And this is so different from what I witnessed some years ago at Lobatse in Botswana – what was then the second biggest slaughterhouse in the world, after the one in Chicago. The image has stayed with me – the way the magnificent steers were in a tight queue before they entered the pen where they were felled by a stun gun. And the condemned animals must have been able to smell the blood as the carcasses were quartered nearby.

After the horrific Labatse visit – the stunning and the quartering, the severed heads rolling down chutes – I had thoughts of becoming a vegetarian. But, sitting on Tom’s terrace and sampling one of the Morendat’s steaks, accompanied by a green salad and washed down with a glass of red wine – I had no such vegetarian qualms.

The Morendat Farm is not a place where you can just turn up to be shown round. But if you have a business reason to go there then you can make an appointment. I suggest you ring Tom on 0712-122475 or Rosemary on 0723-179292.