Individual fresh & frozen cuts are available
in our on farm store.
Gift Certificates: - Buy a Cordray Farms Gift certificate for a Share or Side or any amount from our farm store. Call 843.766.7922 to purchase one to be mailed to your lucky recipient.
We have a fresh meat case with never frozen steaks, roasts, and smoked beef products. We also have frozen cuts available. If you are looking for something special, contact us and we'll check before you make the trip out. To join our email list to be notified of what is available, click here.
We have a fresh meat case with never frozen steaks, roasts, and smoked beef products. We also have frozen cuts available. If you are looking for something special, contact us and we'll check before you make the trip out. To join our email list to be notified of what is available, click here.
History of Cordray Farms
You read in the papers that beef producers are considering implementing an identification system to track where cattle have come from. For me tracing where the cattle come from is tracing my history.
In approximately 1907 Joseph H. Cordray began raising cattle in the Low Country, carefully choosing only the highest quality animals to slaughter and prepare for sale. Each weekend he made the trip by horse and wagon to bring his choicest selections for sale at the end of the trolley car route on Meeting Street. The family stories tell that he arrived in the city late on Friday night, secured his horse and wagon, then caught the trolley to stay overnight with his sister on Oak Street . Before daybreak the next morning, on Saturday, he was ready to meet his customers. Joe Cordray was my grandfather. I never knew him, but I feel a certain kinship with him and vow to continue his legacy of providing top quality beef for the families of the Low Country. I learned much of what I know about cattle and beef production from my father, Lolace Virgil Cordray, who learned it from his father, Joe. My father remembers being given a cow by his dad at about 5 or 6 years old. When new calves were born, some were sold for $1 a piece, and some were kept to start his fledgling cattle herd. This continued until 1941 when my father left home to serve in the Army in Germany in World War II. While he was gone, his small cattle herd was watched over by his family as they waited for his return. That return took longer than anyone expected. From 1942 to 1945, my father was held prisoner of war in Germany. I know that he wrote asking for news of how the cattle were doing from the few tattered letters I’ve seen from those days. When he finally came home in 1945, my dad would tell stories of dreaming of the beef roast Sunday dinners he looked forward to when he was so far from the Low Country . For all my life, my mom has cooked the world’s best Low Country beef roasts for Sunday dinner. The menu stays pretty much the same, just the way my dad dreamed it would on all those cold German nights. When he finally did come home, he continued the family business of raising cattle and bringing his beef to Charleston for sale. Now he loaded meat into a 1939 Chevy and headed down the dirt road called Savannah Highway to a market on Heriot Street downtown. My dad and his brothers butchered their own cattle until 1965 when government regulations forced them into strictly retail sales. After that they had their cattle slaughtered at a local abattoir and hauled the meat in pickup trucks to the markets at Heriot Street. From my earliest memories, my dad worked Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at the market and tended the cattle at home Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sundays were strictly set aside for church. As fortune and love would have it, my mom’s dad also had a meat market on Heriot Street. Pappy, Hogan Grooms, had his market on Meeting street beginning in 1927. He moved across the railroad to join my grandfather on Heriot Street in 1942. He raised his cattle in the Lebanon Community near Ridgeville, butchered them at home, and brought them to Charleston in an A-Model Ford. My two grandfathers had competing meat markets side by side for many years. My parents first met each other at those markets. By the time I came along, the youngest of 4 brothers, only my dad and 2 uncles continued the meat markets on Heriot Street. I can remember that meat was kept cold my putting a large block of ice in a tub and running a fan over it. Yes, there was electricity! I’m not that old!
