Buying Meat Directly From a Farmer: 7 Things You Need to Know
Like most things that I’ve done around here over the course of the past few years, I started buying meat directly from a local farmer in idealistic and almost utter ignorance.
I mean, it’s not exactly like I went out looking for someone to sell me half a hog.
As a matter of fact, when I first started looking into buying local food, meat wasn’t even on my radar screen. Like most people, when I thought of “local food” I thought of CSAs and farmer’s markets, which to my limited understanding meant produce, plain and simple. But when I started participating in a local area food group in Southern Maryland, there was much more than produce on the menu. There were eggs. There were broilers. And then one day there was this:
“For one more week, I am taking orders for meat from half or whole hogs for fall delivery.”
Hello! What’s this? Are you telling me that I can buy a hog?
Of course I had a ton of questions. Starting with, why on earth would I want to buy a hog?
Well, for me it was all about the quality of the meat.
It’s only recently that I’ve become aware of the shortcomings of even organic and “naturally-raised” grocery store eggs and meat, and it wasn’t until I read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma that the penny dropped. In Pollan’s tongue-twisting words – we are what what we eat eats. And just because our beef was raised “without the use of antibiotics or artificial growth hormones” or has been certified “organic” doesn’t mean that it wasn’t standing in a feedlot up to its ankles in its own manure, eating food that cows were never meant to eat and that makes them sick, which is why they get fed all those antibiotics in the first place.
It’s enough to make a person lose her appetite.
But as I said, all of this had not yet arrived in my sphere of notice when I decided to throw caution to the wind and order half a hog. The question I asked was “is it organic,” not “what is the farmer feeding it.” So with approximately 80 pounds of meat coming my way, I really lucked out to find a few months later that my Tamworth hog was being fattened on foraged acorns, an image that calls to mind the feral hog that Pollan shot for his “perfect meal.”
Here’s seven other things that I learned:
1. You’ll get your meat on Nature’s timeline. Not yours.
First off, when you order a whole or a half (or in the case of a cow, a quarter) of an animal, you are entering the Rubicon of fickle nature. Temporal exactitudes are impossible. The hog will be butchered when it reaches approximately 250 pounds; when that is depends on a number of factors, and in our case the biggest factor of all turned out to be the weather. The hogs had a large field to themselves and spent much of their time foraging for acorns underneath a small grove of trees, a task that was made much more difficult by our unusually wet fall. Week after week of rain and several feet of snow apparently made the acorns – and so the desired butchering weight – harder to come by. When I originally placed the order, delivery of the meat was scheduled for sometime in November. It was March before I actually brought anything home.
2. You and the farmer are not the only players.
Fact number two is that you and the farmer (and the hog) are not the only players involved here. In Maryland it’s illegal for the farmer to butcher the hog himself on his property, so they are taken somewhere else for slaughter. But not to the butcher. It turns out that the butcher, who keeps a shop five minutes up the road from me, doesn’t do the slaughtering. What he does is turn the freshly killed animal into various cuts of meat – the chops, the tenderloin, the ribs, etc. He can also smoke the bacon and make the sausage.
3. Some of your meat may require further processing.
We tend to think of “processing” as an ugly word, but the truth is that there are also ways to “process” food which are age-old and natural. For instance, the cut of meat that becomes a ham does not spring off the hog as a ham. It needs to be cured and smoked. The cut of meat that is sliced for bacon is not exactly bacon as we know it until it, too, is cured and smoked. The part of the hog that will become sausage requires grinding, seasoning, stuffing and/or shaping. Chops don’t come off the pig ready to grill. They need to be cut from the loin, and you’ll probably get to specify how thickly you want them cut, and how many of them you want packaged together. All of these things add to the timeline and affect when you will get your meat, and you have to understand what these processes are in order to have a conversation with the farmer and/or the butcher about them.
Which leads into the next thing you need to know.
4. The price of your meat per pound may not reflect the entire final cost.
Meat is usually sold at a certain price per pound. Ask questions to make sure that that price per pound is not just what the farmer is expecting for raising and selling the meat. The slaughtering, the butchering and the processing must also be paid for. Is this part of the farmer’s cost of doing business, figured into the price per pound, as it is when you buy meat packaged and ready to go at the grocery store? Or are you expected to pay these costs in addition to the price per pound that you’re paying the farmer? And who do you pay them to? And when? You need to ask these questions.
5. Half an animal means – well – half an animal.
By which I mean to say that I was offered half the head. I graciously declined.
