A couple of months ago, my wife and I had a discussion about meats and where we wanted to get them from. We are talking mainly pork and beef as those seem to be the main meat staples of our diet. Since we moved into our old house about 8 years ago, we had been ordering our meats through American Frozen Foods. Its a good company, based locally, yet nationwide in its scope, that would deliver all of our meat, vacuum sealed and frozen, for about 6 months. It was always really good meat, top quality and tasty, and we didn't have any complaints about the company except that they couldn't guarantee the sources of their meat. They would claim that they tried to source them for the best quality, but couldn't positively guarantee anything. So, with my wife and I being on a no-additive, non-GMO, "as natural as possible" kick in regards to eating and pretty much anything else, we decided to start seeking out alternatives. Our first order of business was to find a local farm "meaning somewhere in Connecticut" that sold pigs and cows for eating. While there are some areas of Connecticut that are built up, there are still vast areas solely devoted to farming, and we found a plethora of farms to choose from. Next was figuring out which farms devoted their methods to "grass fed" meat only. Being grass fed was an important consideration for us as if a cow or pig is fed grains, it is not as beneficial for the animal as their natural diet would be grass, and in addition, most grains grown now, especially corn, are genetically modified. Even when factoring in that next criteria, we still found we had plenty of farms to choose from. Then we looked at distance and ease of using their website and ended up with a farm about 30-40 minutes away from us in the town of Litchfield. While all of that work might seem like it was the hard part, it was actually the easier part of the whole process.
Then the emails commenced between the farmer and us. Having never ordered a pig or a cow from a farm before, we were diving into uncharted territory. How much was the pig, who did the butchering, how do we get it, etc. etc. etc? Having found what seemed like a really good farm, it was relatively easy to get all our answers and figure out the whole process. We decided to start by ordering a pig. And on top of that, I called up a friend to see if he wanted to split a pig with us with each of us getting half of the meat. He jumped right in and we went for it. We called the farm and told them we wanted a pig, sent them a check for a deposit, and waited. The farm had told us the pigs were just about ready to head to slaughter and that we should have our pig within 2 weeks. Awesome. The farmer just told us we would have to call the butcher and tell them how we wanted our pig cut up. So my wife called the butcher. That turned out to be the hardest part of it all, figuring out how we wanted the pig butchered. Did we want all the bacon sliced, or smoked, or slab? And that was only one of the questions. Luckily for us, they were very helpful at the butcher and walked my wife through every step, gave her the options, and told her the cuts that they normally make. In the end, it was relatively easy and the cool part is, the butcher saves our cut list for the future so that when we order another pig, we can just tell them to reference our prior pig and cut it the same way. And that was that. Sure enough, within 2 weeks, we got a call from the butcher that our pig was ready. So I called up friend, grabbed some large coolers, and headed up to Litchfield in my van to get our grass fed pig. When we got to the butcher, even that was a simple process. We walked in, told them we were there to pick up our pig, and within 20 minutes we had paid, loaded up the meat, and were headed back home. The meat was all vacuum sealed and frozen, and all we literally had to do was transfer it to the coolers. Everything was labeled and surprisingly very simple.
So was it worth it going through the extra work to get a whole pig, or rather half a pig for us and half for our friend? Absolutely. The work we put in would be equivalent to heading to the grocery store every week to buy meat. We just happened to do it all at once. We figure the half a pig we got will last us 6-8 months. When we did the math, all the meat we got turned out to cost us about $6.50 per pound for everything. Sure, some things would cost a little more, but in the end it all worked itself out. The total hanging weight of the pig was 195 pounds, which means we probably got 160 lbs of meat. Not too shabby if you ask me. And in terms of the taste, it still tastes like pork, but more savory and delicious than the pork from the store. The only reason we were able to actually go this route is that we had a large stand up freezer that held all our meat from American Frozen Foods. If we didn't have that large freezer, it would have been much more difficult to do. The next step on our journey of grass fed meats will be to order a cow. We haven't yet decided if we want to get a half cow or a whole cow, but regardless, that will probably happen within a month or two and should get us through the year. Even if the pork didn't taste better (which I already mentioned it does), it brings more peace of mind to know that we are not putting anything in our bodies that had consumed GMO's of any kind, and the meat is local which means we are supporting local families and keeping our carbon footprint as low as possible. I know a lot of city dwellers would find it hard to fathom doing this sort of thing, but for us, it was a no brainer once we started doing the research.
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