But that is where a rare breed can take you.
Moyletra is a family farm dating back to 1876, and bringing Irish Moiled cattle onto the farm was partly about looking back to a slower way of farming. The breed suited the direction the family wanted to take - slow growing, naturally suited to grass and requiring fewer inputs.
There was also the attraction of working with a native breed that had once been part of the Irish farming landscape but had become increasingly rare.
Since that first Moilie arrived, the herd has grown considerably and the family has become increasingly interested in what they can do with the beef - and with the whole animal.
They have always felt that if an animal has been reared slowly and carefully, as little as possible should go to waste. That has led them back to some of the traditional foods and skills that would once have been an ordinary part of farm life.
Tallow is probably the best example.
Animal fats were once a perfectly normal part of the farmhouse kitchen. Dripping and tallow were useful, valuable products, used for cooking and baking and for all sorts of household purposes. Tallow was also traditionally used for candles, long before you could just pick one up in a shop.
At Moyletra, the fat from their own Irish Moiled cattle is now rendered three times to make their Irish Moiled Beef Tallow. It is used in the kitchen for roasting and cooking, but the family also turn it into hand-poured tallow candles.
There is something rather nice about taking something that might once have been considered a by-product and giving it another life.
And it seems that other people like it too. The tallow has recently won two stars at the Great Taste Awards and has been named a finalist at Blas na hÉireann.
Alongside it is Bóshaille - Irish Moiled cured beef - another product born from the same desire to make better use of the animal and to bring traditional methods of preserving food back into the modern farm kitchen.
Bóshaille has also been recognised as a finalist at Blas, which has been a lovely bit of recognition for a small family farm working with a very uncommon breed.
The family's approach has grown beyond the cattle and the products themselves.
The Beef Barn, their honesty farm shop, gives people the chance to buy their beef directly from the farm, along with tallow, candles and a small selection of other local and farm-made products. It is deliberately simple - people can call to the farm, open the door and take home something that has a very direct connection to where it was produced.
The farm has also started welcoming visitors through farm experiences, giving people the chance to meet the Moilies, hear about the history of the breed and understand a little more about how their food is produced.
For the family, that connection matters.
A rare breed needs more than cattle being kept in a field. It needs people to know what it is, where it came from and why it is worth protecting. It also needs a reason to remain part of a working farm.
That is where the food comes in.
The beef gives the breed a future. The tallow makes use of something that might otherwise be overlooked. Bóshaille brings an old preservation method into a modern food business. The shop connects the farm with the customer and the experiences let people come and see the cattle for themselves.
It has all grown from that first Moilie arriving in 2019.
The farm has been here since 1876, but the family aren't trying to recreate the past. They are taking some of the good ideas from it - slower farming, using the whole animal, preserving food and making things properly - and finding a place for them in a modern farm business.
It turns out that sometimes the best way to move forward is to look back a little first.
