Last year we raised more cows and chickens then we anticipated selling during the 2019 season. The reason we did was because we wanted to go into the winter with fully stocked freezers. That way all of you could get high quality meat all winter long.
We raised extra animals, bought extra freezers, and went into the winter feeling like maybe we had a little TOO much meat on hand...
But, we sold out of ground beef in late winter and we sold out of chicken a few weeks ago.
One of the tricky things about farming is that demand can go up and down quickly but supply takes a LONG time to put in place. In some cases, like with beef, it can take years to grow a cow up to butcher weight. And if you’ve been paying attention to the news recently you are also probably aware that agricultural supplies don’t always have much of a shelf life--if you’re a large scale hog farmer with thousands of mature hogs on your hands when demand shifts, you don’t have a lot of options. Some farmers have been forced into some pretty hard situations.
So we try to plan ahead and guess as best we can what we should produce each year.
That being said, I ordered all our broiler chicks and scheduled all our dates with the butcher quite a while ago. And it's a good thing I did, because guess what? He is totally booked now. Due to Covid confusion in the food supply network he is completely swamped till 2021 at least. So we can’t change our numbers. The meat we are producing this season is locked in.
Which would be fine in a normal year. Because we planned for “normal” sales with a little growth. In January that was the reasonable thing to do.
But of course, this is not a normal year.
Demand for our food has increased dramatically this spring. Which means the animal numbers we locked in earlier this spring will almost certainly not be enough. I don’t like to use possible shortages as a way to motivate customers--it feels underhanded to use fear like that.
But I do want to let you know in an honest and straightforward way, that demand for sustainable and local food is literally spiking all over the country and we will very likely sell out of meat much earlier than usual.
You’ve probably heard of meat shortages in some places. Well knowing the production cycles and timelines, I'd say that’s awfully early--there will probably be more.
I therefore recommend that you take a moment to pre-order your meat this season. And soon.
Even if you don’t have the freezer space to store it all, it would be a good idea to give us a call or email so we can reserve your meat for you. Did you know that chest freezers are sold out all over the place right now? A lot of people are forecasting this it seems...
We still have several whole and half cows available, but several hundred chickens have already been spoken for.
So please don’t wait too long to notify us and reserve meat for your and your family.
Fairly soon we will put some new options in our online store so you can place formal orders for bulk chicken buying and beef boxes.
It is already possible to place orders for whole and half cows. You can go HERE to reserve yours now.
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