But I did receive two hocks and two hooves. What does a person do with a hog hoof? Apparently use it to flavor beans and soups. I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m sure that at some point I will, though seeing that hoof bobbing about in my cooking pot may make me feel like I’m in a cartoon…
6. Smoked/cured hams are “cooked” and ready to eat.
When I decided to prepare my “picnic” ham I’ll be honest with you, I had no idea what to do with it. So I threw it in the crock pot. I rubbed it with honey and molasses and Dijon mustard, covered it with water and cooked it until it fell apart like pulled pork. It was pretty doggone good. When I told the farmer this he looked at me in amazement. At first I thought he was impressed with my recipe. Then I realized that it wasn’t my recipe that had dazzled him, it was my stupidity. The picnic ham is already cooked, he told me. "You just have to soak it for two hours." Come to think of it, my pulled pork was quite – um – salty.
If the farmer gives you something that you don’t know how to prepare, don’t fake it. Ask him!
7. Buying meat directly from a farmer is totally and completely worth it.
I may not have gotten my meat when I expected to get it, and it may have ended up costing me a little more than I had thought, but my whole meat-buying experience has been completely satisfying and fantastic. I have great peace of mind about what we are eating. I have ordered a quarter cow for fall delivery, and whenever I head out to the farm to pick something up I can see these longhorn beauties grazing in the field. And I should add that every time I go out there they’re in a different field, so I know that the farmer is employing rotational grazing.
And my goodness, the chickens! The other day we ate a chicken that was fresh, and I mean slaughtered-the-same-day-we-ate-it fresh. It was amazing. These moist, meaty chickens have ruined me for store bought chickens.
Conclusion
Paradoxically, individual self-sufficiency inherently involves community. We’re participating in community when we buy food at our local chain grocery store too; we just don’t see that community, and we may not always share its values. Profit as a motivation is not always compatible with optimum human health. Buying a whole or a half animal directly from a farmer that shares your food values puts you in touch with your local community. It’s also a sound alternative to industrially produced food. You’ll know where your meat came from, how it was raised, who raised it, and what it ate. You can probably even visit the farm while it’s being raised and see all of these things for yourself. Also, there’s a real good chance that the particular kind of animal that you’re buying isn’t the only thing available to you from that farm. You may find that you can meet all of your meat and egg needs – and maybe even get some produce – from a single point of contact. For instance, the farm I go to raises hogs, goats, rabbits, ducks, geese, Guinea fowl, chickens (for meat and eggs) and turkeys, and beginning this spring, the longhorn cows.
If you’re interested in buying meat directly from a farmer and you live anywhere near the D.C. metropolitan area, by all means check out the It’s Only Natural Farm website, where you can see what’s available, put down a deposit on an animal, and even order (cut meats and eggs) online for pickup. If you live anywhere else, you can start your search for a local farm at eatwild.com, which claims to be “the most comprehensive source for grass-fed meat and dairy products in the United States and Canada.”
Portions of this post, in a slightly different form, originally appeared at one of my favorite blogs, Urban Homesteader , which chronicles the “journey of one average urban family trying to create a more sustainable home and garden, without spending a lot of extra money in the process.”
Trying to get back to our roots, my household has upped its involvement in home meat-processing projects in the last few years. Fall chicken processing, dove and pheasant hunting, whitetail deer hunting, plus aspirations to process lambs and eventually pork and cattle – just like my great-grandparents did on the farm where I was raised – means each year we get some of the best meat available, but it also means we receive a surplus of more and more local and wild meats.
With that abundance, the need arises to be more creative in the ways we preserve the meat and even use it. Just as a youngster growing up on a cattle ranch tires of the same steaks night after night, there’s only so much venison chili and meatloaf a guy can eat before the taste becomes all too familiar.
So last fall, I listened as intently as ever when my father-in-law talked about a yearly occurrence among his circle of friends – one day sometime after deer season a group of six or so people gather to make their own venison snack sticks, summer sausage and more. I wanted in, and I wanted to understand the curing and sausage making that not only allowed Native Americans to preserve buffalo and deer meat so many years ago but also was the reason our family farm had that still-standing yet ancient-seeming smokehouse located right next to the root cellar.
Above all, with home meat processing thankfully accounting for a larger portion of the meat we consume, I wanted to experiment with additional uses for this valuable meat – especially the less desirable cuts – I was processing.
Home meat curing: a timeless tactic
Sausage making and curing meats is one of the oldest practices of processing food, and a logical outcome of home butchery today. The word sausage comes from the Latin root, salsus, meaning salted or preserved. It goes way back, dating to perhaps as far back as 1000 B.C. Homer mentioned a type of blood sausage in The Odyssey, made from a goat stomach filled with fat and blood, roasted over an open fire.
