All of our meat is produced from animals raised right here at Meadowood Farms.  Our animals are grazed on pastures free of herbicides or insecticides, and are grown without the use of hormones or antibiotics in the feed. 

HOW WE PROCESS OUR BEEF AND LAMB

Our Belted Galloway beef is processed one or two head at a time, at a small custom USDA processing facility in the CNY region.  Small, high-quality processing plants have really disappeared over the last 15 years and, as a result, we have to book our dates for our cattle to be processed well over 12 months in advance, even though it takes 18-24 months to grow out our Meadowood Farms steers!  Our processing facility is currently booked solid into Fall 2021.  The situation is similar with our lamb.  We booked our October 2020 lamb-processing space in December 2019, about 5 months before most of the lambs were even born.

When our beef and lamb is processed, it immediately is “flash frozen” and goes into a blast freezer at our processing facility. The quality of stored meat depends on how quickly it is frozen, and then particularly on the temperature it is subsequently stored at.  When we bring the meat to our farm, it is stored in our walk-in freezer, which operates at -10 to -15degF to maintain an extremely high quality.

Some people ask us why we freeze our meat.  You might find it interesting to know that it has been demonstrated by the USDA that “The freezing process itself does not destroy nutrients. In meat and poultry products, there is little change in nutrient value during freezer storage.”  And there are numerous studies on food and meat processing that show that meat frozen under the right circumstances, and stored at extremely cold temperatures such as we operate in our farm freezer, have the smallest reductions in measures of tenderness and flavor.  Our tremendously cold freezer temperature allows us to hold meat at the farm for up to 24 months, as that is often the length of time between processing one small group of beef steers and the next.

Most household freezers operate at ~ 0 degF.  Per USDA guidelines, properly wrapped and stored meat can hold its quality in a home freezer for 6 to 12 months; the difference between 6 and 12 months depending on the quality of the wrapping, and the temperature of the home freezer.  Thus, another point that is critical to ensuring the quality of Meadowood Farms’ frozen meat is the vacuum-sealed packaging.  At the processing plant, our meat is vacuum-sealed in a very thick bag before being flash frozen. 

WHAT WE ARE NOT … AND WHY YOU WANT US TO BE WHAT WE ARE

Our national food system, and specifically its meat system, makes it possible for the vast majority of Americans to have access to affordable and largely high-quality meat and protein. We in the U.S. are very lucky to have this food system; in the rest of the world, meat and protein can be expensive and often not available on a wide scale basis.  BUT… in order to produce such vast quantities of meat in the US, and have it readily available at the supermarket -- daily, fresh and on the shelves with variety – requires a few really major things:  a hauling infrastructure that will move animals thousands of miles between farm, feedlot, and processing facility; large processing facilities that will process a couple thousand head of cattle per day with a couple thousand employees on two shifts per day; and massive feedlots that can feed grain to tens and tens and tens of thousands of animals with such precision that their timing to the processing facility by the trucking industry can be done with pinpoint accuracy.  That is not us.

Here at Meadowood Farms we have the smallest of small-scale livestock operations.  In spite of our highly developed systems on the farm, designed to produce the best beef and lamb that we can with the least amount of labor, along with the greatest attention to our animals, we have few efficiencies of scale, like most small-scale farmers.   Our beef cattle are fed on a diet that is 80% forage (pasture during the grazing season, and hay during the winter months) and only 20% non-GMO corn.  Our lambs are on a similar pasture+grain program.

We take either one or two steers to be processed at a time, approximately every 12-18 months, depending on the steers’ growth, which in turn depends a lot on the quality of the pasture over the growing season.  Our lambs are processed on a small-scale basis, like our steers.  At Meadowood Farms we believe in treating our animals humanely and looking after their health and welfare.  Through rotational grazing we maintain lush, verdant pastures by spring, summer, and fall, and in the winter feed the highest-quality hay.  Our animals interact with us and each other, and have room to roam.  We try to be the best stewards of our land and our animals that we can possibly be, and that is what makes us who we are.   

To order our beef or lamb cuts, go to our on-line farm store.

For information about how to order, and where to pick up your order, click here.