The move toward securing food locally has gained a lot of traction in recent years.
The idea of knowing where your food comes from is important to consumers – and its beyond just fruits and vegetables. Area cattle producers have noticed more of an emphasis on locally raised meat by the number of customers that visit their farms or purchase their products during trips to farmers’ markets in the region.
“It has been very gradual, a slow climb,” said Wayne Colsia, owner of Paradise Farm in Lyndeborough.
Connolly Brothers Dairy Farm in Temple has been selling meat since the early 1980s, but it wasn’t until 2000 that they did so on the scale that people are accustomed to today.
Ground beef is by far their best seller, Chris Connolly said, but the better steak cuts are also highly sought after.
Even before recently entering into an agreement to supply Francestown Village Foods with ground beef for their local farm product line, Connolly said they processed around 20 cattle per year.
That supplies their farm store, which is self-serve and open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, the three farmers markets they attend – including two in Peterborough – and their home delivery service.
Connolly knows that people can get their meats at a cheaper price elsewhere, but said that they have a loyal customer following.
“They will come to our place and pay $5, $6, $7 a pound because they can go see the cows and talk to us. People want to see how they’re raised and the conditions they’re in,” Connolly said.
With one pound ground beef packages, burger patties and all kinds of steaks, Connolly said they have no problem with inventory sticking around.
“There’s more demand on the beef end than the supply locally so anyone selling beef doesn’t have a problem,” he said.
Colsia said that customers have talked to him about the unknown when purchasing meat from a large grocery store. Colsia said he has researched the topic and found out that a lot of the meat is coming from places like New Zealand and Australia and from large stockyards that don’t always provide the best conditions for the animals. Plus the use of antibiotics and growth hormones can affect the meat, he said.
“It’s not healthy for (people), it’s not healthy for the animals and it’s not healthy for the environment,” Colsia said.
Colsia and his wife Adrienne’s animals are 100 percent grass fed on 160 acres of land and that they practice rotational grazing. They raise Scottish Highlands, which Colsia said is the oldest breed on the planet.
Paradise Farm has around 30 cattle at any given time and process about eight to 10 animals a year. Meat is available by the side (half a cow) or a full cow. It’s cheaper for the customer in the long run and the Colsias.
“Less time retailing, more time farming,” Colsia said.
They also offer ground beef, a variety of steak cuts and roasts at the farm. The don’t have store hours, but Colsia said they are always willing to stop what they’re doing and help customers with whatever they’re looking for. They also attend the Milford Farmers Market, where Adrienne is the market manager.
They pay extra to have everything vacuum sealed to extend the life of the meat, he said.
At Temple Mountain Beef, Mark Salisbury started with a single cow from Connolly Brothers. He started it as a hobby because he had hay fields on his property and figured it could also be a way to help feed his family.
That was in the early 1990s, and now he’s got 50 head of cattle roaming his land.
“My hobby became my business,” Salisbury said. “I was just doing it because I had the fields.”
Salisbury said he has approached a few of the smaller stores in towns around his Temple farm, but since he only sells it by the side or full cow, many of them didn’t think it would work to purchase that much product at one time.
So he has continued to sell to individuals and families and already sold out of the cattle that were ready for processing this spring. He’s currently taking orders for the fall. Salisbury works with customers to customize their order to specific cuts they prefer.
“I have a good steady base that order every year,” Salisbury said.
But while some other local operations have farm stores where they sell ground beef and specific cuts, Salisbury is a one-man operation so he keeps his sales to a side or full cow.
“I’m gone all day to the field getting hay,” Salisbury said. “Plus I sell out every year so I’ve never needed to do anything else.”
There are also many stores in the Monadnock region to get quality meats. But with high demand, it’s hard for small farms to keep up with their own customers let alone what it would take to stock a grocery store setting. But that hasn’t prevented Nature’s Green Grocers in Peterborough from working with Fry Farm in Peterborough.
Stan Fry shops there and one day he started talking about the beef. And twice since the fall, Nature’s Green Grocers meat department manager Zach Vahakangas has secured a side of beef (half a cow) from Stan Fry and his sons to sell in the store.
“The fact that it’s local is great and you can literally go visit the farm,” Vahakangas said. “It’s nice for people to know their meat comes from down the road.”
Vahakangas said that the Fry Farm beef only lasts a few weeks because once people know about it, they come in looking for it. They also use it for cooking in cafe recipes. It’s 100 percent grass fed and Vahakangas said they are able to get it in what is called primal cuts, which allows them to customize the cuts instead of being completely processed before it gets to them.
Most of the meat used at the Green Grocer is from Boyden Farm in Vermont, but Vahakangas said it is great to get it more locally when available.
“We’ll do it whenever we get a chance,” Vahakangas said. “The problem we have is getting the volume we need at the local level.”
For Fry, the operation started seven years ago and has slowly increased. They have averaged about three to five cattle for processing each year with seven planned for 2019.
They just sell to friends and family, along with Nature’s Green Grocer and the Waterhouse in Peterborough.
“We don’t have enough volume to see it retail,” Fry said. “We’re trying to be practical about it and we’re not there yet.”