On the Great Plains of North America, Native Americans took to curing and drying their meats to preserve venison, elk, moose and buffalo, and they even made a sort of sausage of their own, combining spices, berries and other ingredients with dried meat to make pemmican.
Around the world, you’ll find as many types of sausages as you might find dialects, and often they are named for the city where they originated: Genoa salami from Italy; the braunschweiger, from Brunswick, Germany; bologna lunch meat from Bologna, Italy.
Types of sausage
The types of meat that go into sausage are just as diverse. Almost any type of meat from domestic or wild animals can be used: lamb, beef, pork, venison, elk, moose, or even fowl like chicken and turkey.
There are, though, three distinct types of sausage classified by how it is prepared: fresh, dry summer or hard, and cooked. At times, those three categories are broken down further, like fresh-smoked and cooked-smoked, but typically in America we think of these three groups.
Fresh sausages are made from meats that haven’t been cured, and they require thorough cooking. They also must be consumed immediately, refrigerated or kept frozen. Breakfast sausage typically falls into this category. Fresh sausage also can be stuffed into casings for bratwursts or Italian and Polish sausages.
Dry or hard sausages are cured meats that are fermented and dried. This is the category where summer sausage falls. They will keep for a long time – summer sausage even gets its name from staying preserved during summer months or with little or no refrigeration.
Cooked sausage is made with fresh meats, then fully cooked. These are the hotdogs and bolognas. Braunschweiger and liver sausage are two other examples. Cooked sausages are either eaten immediately or kept refrigerated.
Sausage-making equipment
From the outset, I knew I wanted to make summer sausage and snack sticks, both from venison and pork. These make great gifts for friends and family, they can be kept for months on end, and they are perfect whether from a side of beef or a whitetail doe I harvest during the winter months.
So the question became, “What do I need?” The answer, at least to get a basic setup, is a meat grinder, a sausage stuffer and a smoker.
You can get away without using a smoker; you’ll just have to bake your sausages in the oven. If you have an affinity for smoked meats in general, a smoker will likely be a part of your culinary craft kit before you ever add a grinder or stuffer.
With the grinder, I would opt for an electric version. A manual-crank grinder will work, but if you’re handling a significant amount of meat, it might be worth it to invest in electric – especially if you’re taking fresh chunks of less desirable cuts and putting them through the grinder for the first time.
Then, in my experience, it’s beneficial to have the manual-crank sausage stuffer. If you’re looking to do snack sticks in, say, 19-mm casings, a manual-crank stuffer will allow you to stuff slowly enough that your casings don’t break. It’s also no problem to stuff larger 21⁄2-inch summer sausage casings or other larger stuffing tubes. Go manual on the stuffer, electric on the grinder. Some grinders come with stuffing tubes and can work for stuffing as well, but trying to stuff the smaller casings without tearing them will be a challenge.
Some retailers, like Mad Cow Cutlery (www.MadCowCutlery.com), package products together, so you can buy a grinder-stuffer-smoker package cheaper than you’d get them buying the individual parts. Think of it as an investment that will be with you through years of perfecting sausage recipes.
Start by making summer sausage
Once you have the basic pieces of equipment, it’s time to have some fun. The first time I ever attempted curing sausage, we set out to make two different yet similar products: summer sausage and 21-mm snack sticks.The outcome was actually good enough. The product was sufficiently cured and smoked to produce a great flavor and not make anyone queasy.
However, for my first homemade sausage-making experience, I felt a little cheap. It felt a little like I wasn’t getting back to my roots at all (except for the excellent farm-fresh pork and venison we used). That first time, I bought seasoning kits, and my role was pretty much to dump in the seasonings – not having a clue what was in there – mix it with the meat, let the summer sausages sit overnight, and smoke them until done.
Afterwards, it was evident we needed to start with fresh ingredients, work from a recipe, then adapt that recipe to fresh ingredients that suited the whole family’s taste.
Having had store-bought beef summer sausage with cheddar cheese and jalapeño peppers in it, I knew that was the route I wanted to go. Comparing a buddy’s recipe to a recipe I found in The Complete Guide to Sausage Making by Monte Burch, I decided to slightly alter the recipes and give my own version of Jalapeño-Cheese Venison Summer Sausage a go.
I think it’s a winner. Give it a try for yourself, using the recipe link at the bottom of this article.
Go sausage-making crazy!
