FAQs

Our meats are packed with coolant during their journey to ensure they arrive in great shape. Meats will arrive frozen or refrigerated. Most of our products are shipped frozen; occasionally, due to very quick turnaround between when the meats arrive at our freezing and distribution facility and when they are delivered to you, meats may be shipped fresh. Meat that is cold to the touch can be refrigerated for immediate use, or frozen for later use.

It's better than organic! Certification doesn't always mean everything you want it to mean; for example, USDA organic standards allow chickens to be raised in near total confinement and fed nothing but organic corn and still be called "free-range organic." Those practices are unacceptable to us; we want the animals to be outside and enjoy life in their natural setting. Our animals are all raised outdoors on pasture, with plenty of room to move around, forage and otherwise express their natural tendencies.

In general, you can follow your favorite recipes for all our products. For our dark meat chicken, we recommend cooking at a lower temperature and with a little more liquid, for a longer time. (Since the birds actually move around, the leg fibers benefit from slightly longer cooking time to soften up.) Otherwise, since our pastured meats have so much flavor, you may find yourself grilling a steak or roasting a chicken with nothing but salt, pepper and olive oil so you can really enjoy the taste of the meat itself -- no complicated sauces needed.

Including some grain in our cattle's diet helps us deliver a more affordable, tender, delicious and consistent product. The animals NEVER receive growth hormones or routine doses of preventative antibiotics. Our finishing yards are clean, spacious and animals are healthy and well-cared for. Their 100% vegetarian diet (no animal by-products) consists of a balance of hay, grass and grain.

Although it's the topic of much press and conversation, feeding grain to cattle is not always a bad thing. Feeding cattle only grain makes them sick, which is the practice on large feedlots. We abhor the practices of these large feedlots, where overcrowded, malnourished cattle are routinely fed antibiotics to help them put on weight for slaughter as quickly as possible. However, cattle naturally eat grain in their diets (grass seeds are grains), and people have been feeding animals limited amounts of grain for millennia to produce flavorful, well-marbled meat (see Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking, p. 135). In contrast to feedlot beef, our animals are healthy as evidenced by our extremely high kosher rates and extremely low incidence of illness. Grain is gradually introduced into their diet in the last few months. Grain is not more than 50% of their lifetime diet (the remainder of their diet is grass and hay.) We inspect our farms regularly to ensure that conditions meet our standards. We examine every animal before slaughter, and again after slaughter (checking innards) and attest that our animals are healthy and do not suffer from the grain (in fact, they eat it eagerly!).

While the arguments for and against GMOs are complex, we do encourage our farmers to use GMO-free feed where possible. All our poultry receive GMO-free, locally-milled feed. Lamb receive a very limited amount of conventional feed (only while in transit). Beef feed is conventional. Note that in all cases grain feed is a supplement to the diet of pasture grasses available to the animals at all times.

When we assure you that our meat is produced according to the strictest standards of kashrut, animal welfare, worker treatment, and sustainable agriculture, we do mean just that: we are taking many aspects of meat productions into consideration to produce the best kosher meat on the market. We have spent considerable time and effort exploring the field (including working on small farms, in butcher shops, and slaughterhouses across the country), and we haven't yet been able to find beef produced with GMO-free grain that also meets our other standards, including feed being grown nearby, being able to slaughter the animals upright and in facilities near to where they are raised, supporting small farms and production facilities with good working conditions, (including healthcare for the line-workers), while producing high quality delicious meat under rigorous kashrut supervision. These aspects are all critical to us in piecing together the puzzle of kosher sustainable agriculture today.

If avoiding GMOs is of critical importance to you, we hope you'll check out our pastured poultry.

We do not sell prepared meals. Most of what we sell is raw frozen meat which requires cooking at home, with the exception of Beef Jerky, Deli Meats and our pre-cooked sausages.

No. We have yet to find bison that meet our rigorous standards. It is not practical for us to ship or deliver eggs at this time, but we suggest that you talk to a vendor at your local farmer's market or search on Local Harvest for a nearby source.

All of our raw Beef, Veal, Lamb and Poultry are kosher for Passover year-round with no additional markings on the package. Additional kashrut information can be found here.

Sometimes sharp bones or rough handling by the shipping carrier will cause punctures in the packaging. Additionally, dry ice can make the plastic extra brittle and prone to breakage in transport. However, your meat is still completely safe to eat; we recommend defrosting it over a plate or bowl to avoid leakage.

Vacuum-sealed meat can occasionally look dark red or brown, or have a sulfurous smell when the package is opened. DON’T WORRY. This is not a sign of spoilage. It is in fact a sign of an excellent vacuum seal, and resulting lack of oxygen in the package. If the smell dissipates and gets better after oxygen exposure (even if it doesn’t entirely disappear), your meat will taste delicious. If you have any concerns over the quality of your delivery, please call us immediately. Please do not discard any product or packaging until you have contacted (and heard back) from us.