How does our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) work you ask??

This blog post will serve as a resource to hopefully answer many of your questions about participating in our CSA. All CSA's work a little different, we focus primarily on pasture-raised meats. We plan to expand our annual/perennial gardens and orchard each year in hopes of offering shares of organic fruit and vegetables.

You've probably come here because you want to source your food from a local, responsible producer. We employ a variety of different agricultural practices that respect and honor the life of plants, land and animals. Our approach is rooted in permaculture, regenerative agriculture, ecological agriculture, organic, no-till and ancient native wisdom.

Steep Mountain Farm offers limited quantities of beef, lamb, turkey, roaster chickens and eggs. As we expand our vegetable production, we'll offer veggie shares.

We strongly encourage and promote the concept of "nose-to-tail" consumption. This is the best way to honor and use the entire animal. There is much less waste, and it also gets you creative with your cooking of various different and less common cuts of meat such as a shoulder roast, ox-tail, tongue sweetbreads, bones, etc. Also, when you purchase an animal in whole or in part directly from a farm, it's often sold by "hanging weight". This means that after the animal has been eviscerated and skinned, it is weighed and you pay for that weight. The more want from that animal, such as bone-in cuts, soup bones, offal (organ meats), etc. the less you pay per pound in the end. When ordering, please specify if you’d like “nose-to-tail”, we’ll include some of the extraneous cuts and offal. But don’t worry, it won’t go to waste if you don’t. We donate surplus organ meats to a raptor rescue center in Driggs.

Beef and lamb: half, quarter, or whole??

Most couples and small families find a quarter beef to be enough. When ordering your beef, keep in mind that you’ll get more variety of cuts if you take a half beef or more. Our butcher also charges a small fee for quarter shares due to the extra work involved. For example, if you order a half beef instead of a quarter, you'll likely see a rib roast, a brisket, skirt steaks etc. in your package. Otherwise, these cuts will likely be turned into steaks, cubes or ground up.

For lamb, whole is better than half. We raise a Painted Desert/Dorper lamb which has excellent flavor and tenderness, but is a smaller breed. The average hanging weight on a lamb is usually around 35 to 40 lbs. A whole lamb provides more variety in cuts, such as whole loins and racks as well as chops, neck steaks, more stew, ground, etc.

A whole lamb won’t take up too much real-estate in your freezer.

Whole turkey or butchered turkey?

We offer Broad Breasted white turkeys and Red Bourbon heritage turkeys. Broad breasted turkeys are larger and great for holiday parties or parted out into cuts for using throughout the year. Heritage turkeys are a slower growing bird, with more proportionate bodies and more dark meat that tends to be richer.

Here are a few ways you may order your turkey.

·        Whole bird with giblets for your holiday style gatherings.

·        You may order a whole turkey, and for an additional butcher fee of $15, we’ll cut and wrap your bird into breasts, thighs, drumsticks, wings, giblets and carcass

·        We also offer individually priced breasts, thighs, legs, etc. by the pound (see order sheet)

Roaster Chickens

We raise three batches of red ranger roaster chickens per season. One is harvested in early-mid June, the second in September, and the third in October. The price is $4.25 per pound. We raise red rangers because they are overall a healthier and tastier bird that is good at foraging and moving about the pastures. They take a little bit longer to grow to butcher weight, but it's well worth the final product and the rangers don't have the health issues the white Cornish crosses typically have which are commonly used in production settings. 

There are 2 ways to buy chickens:

·        Whole roaster with giblets   

·        Cut up and packaged into breast, thighs, drumsticks, wings, giblets and carcass for an additional $10 fee.

Please specify when you'd like your poultry, or we'll spread your order over the three harvest dates.

Deliveries

We do meat pickups in SLC after every butcher date. We try to deliver poultry fresh, unfrozen when possible. Local pickups at the farm are always welcome and encouraged. We are also somewhat flexible and occasionally make special arrangements for home deliveries or accommodate different drop locations. Tara commutes along the Wasatch front almost weekly and does various drops of eggs, milk, soap and occasionally other farm goodies.

Deposits

The reason it's "Community Supported Agriculture", is because you will send us a deposit or a partial payment for the products you order. This reduces the amount of operating funds we need to invest at the beginning of the season and softens the burden on us, your farmers.

By sending us a deposit, you are securing and committing to your order. Your order is not secure until we have received a deposit.

Below are the deposit amounts for each individual product. (*redundant on the order form).

• Whole beef -            $600
• Half beef-                $400
• Quarter beef-           $200
• Whole lamb-            $100
• Half lamb-                $50
• Whole turkey-          $20
• Roaster chicken-      $5      *Each chicken requires a $5 deposit.

Also, if you wish to make payments toward your larger orders, after your deposit amount is fulfilled, we can arrange accepting smaller payments until you receive your order in the fall. For example, If you want a quarter beef that will end up costing around $700, you can pay $50+/- per month throughout the season, so by the time you receive it, it's mostly paid for. 

Final costs, what to expect. 

Here is a summary of what to expect for each product:

• Beef. If you order a qtr beef, you may expect to receive around 80 to 100 lbs or more of final cuts. qtrs typically cost anywhere from around $600 to $800.
• Lamb. Whole lamb will be around the $200 range, and you can expect around 25 to 30 lbs of final product.
• Turkeys. Broad breasted turkeys dress out from 18 to 22 lbs typically and end up costing around $100 - $125. Occasionally they get bigger, say 26+ lbs. which are great for parting out. Red Bourbon turkeys dress out much smaller at 12 to 16 lbs. They take longer to grow and are therefore more expensive. Expect your heritage bird to be about $80 - $100.
• Chickens. Our pastured roaster chickens typically dress out at 4 to 7 lbs. and end up costing about $17 to $30 each. 

Hopefully this has been informative. If you have any more questions, please feel free to email or call, we'd love to hear from you!