Where’s The Beef? In Your Freezer

The CSA model of farming has become popular in recent years, with a variety of farms offering shares or subscriptions in which customers offer financial support for a farm in exchange for a weekly selection of produce in return. This idea of “shared bounty, shared risk” has worked so well for produce farmers that it’s now being tried by farmers and food artisans in other areas. A couple of weeks ago we wrote about Monforte Dairy’s Renaissance 2010 program for a cheese CSA, and now even local meat producers are getting in on the act.

The Stoddart Family Farm in Kawartha has been running continuously since 1819. Now in its 7th generation, Harry and Silvia Stoddart maintain an operation dedicated to safe, healthy and nutritious pasture-raised beef, pork and lamb in addition to certified organic poultry and eggs.

The Stoddarts sell their wares at the Green Barn Farmers Market, but they’ve recently initiated a CSA program where co-producers (aka customers) can pre-pay for a variety of different meat share options.

Most of the shares are offered as either 3 or 6 month arrangements, with the meat delivered to a pre-arranged location once a month. Currently, the only pick-up location is at the Green Barn Market, but Stoddart Family Farm representative Kelly Lettner assures me there will be delivery locations across the city.

Customers need only arrive at the pre-arranged place and time to pick up their meat. Each delivery is freshly processed at a licensed provincial abattoir and then frozen. All orders include a range of meat; some months there may be more beef and pork, other months there may be more lamb and poultry. Each order will be comprised of ground, stew, chops and steaks, with the pasture-raised beef being dry aged for a 21-day period.

Shares are available in a couple of different sizes; usually either a 10- or 20-pound package of meat each month. The pork and beef share includes equal amounts of each and a 10-pound per month share runs $175 total for a 3-month subscription, which works out to $5.83 per pound – a really terrific deal!

The grass-fed subscription, which includes beef, pork, lamb and chicken, works out to just over $7 a pound in a 6-month 10-pound subscription, making the prices comparable to similar quality meat available in stores.

The Stoddarts also offer a couple of share “add-ons” to customers already participating in their CSA program. The first is certified organic eggs and poultry, and their egg subscriptions include both chicken and duck eggs. The price for their egg subscriptions is actually lower than organic “free-run” eggs from some well-known supermarkets, and customers can be assured that the eggs come from happy birds that eat organic feed and actually get to run around in the outdoors, not a cramped “free-run” factory farm shed.

There’s also a gourmet meat share that includes three pounds per month of either duck, guinea fowl or rabbit, with the selected meat rotating each month so customers get to try everything.

Not sure about purchasing a large quantity of meat without trying it first? Lettner tells me that customers can stop by the Green Barn Farmers Market on Saturday mornings and buy single units of the Stoddarts’ products before committing to the CSA program.

They are also hoping to establish delivery depots in the Annex, Central Downtown, the East end and Mississauga so the products will eventually be accessible right across the city.

For more information about the Stoddart Family Farm and their meat CSA, please visit their website. To establish a delivery location with some of your friends & neighbours, or to subscribe to one of the meat CSA programs, please contact Kelly Lettner.