From the Drawing Board - Updates on Butcher Shop Closure

Moving forward - With the upcoming closure of our butcher shop (see our previous post), we will be selling meat slightly differently until another solution is found. We currently still have a fair amount of retail cuts of beef and pork in our freezers which we will continue to sell until we are sold out. At the same time we will be making more use of our On Farm Slaughter License by pre selling whole pigs, whole, half and quarter cows as well as chicken and turkey. What is the On Farm Slaughter Licence? It is a program introduced by the Alberta Government a couple of years ago which allowed licence holders to slaughter and process (cut and wrap) their own animals on farm and sell it directly to their customers. The caveat is that the animal has to be pre sold before slaughter and cannot be resold to someone else after slaughter. It's actually a pretty good program with very little red tape, which is helping to strengthen local food throughout Alberta. Which begs the question: why is the inspection of meat in Alberta's butcher shops such a red tape fest that butchers are quitting? Anyway, we are very thankful that we do have this option of selling meat directly to you. By the way, under this program we can also authorize someone else to do the butchering on our behalf, meaning we can utilize one of the local butcher shops that does not have an inspected kill floor. We will be taking advantage of this option since we are not currently set up well to process large animals, nor do we have the time or desire to do so. Another option for you: Since our On Farm Slaughter Licence only allows us to sell whole pigs and whole, half or quarter cows, we are working on an option for those who cannot store, or afford that much meat at once. We haven't worked out all the details yet, but are thinking of a monthly subscription box. Basically you's still commit to a whole pig, whole, half or quarter cow but we would store the meat for you and make up a monthly variety box, while you pay us in monthly instalments. Please let us know if you might be interested in something like this and we will make sure to update you as we work out the details. Should this prove to be a popular idea we would add chicken and turkey to the boxes next year. We also just want to say thank you to all those who have reached out to us in the last week and expressed their support for us and our farm. It means a lot to us and we truly appreciate it! As always, if you have any questions or comments, please reach out to us. We are happy to talk to you!