Real Aphrodisiacs for Valentine's
How to Make a Healthy Snack
McBites = Modern McNuggets?
Classic Valentine Dishes
How to Scrape a Vanilla Bean
Chocolate Beers for Valentine's
Love it, cook it well, eat it responsibly.
Get to Know Bison
Your questions answered.
Meat at Your Door
Bypass the supermarket and buy it direct.
How to Buy, Freeze,
and Prepare Meat
Smart tips from a butcher.
Your Meat Is Green
Ten ways to be a responsible carnivore.
Innard Workings
Chris Cosentino wants you to eat the nasty bits.
Beyond the Porterhouse
Ten underappreciated cuts of meat.
Joining a Preexisting Club or CSA
If you live in one of the cities listed below, you can contact these producers to join an established meat CSA or be hooked up with a buying club. But know that some clubs accept new members via invitation only. In that case, you can start your own.
Boston, Massachusetts
CSA
Offers grass-fed beef, chicken, pork, lamb, and turkey. Available for 6 or 12 months; delivered monthly to pickup points in the area. Options are a quarter share (5 pounds), half share (10 pounds), or full share (20 pounds) per month.
Brooklyn, New York
Angus McDonald
(845-228-8896)
Buying club
Beef only, pasture raised and grain finished. McDonald runs a buying club that gets meat from a producer near New Paltz, New York. Available two to five times a year, in whole, halfs, quarters, and eighths.
Arlington, Virginia (Washington DC area)
Buying club
Offers grass-fed beef, pork, chicken, eggs, turkey, and rabbit. Joel Salatin, the founder of Polyface, is the father of the buying club movement and a pioneer in the arena of grass-fed farming. He encourages people in his area to start buying clubs, and he’ll deliver. Club members must spend a minimum of $1,000 over the course of a year, and a 25-cent-per-pound delivery rate applies. Refer a new member, and you get $10 of free product.
Chicago, Illinois
Buying club
Grass-fed beef (they also partner with other farms to provide pork, lamb, chicken, salmon, and shrimp). Wallace Farms serves several buying clubs, including two in Chicago. The farm will hook you up with a club near you.
Denver and Boulder, Colorado
Buying club
Grass-fed beef. Meat deliveries twice a year of 25- or 50-pound boxes; options include assorted cuts, the Party Box (containing only ground beef and bratwurst), and the Braise-N-Grill Box (ribs, steaks, and more).
San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, California
CSA
Offers an assortment of beef steaks, roasts, ground beef, and stew meat for $7.10 per pound (packaged, not hanging, weight; includes delivery fee), delivered three times a year. Morris also sells whole, halfs, and quarters of beef; there is a $25 delivery fee.
Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon
Buying club
Offers grass-fed beef, pork, chicken, goat, lamb, and turkey. Already services several neighborhood buying clubs in the Seattle and Portland areas, and hooks you up with your local club for pickup when you place orders on its website. There is no minimum order for individuals; for clubs the minimum is $1,000, plus a 7 percent delivery fee, capped at $30. The clubs’ hosts receive 5 percent meat credits.
I literally just found out that Polyface Farm (made famous in Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma") has a buying club in my area. I can get Polyface chickens, sausage and eggs from my local market but it's hit or miss when they're in stock and they're expensive because, well, the market's got to make its money too. Over the past few months I've made a pretty concerted effort to buy...+READ
I literally just found out that Polyface Farm (made famous in Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma") has a buying club in my area. I can get Polyface chickens, sausage and eggs from my local market but it's hit or miss when they're in stock and they're expensive because, well, the market's got to make its money too. Over the past few months I've made a pretty concerted effort to buy local and free range and this is going to help tremendously. I'm such a food nerd. ;)-COLLAPSE
I appreciate this thread as I am a meat producer and it does make a world of difference when folks get their meat directly from me because I feel like they are getting a fair bargain and are assured fresh quality meats and we are able to provide that meat because you buy directly from us which serves to sustain our farm without a middle man taking his unfair share.
Thanks to all our customers! :)
...+READ
I appreciate this thread as I am a meat producer and it does make a world of difference when folks get their meat directly from me because I feel like they are getting a fair bargain and are assured fresh quality meats and we are able to provide that meat because you buy directly from us which serves to sustain our farm without a middle man taking his unfair share.
