Farmers Market Meats
My family purchases meats from the farmers at the North
Carolina State Farmers Market. Go to www.localharvest.org
to find a farmers market near you. The Research Triangle area where I live has
many wonderful farmers markets from which to choose. I have purchased from them
all.
We enjoy chicken, turkey and eggs from Rainbow Meadows Farm www.rmfpasturepuremeats.com.
They also sell lamb and pork. Sandra, the wonderful owner of Rainbow Meadows, is at the State
Farmers Market in Raleigh on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to
5:00 p.m. Ask her for the co-op price and tell her that Laura sent you.
We get our ground beef from Roger and Brenda, the fabulous owners of Angus Acres. They are at the State Farmers Market on
Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. They are very generous
and sell us ground beef in bulk at a significantly discounted rate when several
families join together to make one large order (around 100 pounds). Feel free
to let Roger and Brenda know that I sent you.
Another way to save money on beef purchases is to join
with a couple of other families and purchase part of a cow (sounds strange to say
it that way, I know!). This is an extremely affordable option when you want
more than ground beef in your menu. We have shared two cows, and our most
recent cost was just over $3 a pound.
Meat Storage
Where are you going to store all of this great bulk food
if you don’t have an extra freezer? Ask
for one on Freecycle or monitor Freecylce to see who is offering one www.freecycle.org. We got ours that way, and it works well.
For those not familiar with Freecycle, they describe themselves
best:
The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,615 groups with
5,932,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit
movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own
towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local
group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is
free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above
or by clicking on “Browse Groups” above the search box. Have fun!
You can purchase a chest freezer pretty inexpensively on
Craigslist www.craigslist.com. It will
more than pay for itself by the savings resulting from your bulk purchases.
Honey
Finally, we eat a lot of honey and purchase that at the
State Farmers Market. Barry at Bee Blessed has many tasty, raw, unfiltered, untreated
honeys to sample. You can reach Barry at 252-314-2913. Ask him when he will be at the farmers market. We have been most successful purchasing from him on Saturdays. Tell him that Colson,
the boy who buys six honey sticks every time, sent you.
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