Anyway, the years unfolded springtimes full of new calves, summers spent bailing hay, and winters spent feeding hungry cattle until the first faint green of grass in the pastures helped to fill their void. My family kept cattle on what is now Tea Farm County Park and rounded them up on horseback several times a year. We called this “cow hunting” and it is one of my fondest memories. My dad, my uncles, my brothers and finally me, when I was old enough, would leave before daybreak. I remember hanging tight around my Daddy’s waist on Traveler in the hot summer sun, as we thundered through the dark swamps, passing oaks dripping with Spanish moss and swimming our horses through the canals around long abandoned rice fields. The cattle dogs yelped and the men whistled and swore. It was a fine time. My dad continued as his dad had done, giving me a calf of my own from time to time. Some I kept to build my own herd and some I sold saving money for college. The small family beef ranchers were becoming a scarcity in the Lowcountry. When that day finally came for me to leave home for Clemson, I felt the tug of the cattle business for myself. I majored at Clemson University in Animal Science with my concentration in Meat Science. I worked for a few years after graduation in the Meat Laboratory doing research on tenderness and taste tests from cattle on different feeding formulations and different breeds. At the University, I was also introduced to the production of smoked meat products and worked on packaging research using vacuum sealing to extend product life. When we left Clemson to return home to the Lowcountry I love, my dad had faithfully tended my small herd of cattle and returned them to my care. Through the remaining years, I’ve continued the family tradition of giving a few calves to my kids. I think it has taught them responsibility and helped to keep them grounded in their roots.
Since 1994, when my dad shut the doors of his Herriot Street market for the last time, we’ve continued raising cattle, sometime butchering some for our own use, but selling most of the year’s calf crop at the stockyards in Walterboro. Since 1990, I’ve been processing venison for hunters with Cordray’s Venison Processing. For the first time, in nearly 100 years, no Cordray was providing beef for the Lowcountry. I’ve decided to change that. We are continuing to raise beef cattle naturally, as we always have. We never give them growth hormones or antibiotics. They graze on bahia grass and Bermuda grass from our pastures all through the lazy days of a Ravenel summer. In winter, we feed them hay we baled during those hot summer days. We fatten them up on a little corn raised by local farmers. We harvest them humanely here at our state of the art abattoir . Our beef is then dry aged in temperature controlled coolers until just the right stage of tenderness and taste is reached. Then we cut, vacuum seal and freeze them to keep all that goodness sealed in for you! So while much has changed, much has stayed the same. We check the weather. We check the pregnant mamas. We check the newborn calves. We watch them grow and plan for the right breedings for next year. Raising Cordray Farms beef is a labor of love for the animals we care for, for the land that provides for us, and for the families who grow from its goodness.
Oh, yes, and one other thing hasn’t changed. This July a new heifer calf was born. She’s tan with a black nose and she now belongs to Paul Alexander DiMaio, Joe and Hogan’s great- great grandson. I think they would approve.
Michael Keith Cordray
August 2005
(Before this was written, Clark Lolace DiMaio was our very first grandchild. Read this over recently and realized he never got any press.)
July 25, 2007 Update
Colleen Michaela DiMaio will be getting her new calf when next spring's calves come. Her brothers will have to show her how to call the cows!
July, 2010
Banks Ransom Owen Cordray got his calf from this year's crop!
Jan. 2011
Trenham Lee Cordray's calf is one of the early ones from this year.
August 2012
This summer has been a bumper year for Cordray boys! Twins joined our daughter, Michelle's family in February - Nathaniel Cordray DiMaio and Thaddeus Robert DiMaio! In July two more boys were born 2 weeks apart. Case Milton Henry Cordray joined Tristan's family and Rhett William Cordray joined Kenneth's. We are truly blessed!
January 2015 update:
Kenneth and Kristin's family grew by one more blessed boy with the birth of Fowler Keith Cordray. He looks a little outnumbered in this cousins' photo but we're betting he'll be holding his own in no time!
As I read this preparing to add little Fowler to the family, I realized that I've not updated it in quite a while. In 2009 Kenneth graduated from Clemson in Animal Science and came home to join the family business. He came home with his own set of skills to add by apprenticing in a taxidermy shop while in school. He works both in the processing plant and runs his own taxidermy business as well. He and his family live on the family farm right across the field. They've added both helping hands and lively activity to our daily life!
In 2012 I lost both my parents within 3 months. I've heard it said that no matter how old you are, you are a lost orphan when your parents die. It is a terrible truth. But through the grace of God and the strength of our family, I've come to find peace and comfort in the cycles of nature and the coming of each new season in both our farm and my life.
In 2014 we enlarged the building once again and added the capacity to do on-farm slaughter. Now our cattle don't leave our care at any point. We can ensure the humane handling and slaughter that we insist upon for our animals. The new space and equipment also allows us to meet a local need for small state inspected custom slaughter for neighboring farmers. We have the capacity to kill, dry age, cut, package and custom label beef, goats and sheep for on farm or retail sale.
