Can I meet the animals?
Absolutely! Get in touch with us by phone or email and we can set up a time for you to come visit the farm.
How Are your Cattle turned into meat?
We send our cattle to Sailer’s Meats in Elmwood, Wisconsin. Sailer’s is a small, local, fifth-generation, family-owned meat-processing business. They generally process less than 25 beef a week in their federally inspected facility, and they also run an award-winning prepared-meats operation.
For more information on how important and rare these sorts of small-scale, local slaughterhouses are, read this article about their endangerment in the U.K., a trend which is sadly a huge problem here in the U.S., too. According to a USDA report, Slaughter and Processing Options and Issues for Locally Sourced Meat, “over the last 10 years, just over 1 percent of cattle were slaughtered in plants that process fewer than 10,000 head of cattle per year.”
We feel fortunate to be able to send our cattle such a short distance. We also appreciate that Sailer’s takes important steps to minimize stress on the animals, and to dispatch them as quickly and painlessly as possible (using methods endorsed by Temple Grandin and in line with the Humane Slaughter Act of 2010). Sailer’s will even let us observe as our animals are processed, so we can see each step of the operation firsthand, and know that they are being handled with care.
Is eating this meat ethical and environmentally responsible?
We think so, or we wouldn’t be doing it, but we leave it to you to make up your own mind.
We fully respect the decisions of vegetarians and vegans not to eat meat. We, too, are horrified by factory farms and stockyards, and we understand why people would not want to participate in or support that system. We do not want to support that system either, and that is why we farm the way we do. We want to be able to raise our own food by methods we respect, and to share any surplus with others who share our values.
That said, eating meat does involve ending animals’ lives, and that is always a difficult thing to do. We have great appreciation and affection for our cattle, most of which been born on our farm (we don’t use stockers, like many other beef operations do). We know them as individual creatures, and so parting with any of them is hard.
However, we also know that all forms of agriculture, including plant-only crop harvests, inevitably involve the death of a great many small animals, including birds, rodents, reptiles, insects, and invertebrates. Conventional farming of grains and other plant foods also destroys the soil, depletes water sources, pollutes the environment, and often involves underpaid migrant labor from humans who suffer as the result of their work.
We feel it is important for all eaters to be aware of the fact that there is really no “pure” or deathless way to eat. The fact is undeniable: In order for any us to eat, something else will perish. We must each make our own thoughtful, considered decisions on that basis. By “voting with our forks,” each of us can also help support food systems that do more good for all involved.
Raising animals responsibly and sustainably on organic pasture allows us to produce organic manure, which is essential to building the soil of the gardens and fields where we grow vegetables, grasses, and grains. And that is essential to us being able to maintain hundreds of acres of forest, prairie, wetlands, and the complex ecosystems of our farm. Raising food this way is also important to the health and wellbeing of the humans we love.
If you want to learn more about how selective, responsible meat-eating supports both personal and environmental health, consider checking out the following resources:
The Eating Meat episode of The Living Experiment podcast from Pilar Gerasimo and Dallas Hartwig.
Lierre Keith’s book, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, or this Wise Traditions podcast, or this PaleoHacks video interview.
Denise Minger’s work, including her book Death by Food Pyramid.
By buying pasture-fed beef from a small, local farm, you are helping to support an important (and all too rare) part of a sustainable, ethical food system.
👉 IMPORTANT ORDER INFO: We deliver locally to the Twin Cities and Western Wisconsin area, but we do not ship. Please do not place non-local orders without prior approval, because we are immediately charged an 8% service fee that we will then have to deduct from any cancellation request. Thank you!