Now that you’ve successfully made fresh summer sausage, the possibilities are endless. Make homemade salami for a tasty sandwich, your own pepperoni for an on-the-grill pizza, frankfurters for your next barbecue, or good old-fashioned breakfast sausage to go along with those fresh free-range eggs.
With a little experience, one can turn livestock and game into delicious novelty meats that will keep for long periods of time and will delight friends and family who find homemade, farm-fresh sausage in their possession. And that feeling of generosity and community, if nothing else, will take you back to your roots.
TRY YOUR HAND AT SAUSAGE MAKING WITH THIS RECIPE:
Jalapeño-Cheese Venison Summer Sausage recipe
Jalapeño-Cheese Venison Summer Sausage recipe
GRIT Associate Editor Caleb Regan lives in Lawrence, Kansas, with his wife. They hunt dove together, raise chickens, and dream of the day they can get all the way back to their roots on a modest farm of their own. Read more about Caleb’s sausage-making exploits and other country pastimes in his blog at www.Grit.com/Arrows-and-Minnows.
Chemistry of home meat curing
The two main ingredients involved in home meat curing are salt and nitrite. Other substances are used to modify flavor, appearance, size, etc. Salt is the primary ingredient. Since meat is so highly perishable, salt preserves by dehydration, which then inhibits bacterial growth.
Nitrates and nitrites, either potassium or sodium salt, are used to develop cured meat color. They also affect flavor by acting as antioxidants — compounds that prevent the development of oxidative rancidity, which would reduce the keeping quality. Sodium nitrites also prevent the growth of Clostridium botulimum, the bacterium that causes botulism.
Nitrates and nitrites should be used in an exact and cautious manner when curing meat.
High temperature cheese
The idea seems odd, a cheese that will withstand temperatures up to 400 degrees F. So it’s only natural to wonder, What the heck is in it?!
High-temp cheese is the result of an enzymatic reaction. And it’s really not as exciting as it sounds. What happens is high-temp cheese producers will buy barrels of excess cheese, be it market-quality or the scraps and shavings from blocks of cheese or all different sorts of end cuts, then they’ll melt it down, add a couple of enzymes to it, cool it, and cut it into cubes. The new cheesy structure is temperature stable — it just won’t melt. As for what those enzymes are, high-temp cheese producers play that one very close to the vest.
Read more: http://www.grit.com/departments/home-meat-curing.aspx#ixzz2lhIBdLaB
Step-by-Step Chicken Processing
Butchering chickens from your own flock can be intimidating if you've only recently begun raising poultry. Luckily, chicken-processing skills are practiced today by modern homesteaders who value meat they've raised themselves. Planning a tasty, healthy chicken dinner for your family members isn't so difficult when you have the right know-how, and you'll find everything you need in this "How to Butcher a Chicken" video.
Taken from poultry expert Harvey Ussery's comprehensive guide, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers (available for purchase on the MOTHER EARTH NEWS shopping site), the video is packed with step-by-step photographs and instructions for poultry processing.
Beginning with an introduction to the basic equipment and tools needed for butchering chickens, the video continues with an outline of the best killing and plucking methods. You'll view birds in various stages of evisceration and discover how to remove oil glands and entrails — plus everything else you need to know about chicken processing.
Scroll below the video to find additional resources on raising poultry and processing chickens.
Resources for Raising and Processing Chickens
"Chicken Processing for the Uninitiated" includes a video of Joel Salatin (Polyface Farms) and David Schafer (Featherman Poultry Processing Equipment) butchering chickens at the MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR in Seven Springs, Pa. This unique presentation involves killing live birds in a sensitive and humane manner.
"Raising Chickens for Meat: Do-It-Yourself Pastured Poultry" by Gwen Roland outlines the author's experiences over the span of one year. She gives the ins and outs of raising poultry, including a frank discussion on the emotional stress she felt while killing her birds. Roland also gives a brief introduction to the best hybrid and heritage poultry breeds for broiler chickens, and suggests ways to make poultry processing easier.
Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens for Meat is an excerpt from the book by Gail Damerow. This article also outlines the best meat breeds and discusses confinement options — including indoor, pasture, range feeding and free range. A discussion of feeding philosophies is helpful in determining how you wish to feed your birds. Find this title on the MOTHER EARTH NEWS shopping site.
"The Homestead Poultry Flock" on Harvey Ussery's website, The Modern Homestead, offers detailed information on feeding, housing and breeding poultry, as well as chicken processing.
Rebecca Martin is an Associate Editor at MOTHER EARTH NEWS magazine, where her beats include DIY and Green Transportation. She's an avid cyclist and has never met a vegetable she didn't like. You can find her on Google+.
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