My experience with buying quarters was 'so-so' enough that I stopped. Even when the meat was good enough, I found that I felt like I was being ripped off. There is just so much opportunity between the farmer and butcher to cheat you, and you don't have any insight. Maybe it's just me.

I can really only imagining this working out consistently if you really developed those relationships, and for a purchase I'd make a few times a year at most, it didn't seem worth it.

I guess, yea, do business with people you trust.

I've found butchers and farmers to be generally upstanding people. I'm also in the heart of farm country. I would be a lot more leery of people targeting a more urban market.

A good compromise is an actual butcher, the kind who has a relationship with farmers and breaks down primal cuts.

I live alone so a quarter beef would be a real challenge to finish off. Instead, I can go to the local butcher and get the usual cuts, and the unusual cuts, soup bones, hard fat for tallow, and so on.

Where I live, at least, it's all local, beef, lamp, goat, chicken, doesn't matter.