It feels like it has taken ages to get to this point, but we’re now ready to announce the beginning of our Doorstep Delivery service. We’ll be doing weekly shipments of our meat via next day delivery to customers within our UPS/FedEx delivery zone. Orders should arrive on Wednesdays.

We’ve done a lot of work on the pricing to pare things down and we’re happy that we can offer this service with a minimum of overhead. We’ve looked at the big national natural and grass fed meat companies, and we’re glad to note that our prices are still competitive (better in most cases) even when the shipping and handling are all included.

We don’t have any aspirations to become a nationwide meat distributor. Lots of folks are working hard to do that with venture capital funding going into box services, home delivery, and extensive grass fed vertical integration efforts. Following that path would cause us to stray far from our identity as a family farm to become a brand that represents farmishness without being viscerally connected to a farm. (Note that I’m not knocking farming cooperatives or partnerships, I’d actually like to be part of more partnerships, but I am dubious of the ability of a nationwide brand to stay true to the roots that gave it initial success and legitimacy.)

Our goal is to be one farm in our area that distributes food to people in our part of the country. We realize that our Neighborhood Deliveries don’t work for everyone who wants our products, so we’re doing what we can to make ourselves accessible to the people who are looking for better alternative food suppliers. We would rather be part of a system that encourages many farms to produce food for consumption within their own regions. Such a robust, regionally distributed food system is counter-cultural in our age of consolidation, standardization, and homogenization.

So, I’ll say in this post which is by its nature also an advertisement to buy our stuff, “Yes, go buy our stuff.” Or buy stuff from another farm in your area. But send a message with your food dollars that you won’t be an interchangeable part in the industrial organic/natural food machine.