stories : Feature
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.
Neighborhood Buying Clubs
Buying clubs are groups of people who live close to one another, and who together decide upon a producer, order whatever cuts they want, and have it all delivered at once to the club host’s house.
The most important thing is to make sure members are on time picking up their meat
To form a club, you must find a producer willing to deliver and a local (probably you, if you’re starting it) willing to provide the delivery spot. Work out how much the producer will charge per pound per person for delivery, and ask if he requires that a minimum order be put together first and what products he has to offer. Unless the producer is ready to shoulder the responsibility, or has a website that takes orders, you’ll need to create order forms and have your members fill them out, then get those to the producer. You’ll have to establish how often the rancher will deliver the meat, and let people know where and when to pick it up. Keith Swanson of the Seattle-area Thundering Hooves farm says that when he delivers to one of his ranch’s clubs, “they have a barbecue going—they’re making an event out of it.”
Thundering Hooves buying club members wait to get their meat at host Robin Magonegil’s house.
Robin Magonegil
The most important thing is to make sure members are on time for pickup, so the host doesn’t have to front the rancher money or store all the meat. Robin Magonegil hosts the Thundering Hooves buying club in West Seattle (nicknamed the Meateaters Buying Club). When they started she was nervous that people would be tardy to an 8 a.m. Saturday drop-off at her house. Then the Thundering Hooves truck drove up, Swanson got out with his clipboard, the 25 members showed up with checks and cash, and everything was parceled out smoothly. Now the club has grown to 65 members. “Sometimes my partner makes muffins, and members who are our friends come in and eat them, but the majority of people just wait outside, go up and get their meat when it arrives, and leave.”
A healthy club will buy often and consistently, and will build a good relationship with the producer. Magonegil’s family orders at least $100 of meat a month, and that’s standard in her club. Eatwild.com’s Jo Robinson recommends putting an order form in every box, so people will remember to place their next order. An email list reminding people to order and pick up is also a good idea.
The neighborhood buying club model has potential beyond meat. Lawren Pulse, another Thundering Hooves Seattle host, has used her meat club as a launching pad for other orders. The club has selected suppliers for dairy, grains, and vegetables; its members order through the producers’ websites; and the food is delivered to Pulse’s house for pickup, just like the meat. Pulse points out that besides giving members the power to choose whom they buy from, the club fosters a sense of community and is environmentally sound: less driving from place to place to get your groceries.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wineunleashed - Where do you get your beef from? We have a great lamb source already.
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!
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.
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.