As for other changes, we grow all our own hay now, not cutting on Selkirk, but managing rental pastures closer to home. It surprises me sometimes that as much as we've grown our farm, we're heading further and further back to doing things like my Grandpas Joseph Cordray and Michael Hogan Grooms. raising our own animals here at home under our watchful care throughout their lives. As this fifth generation grows up feeding and caring for the land and the cattle, I pray that they'll grow to love this farm as much as I do and to embrace our family's small part in providing healthy food for the Lowcountry.
In approximately 1907 Joseph H. Cordray began raising cattle in the Low Country, carefully choosing only the highest quality animals to slaughter and prepare for sale. Each weekend he made the trip by horse and wagon to bring his choicest selections for sale at the end of the trolley car route on Meeting Street. The family stories tell that he arrived in the city late on Friday night, secured his horse and wagon, then caught the trolley to stay overnight with his sister on Oak Street . Before daybreak the next morning, on Saturday, he was ready to meet his customers. Joe Cordray was my grandfather. I never knew him, but I feel a certain kinship with him and vow to continue his legacy of providing top quality beef for the families of the Low Country. I learned much of what I know about cattle and beef production from my father, Lolace Virgil Cordray, who learned it from his father, Joe. My father remembers being given a cow by his dad at about 5 or 6 years old. When new calves were born, some were sold for $1 a piece, and some were kept to start his fledgling cattle herd. This continued until 1941 when my father left home to serve in the Army in Germany in World War II. While he was gone, his small cattle herd was watched over by his family as they waited for his return. That return took longer than anyone expected. From 1942 to 1945, my father was held prisoner of war in Germany. I know that he wrote asking for news of how the cattle were doing from the few tattered letters I’ve seen from those days. When he finally came home in 1945, my dad would tell stories of dreaming of the beef roast Sunday dinners he looked forward to when he was so far from the Low Country . For all my life, my mom has cooked the world’s best Low Country beef roasts for Sunday dinner. The menu stays pretty much the same, just the way my dad dreamed it would on all those cold German nights. When he finally did come home, he continued the family business of raising cattle and bringing his beef to Charleston for sale. Now he loaded meat into a 1939 Chevy and headed down the dirt road called Savannah Highway to a market on Heriot Street downtown. My dad and his brothers butchered their own cattle until 1965 when government regulations forced them into strictly retail sales. After that they had their cattle slaughtered at a local abattoir and hauled the meat in pickup trucks to the markets at Heriot Street. From my earliest memories, my dad worked Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at the market and tended the cattle at home Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sundays were strictly set aside for church. As fortune and love would have it, my mom’s dad also had a meat market on Heriot Street. Pappy, Hogan Grooms, had his market on Meeting street beginning in 1927. He moved across the railroad to join my grandfather on Heriot Street in 1942. He raised his cattle in the Lebanon Community near Ridgeville, butchered them at home, and brought them to Charleston in an A-Model Ford. My two grandfathers had competing meat markets side by side for many years. My parents first met each other at those markets. By the time I came along, the youngest of 4 brothers, only my dad and 2 uncles continued the meat markets on Heriot Street. I can remember that meat was kept cold my putting a large block of ice in a tub and running a fan over it. Yes, there was electricity! I’m not that old!
Anyway, the years unfolded springtimes full of new calves, summers spent bailing hay, and winters spent feeding hungry cattle until the first faint green of grass in the pastures helped to fill their void. My family kept cattle on what is now Tea Farm County Park and rounded them up on horseback several times a year. We called this “cow hunting” and it is one of my fondest memories. My dad, my uncles, my brothers and finally me, when I was old enough, would leave before daybreak. I remember hanging tight around my Daddy’s waist on Traveler in the hot summer sun, as we thundered through the dark swamps, passing oaks dripping with Spanish moss and swimming our horses through the canals around long abandoned rice fields. The cattle dogs yelped and the men whistled and swore. It was a fine time. My dad continued as his dad had done, giving me a calf of my own from time to time. Some I kept to build my own herd and some I sold saving money for college. The small family beef ranchers were becoming a scarcity in the Lowcountry. When that day finally came for me to leave home for Clemson, I felt the tug of the cattle business for myself. I majored at Clemson University in Animal Science with my concentration in Meat Science. I worked for a few years after graduation in the Meat Laboratory doing research on tenderness and taste tests from cattle on different feeding formulations and different breeds. At the University, I was also introduced to the production of smoked meat products and worked on packaging research using vacuum sealing to extend product life. When we left Clemson to return home to the Lowcountry I love, my dad had faithfully tended my small herd of cattle and returned them to my care. Through the remaining years, I’ve continued the family tradition of giving a few calves to my kids. I think it has taught them responsibility and helped to keep them grounded in their roots.
