Thursday, May 7, 2009

Local Food Field Trip: Blood Farm

Today I made a trip to my favorite place to buy meat: Blood Farm. It is a little out of the way for me to get to, but I feel it is totally worth the trip. All of the meat is locally raised and slaughtered on site. While they are not certified organic nor do they make promises about exclusively raising grass-fed beef, the freshness and quality are both excellent. If you have concerns about CAFOs (and everyone should, even without the current swine flu issues or connections), Blood Farm is definitely a great alternative. The place is basically a small scale local slaughter house with a couple of freezers stocked with meat. You can actually see the hanging meat while they are weighing your purchases and can get very fresh cuts of meat if they happen to have what you are looking for available. I have been told that they do special orders if you call ahead.

I tend to buy 2 - 3 months worth of food when I go there, so now our freezer is stocked up with all manner of local chicken, beef, and pork. (Mark Bittman's latest Minimalist column espouses the joy of a full freezer, and I must concur.)

The one new thing I came across on today's trip was local eggs:

These very cool looking and their diverse color reflects the free range nature of the chickens that produced them. Blood farm is not close enough for this to be regular "local egg" supplier, but I am definitely going to buy the eggs when I go there. They also had duck eggs which I have never had, but the fact that they sell them has me very intrigued...

3 comments:

  1. There's a place in Princeton that sells duck eggs (and ducklings, too.). There was an ad for it in today's Worcester paper. It says free range, local, and the eggs have bigger yolks and lower cholesterol.

    It's Woodland Gardens Farm, 978-464-2408.

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  2. Thanks Cate... but just so you know, Sue doesn't like when people encourage me

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  3. Ha! No ducklings, please!!!

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