We pride ourselves on our animals living a happy and healthy life, with just one bad day.
Many folks overlook that one bad day, but for us that is possibly the most important day. These animals are making the ultimate sacrifice to feed thousands of mouths. It is our duty to make sure do so with dignity.
When we started the journey of selling our meat directly to customers, a huge piece of that was finding a processor that fit ALL of our requirements.
Not only did they need to be able to produce quality finished product in high quality packaging, but they needed to care for our animals the way we would if we were processing on farm.
Especially when it comes to chickens, we get a lot of questions related to processing. We love this, because it shows how educated you are and how much you care about the welfare of the animals you consume. Many of you are aware of the chicken processing exemption in Virginia (and many other states), which states that farms can legally process a certain number of chickens on farm and sell them to the public in their home state. This is different than hogs and cows, as those must go through a USDA facility to be sold in individual cuts.
Through careful consideration of the capacity of our farm, its goals, and its reach (which is already outside of our home state), we have decided not to process our chickens on the farm. With this decision came the task of finding a USDA poultry processor who values these birds as much as we do and will treat them with the same care.
Enter fellow farmer Alex. Alex also raises chickens, along with several other species of animals, along the same humane and regenerative path we follow. Finding a fellow farmer who believes as strongly as we do in humane handling and processing – so far as to build his own on-farm USDA small animal processing facility – was a huge win for us!
We’re comforted knowing that our animals are processed humanely, by folks who also believe that their one bad day needs to be a peaceful one. And at the same time, we are able to support another small agricultural business.
