How to Find Local Pastured Meat
We used to purchase our meat at the grocery store like most other Americans. If there was a sale, I might pick up some extra. But for the most part, we would shop for the month of so for our meat, maybe more if we made a trip to Costco. Now, we prefer to find local pastured meat for our family.
Would you also like to stop buying your meat at the grocery store and find a good local source? In many conversations I hear people say they want to start buying more local and find a farmer, but are not quite sure how to do that.
Though our ultimate goal is to raise all our own meat and we are on our way with rabbits and meat chickens, but we are not yet there when it comes to being from self-sufficient with raising pork or beef.
And I know that raising your own meat may not be your goal either.
But you want to eat good meat. Pasture raised meat is the best. So how do you find it and know what you have found is good?
There are several places that we have found success in sourcing local pastured meat.
How to find Local Pastured Meat
1. Farmers Market
The first place I started looking around for local farmers was at the farmer’s market. There were actually quite a few in my area. I looked around at what they were offering and decided to purchase the same type of meat from several of them to see what we liked best.
I found that when I went north out of town a bit to a more rural farmer’s market, there were even more choices of farmers with pastured meat.
2. Facebook
Depending on where you live, this might be a hit or miss. It might take some searching, but you can reach out in local groups that have the same interests with pastured meat or ask friends online.
3. Craigslist
Depending on the time of year, there might be quite a few farmers with ads on Craigslist for a half or whole hog or beef. Or they might have smaller amounts of meat available. I ended up finding local farmers this way. I talked to a few that did not have the same values in mind when it came to how they raised their meat and that made it easy to move onto the next one on the list.
4. Google “Farms Near Me”
This was actually one of the best ways for me to find local pastured meat. I was able to see exactly where the farms were and pull up their websites to read about what they offered. Most of the farms were not ones that I had seen at the farmer’s market. We purchased most of our meat this way once we found the farms.
5. Ask Around to Others Who Make Food Conscious Choices
We ended up taking too long to purchase beef a few years ago and then most of the farms we had looked up or talked to were sold out. We wanted a 1/4 or 1/2 of a cow as it gets expensive to purchase separate cuts of beef from the farmer’s market. But just by talking to other people who purchase local pastured meat, we found a farmer through a friend that had several extra hundred pounds of beef he was trying to sell. It was all by word of mouth and we would have never found him on a webpage.
6. Take a Drive in the Country
Sometimes there are farms out there that only have a sign in the driveway with a phone number and no other way to get ahold of them. If I had just Googled and not driven around, I would have missed a few places that were selling pastured meat.
What Should you Purchase First?
The last few years I went to the farmers market a lot and found that there were actually quite a few farmers offering the same types of meat for very similar prices. I was having a hard time deciding who to go with for such a large purchase as I wanted to purchase a whole hog and a 1/4 or 1/2 beef.
Fortunately, most farmers had cuts of meat they were selling there at the market or in a variety sampler box. I purchased ground beef and a few other cuts from several farmers. That way I was able to sample the meat before making a larger purchase.
One of the farmers told me he wasn’t satisfied with a butcher he had to use on his last beef because it wasn’t aged properly. He usually used another butcher, but couldn’t that time. And it was evident in his beef. We did not like the taste nearly as much as others we tried. Yet, his pork was fantastic. So we bought a whole hog from him and then looked elsewhere for beef.
Questions to be Asking the Farmer about their Pastured Meat
We love buying local pastured meat, but not all farmers are raising their animals the same way.
There are things that we look for that are important to us and so we make sure to ask the farmer about those things.
Here is a quick list of questions you can ask to get a feel for the farmer and how they do things. Then you can decide if you are comfortable with their answers and proceed.
1. Housing – How are these animals living – outside or in a barn? Are they on the farmer’s land or somewhere else? Are they being rotated on pasture?
Ideally, they are living outside and rotated through pasture. Chickens and hogs will need some sort of shelter, but cows do not.
2. Food – What do the animals eat? If you are wanting truly pasture raised, are they? Are they grain finished?
We think that beef should only be eating grass, but many like to have grain-finished. Chickens should be outside pecking around in the dirt for bugs and grass along with non-GMO feed. Hogs eat a bit of everything and if on pasture should be eating grass, plants, nuts, kitchen scraps along with their non-GMO feed. If the farmer has access to milk, they might be getting that too.
3. Health – Are the animals given antibiotics, vaccines, treated naturally for health issues?
If the animals are being raised in the correct environment and given the food they should eat, the farmer most likely won’t be needing to treat them for illness. No hormones, vaccines, or antibiotics should be in our meat. If a farmer is routinely treating with these things, you might want to look for another one.
4. Meat Processing – What butcher do they use? How are they processed? Do you have a choice in which cuts you will get?
A lot of farmers will process their own chickens, but need to send hogs and beef cattle to a butcher where you will be in contact with the butcher for the cuts that you prefer and then you pick up from there.
How to Prepare for Your Meat Purchase
If you only have a small space to store your meat at home, you might want to purchase from the farmer’s market when you can, but for the best deals and to make sure you always have meat on hand, I suggest bigger purchases.
Once you find a farmer with pastured meat you like, you will most likely be purchasing in large quantities for the best price. Here are a few things to consider before bringing home a whole hog or half a beef.
1. Cash
Do you have the cash to make this large of a purchase at one time? Unfortunately this was the reason we did not buy pastured meat for our family sooner than we did. We did not have the grocery budget set aside to make this large of a purchase at once. If you find yourself in that same position, set aside a portion of your grocery budget for a few months until you have the amount needed.
Usually the farmer will have you put down some money to hold the animal, but then the rest of the portion isn’t due for a few months. You will then pay the farmer the rest owed when it goes to the butcher. And finally the final amount is paid to the butcher, so it can be stretched out depending on the butcher date. You will need to pick up pork right after butcher, but a beef cattle will need to age for a few weeks before you can pick it up.
2. Transport
Think through how you will get your meat home. Do you have a vehicle large enough to transport it home? If you buy a 1/2 or whole animal, it can be quite a bit of space needed to transport.
3. Freezer Space
Do you have enough freezer space? Or do you need to purchase an extra freezer to hold the amount of meat you will be brining home? Here is a quick guide to different types of freezers and how much space you will need for the meat you are purchasing.
I hope you have success finding local pastured meat like we did. We will never go back now that we have tasted the difference.
Other Homesteading Blog Posts
How to Plan for a Homestead Orchard
Homesteading in Suburbia
6 Reasons to have Rabbits on the Homestead
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