Meat: Sustainable and Grass Fed

Albany Patch takes a look at the people behind the . Kelli Loux of Petaluma says the people who stop by her booth know their meat and aren't afraid to experiment with how they cook it. 

What is the name and location of your farm?

The farm is and we’re based out of Petaluma, CA.

What do you usually bring to the Albany farmers market? 

I bring meat, beef and pork, and it’s all sustainably raised, pasture fed. The beef is grass fed and grass finished, and also dry-aged for three-and-a-half to four weeks so the meat is more flavorful, more tender. There’s 20 percent less water weight; you’re not paying for that. I don’t bring chicken here, but our pork and our chicken are pasture raised as well. They’re all raised out on pasture and they do have to have some sort of a grain feed, but it’s soy-free, corn-free, GMO-free, organic feed. So we’re pretty proud of that. It makes the meat the best it can be.

Out of curiosity, why don’t you bring chicken?

Because we process the chicken ourselves on our farm. In order to bring things to the farmers market it has to be processed at a USDA shop.

How did you get connected with the Albany farmers market?

Our operations manager got us into quite a few markets this year. We were only in about three markets last year. I think we’re at eight this year. We’re really happy to be at the Albany farmers market. It’s a really great market, the customers are great. I have regulars that come back every week to get our stuff.

What do people usually buy? What’s your biggest seller?

Here I sell a lot of ground beef, a lot of stew meat, a lot of rib eyes, filet mignon. I sell a lot of everything.  I have a lot of people here that like offal - the innards, the liver and the heart and the kidneys and all that. The pork hearts and stuff you can grind up and mix, with the meat for the ground beef, and make a meatloaf. There’s all kinds of things, people get really creative. We have bones. And then the bones, people make beef stock with it, which is really good for you, or they cook it and take the marrow out and eat the marrow. That’s the best you can get.

How many pounds of meat do you tend to bring?

It depends on what we have. Like today I couldn’t bring any pork because we didn’t have enough pork. We have a CSA as well. It stands for "community supported agriculture" and it’s where people subscribe to get a box of our meats and veggies and eggs. We’ve got meats, veggies and eggs that come from our farm, and then we have about 20 other add-on items from other local farms. We do that for a couple reasons: One, it helps support the other local farmers, but also to keep our customers from having to go to the store, because that’s where I overspend, when I go to the store. I buy stuff I didn’t need, didn’t want and can’t use. I subscribe myself to it! I get a $30 meat bag and a $20 veggie box every two weeks and then I just add yogurt when I need it and butter when I need it.

What are your prices?

Our prices are very good, I think, for the type of food that we have and the quality of meat that we have. In fact I had some people at the Sonoma market tell me yesterday that we’re priced too low, $21 a pound rib eye, he thought it was too low. Our ground beef is $7 a pound. I was at a store that sold ground beef - I won’t mention names - but it was $8.99 a pound there, and theirs was grass fed as well. Oftentimes you can go into the store and you can get "grass fed," but you don’t know: that just means that it ate grass at one point in its life, but it could have been finished on corn and antibiotics and that kind of stuff.

Do people shy away from buying the meat because of the prices?

Sometimes, but normally I’ll say, "Well why don’t you try some ground beef?" And then they try it and then they come back the next week wanting some more because it’s so good.

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at emilier@patch.com.