Thanks to all our customers! :)
.... Buy local whenever and wherever you can folks!
Cheers!-COLLAPSE
can anyone tell me where in ireland i can buy half a cow and approx how much it would cost. thanks for any help
We bought half a beef from a place that raises them and have their own butcher on site. The meat has been incredible. I have friends that raise meat chickens so we get our chickens from them. We raise our own hens for eggs. A friend raised an extra pig for us last year and that meat has been incredible also.
I would NEVER go back to store bought meat. I can't stand the thought of the factory...+READ
We bought half a beef from a place that raises them and have their own butcher on site. The meat has been incredible. I have friends that raise meat chickens so we get our chickens from them. We raise our own hens for eggs. A friend raised an extra pig for us last year and that meat has been incredible also.
I would NEVER go back to store bought meat. I can't stand the thought of the factory farms.-COLLAPSE
I started doing this a few years ago and it sounded really out-there to me. Now I know more and more people who either do buy farmer-direct, or who would like to. I buy poultry, pork and lamb from the farmer's market, and shares of pork and beef through co-ops with other families - couldn't be happier with it. I have had breeds of beef that I didn't like as much, and there was a learning curve...+READ
I started doing this a few years ago and it sounded really out-there to me. Now I know more and more people who either do buy farmer-direct, or who would like to. I buy poultry, pork and lamb from the farmer's market, and shares of pork and beef through co-ops with other families - couldn't be happier with it. I have had breeds of beef that I didn't like as much, and there was a learning curve with cooking grass-finished beef, but it's been so worth it.-COLLAPSE
We're really fortunate in my part of Ireland that we have a local butcher who does his own beef slaughtering (and practically knows every cow by name). Nonetheless the pork slaughter is handled somewhere else, and getting leaf lard is very difficult. Annoying, since the Irish diet is changing enough that supermarkets rarely carry lard any more, just "cooking fat". (It's not that the diet's...+READ
We're really fortunate in my part of Ireland that we have a local butcher who does his own beef slaughtering (and practically knows every cow by name). Nonetheless the pork slaughter is handled somewhere else, and getting leaf lard is very difficult. Annoying, since the Irish diet is changing enough that supermarkets rarely carry lard any more, just "cooking fat". (It's not that the diet's getting any healthier -- rather the opposite: people are depending on pre-cooked meals and fast food more than ever before, and no one wants lard now simply because most people aren't willing to do the kind of cooking that calls for it -- i.e., from scratch. A sad trend.)
However, the huge influx of eastern European people to Ireland in recent years means that the little local Polish, Russian, Lithuanian and Czech groceries routinely carry jars of "smalec", which is lard in jars, either plain or flavored with fried onion. (And now I understand the tradition underlying "schmalz".) Yum!-COLLAPSE
Wineunleashed - Where do you get your beef from? We have a great lamb source already.
The reason to skip the local butcher is that they usually carry factory farmed meat - this is what many of us who buy direct from the farm are trying to avoid. I would rather pay the farmer directly as they make a better profit that way, and it's cheaper for me than buying from the very few places that carry pastured and/or more traditionally raised meats.
I buy half a cow at a time and just love it. I know ( I met the cow beforehand) that what I am serving my family is top notch. Also grass fed beef is FAR superior to that of corn fed. I also buy two lambs each year. You just have to get in the pattern of it. I usually take the meat out the freezer the night before and usually it is thawed by the next morning. If you do a lot of entertaining this...+READ
I buy half a cow at a time and just love it. I know ( I met the cow beforehand) that what I am serving my family is top notch. Also grass fed beef is FAR superior to that of corn fed. I also buy two lambs each year. You just have to get in the pattern of it. I usually take the meat out the freezer the night before and usually it is thawed by the next morning. If you do a lot of entertaining this is a very economical way to feed a crowd.
I do buy additional meats from a local butcher. So I do support both.
I am still looking for a pig resource. If anyone has any in the San Francisco- bay area, let me know.-COLLAPSE
Or how about going to your local butcher and supporting them?
My local butcher hand cuts prime beef for me, as well as supplys me with any cut of pork, or lamb I want. I can also get rabbit, duck, and fresh turkeys.
There are a goodly number of online operations in the UK which sell butchered meat in family quantities. I buy, online, organic meat direct from a farm in my own region of northwest England. Probably order a couple of times a year.