I’ve been looking into buying pastured meat in bulk for some time. We live in the suburb suburbs so our only option is grocery store meat. This can get expensive when buying organic free-range, and it still feels so disconnected. It became a priority to meet one of the local ranchers and make the distance between us and our food a bit smaller. We tried a few small batches, about 40 pounds, and were quite pleased. So we decided to take the plunge for some of the larger quantities. Date Creek Ranch here in Arizona is a wonderful ranch with pastured pigs and cows. They live at elevation and are not treated with any hormones or antibiotics. They haven’t used chemicals on their land in over 15 years. Stefan and Kimberly are beautiful wonderful down to earth folks with a love for their craft. We are planning on making a trip to visit the ranch in the coming months. But if we don’t make it in the spring, we will be going up to pick apples in the fall.

We recently picked up our pork order for $3.90/lb. Compared to organic prices, this is a steal. The chops we have tried thus far are amazing, though the uncured bacon was a bit of a new thing to me. We will be picking up the cow in a couple of weeks, I’m thinking we need to make more room in the freezer. I know we are still more than 6 degrees of separation from preparing the meat ourselves, but it feels so much better to be connected to our food a bit more intimately.