Since 1994, when my dad shut the doors of his Herriot Street market for the last time, we’ve continued raising cattle, sometime butchering some for our own use, but selling most of the year’s calf crop at the stockyards in Walterboro. Since 1990, I’ve been processing venison for hunters with Cordray’s Venison Processing. For the first time, in nearly 100 years, no Cordray was providing beef for the Lowcountry. I’ve decided to change that. We are continuing to raise beef cattle naturally, as we always have. We never give them growth hormones or antibiotics. They graze on bahia grass and Bermuda grass from our pastures all through the lazy days of a Ravenel summer. In winter, we feed them hay we baled during those hot summer days. We fatten them up on a little corn raised by local farmers. We harvest them humanely here at our state of the art abattoir . Our beef is then dry aged in temperature controlled coolers until just the right stage of tenderness and taste is reached. Then we cut, vacuum seal and freeze them to keep all that goodness sealed in for you! So while much has changed, much has stayed the same. We check the weather. We check the pregnant mamas. We check the newborn calves. We watch them grow and plan for the right breedings for next year. Raising Cordray Farms beef is a labor of love for the animals we care for, for the land that provides for us, and for the families who grow from its goodness.
Oh, yes, and one other thing hasn’t changed. This July a new heifer calf was born. She’s tan with a black nose and she now belongs to Paul Alexander DiMaio, Joe and Hogan’s great- great grandson. I think they would approve.
Michael Keith Cordray
August 2005
(Before this was written, Clark Lolace DiMaio was our very first grandchild. Read this over recently and realized he never got any press.)
July 25, 2007 Update
Colleen Michaela DiMaio will be getting her new calf when next spring's calves come. Her brothers will have to show her how to call the cows!
July, 2010
Banks Ransom Owen Cordray got his calf from this year's crop!
Jan. 2011
Trenham Lee Cordray's calf is one of the early ones from this year.
August 2012
This summer has been a bumper year for Cordray boys! Twins joined our daughter, Michelle's family in February - Nathaniel Cordray DiMaio and Thaddeus Robert DiMaio! In July two more boys were born 2 weeks apart. Case Milton Henry Cordray joined Tristan's family and Rhett William Cordray joined Kenneth's. We are truly blessed!
January 2015 update:
Kenneth and Kristin's family grew by one more blessed boy with the birth of Fowler Keith Cordray. He looks a little outnumbered in this cousins' photo but we're betting he'll be holding his own in no time!
As I read this preparing to add little Fowler to the family, I realized that I've not updated it in quite a while. In 2009 Kenneth graduated from Clemson in Animal Science and came home to join the family business. He came home with his own set of skills to add by apprenticing in a taxidermy shop while in school. He works both in the processing plant and runs his own taxidermy business as well. He and his family live on the family farm right across the field. They've added both helping hands and lively activity to our daily life!
In 2012 I lost both my parents within 3 months. I've heard it said that no matter how old you are, you are a lost orphan when your parents die. It is a terrible truth. But through the grace of God and the strength of our family, I've come to find peace and comfort in the cycles of nature and the coming of each new season in both our farm and my life.
In 2014 we enlarged the building once again and added the capacity to do on-farm slaughter. Now our cattle don't leave our care at any point. We can ensure the humane handling and slaughter that we insist upon for our animals. The new space and equipment also allows us to meet a local need for small state inspected custom slaughter for neighboring farmers. We have the capacity to kill, dry age, cut, package and custom label beef, goats and sheep for on farm or retail sale.
As for other changes, we grow all our own hay now, not cutting on Selkirk, but managing rental pastures closer to home. It surprises me sometimes that as much as we've grown our farm, we're heading further and further back to doing things like my Grandpas Joseph Cordray and Michael Hogan Grooms. raising our own animals here at home under our watchful care throughout their lives. As this fifth generation grows up feeding and caring for the land and the cattle, I pray that they'll grow to love this farm as much as I do and to embrace our family's small part in providing healthy food for the Lowcountry.
