Taking Back Control of Our Local Food Supply

written by

Sue King

posted on

October 2, 2022

Harmonys Way Family Farm is a small family run farm that direct markets our beef, lamb and pork in our local community. Our family has been on a mission since 1998 to create a farm that cares for the needs of our animals in a natural, ethical way, and to provide not only for our family, but the people of our community with access to nutrient-dense, clean food.

An integral part of this mission (the butcher shop) came into existence out of necessity. Up until this time we had used multiple larger custom processors to get our animals freezer ready. Unfortunately, the quality of the processing deteriorated so badly that we would dread picking up meat from the processor. There is nothing more frustrating than putting your heart, soul and hard-earned money into raising high quality animals for our customers only to have the finished products come back from the processor poorly trimmed, inconsistently cut and below par packaging. We also learned that the bigger processors comingled the ground meats for convenience. So, we weren’t necessarily getting our own meat back. It was at this point that we decided to take quality-control into our own hand. In 2010 we built our on-farm, government inspected processing facility. This has allowed us to process all our animals into freezer-ready cuts for the people of our local community.

We believe that local food security is extremely important at this time. The past two years have shown us how vulnerable our food supply actually is. We simply can’t rely on a handful of faceless, multinational corporations to feed us. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is time to take back control of our local food supplies. It is time for farmers and consumers to come together and take back control of our local food supplies. I mean truly local; food that is raised and processed in our regions. Not just a supermarket that markets themselves as local but doesn’t carry food from local farms. It is time to build infrastructure that facilitates this food security. In our region we have so many producers that are committed to raising food for their community. We can’t feed our whole community from our one small farm. We need many small farms. As small farmers we can’t do this by ourselves. We need you, the eaters to partner with us.

As a result of one larger local abattoir closing many local producers have found themselves in a conundrum. They need a licensed facility that will process their animals for them and there are not a sufficient number of small abattoirs around.  As word got around to other small farms in our region, we were asked to process their animals also, which we have been trying to do. But we can’t help everyone.   

The dilemma Harmonys Way Family Farm now faces is “how can we be a part of the solution to this problem?” We have a small facility, but it was sized to process our own animals, plus a few more. 

In order to fill this need in our local community we will need to expand our small facility.

Phase one of the expansion to be able to help these other local producers who are now between “a rock and a hard place” contribute to our local food security is to expand our aging cooler and freezer space so we can process animals for them.  Anticipated completion of phase one is December of 2022.

Phase two will be to construct an inspected slaughter facility which would be completed by the summer of 2023. 

Together, as consumers and producers we can be the solution in taking back control our local food security. 

Please consider partnering with us to build a resilient, local food supply one step at a time. Your donations through Give, Send, Go will help build the facilities that local farmers need to continue to maintain and grow a local food supply that will stand the test-of-time.

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