Now that I have been ranting about the importance of eating organic for a few days, there is an obvious question. Where are you supposed to find this special meat? Organic produce is relatively easy to find. I have organic golden beets and kohlrabi in my refrigerator right now. Yet, while I live near an obscenely large Whole Foods I have only one obvious source for eggs from grass-fed chickens (Vital Farms which sells through Whole Foods), and no regular source of meat from grass-fed chickens or truly humane, free range pork.
To solve this dilemma, I got a chest freezer and started visiting the Farmers Markets. I started interviewing the farmers until I found one that I really liked. That is not a simple task. For example, every year I order turkeys from a place called Good Shepherd Ranch in Kansas. They have a turkey-cam. I get to see that the turkeys have a relatively nice turkey life until one day they don’t. They breed rare turkeys instead of broad-breasted whites, and the turkeys are outside eating bugs and grasses. My kind of turkeys.
I found Good Shepherd Ranch via Heritage Farms. Heritage Farms sells other meat that I do not like as well including beef cattle that have corn in their diet. So for turkeys, I love them. For other meats, it depends. And the shipping costs are both necessary and rather scary.
Then I found a farmer here in Illinois that I love, but they cannot keep up with demand except for goat and lamb. I don’t do goat recipes. It may taste great, but goat just isn’t something that is easy to find and therefore its not an appropriate choice for parents of neurologically impaired children.
When I find meat we might use, I buy it. I fill the chest freezer with a 6 month supply of meat. I take as many chickens and as much beef as I can get. I know a doctor who drives three hours each way every few months to a farmer in Wisconsin and then drives home with a cooler full of meat.
To find organic and grass-fed meat in your area and to learn more about the differences (those increases in Omega-3s can get amazing if you stick with pastured meat) you can visit Eatwild at the following website and look around.
http://www.eatwild.com/
The next post will cover how to pay for it.
