Frequenty Asked Questions

Scroll up to see your options. As a partner, you're buying the livestock which means that you get the flexibility to have the animal butchered to your specifications and you have the benefit of using all of the most delicious and nutritious parts of the animal. Poultry is processed on the farm and you get whole, fresh birds. If you choose, you can use the feet and carcasses for nutrient dense broth. Spent laying hens are yours and you can use these in soups, stews, casseroles, noodles and for making rich, delicious broth. Beef and pork are cut to your specifications, greatly enhancing the convenience of making the kinds of meals you enjoy.

It depends entirely upon your eating habits. Our most popular and highest value option, the RED option, typically feeds a family of between 2 and 4. If you travel a lot, eat out a lot, or eat diet higher in carbohydrates (potatoes, pasta, rice, noodles, etc.) then you might consider the WHITE or BLUE options. The entire RED option averages about one and a half times as much meat as the USDA says is consumed by one average American in a year. This RED option typically makes between 3 and 4 large meals per week, each with leftovers for a couple of smaller meals.   Click here to see a 52-week sample menu based on 2016 actual cuts from the RED option.

Yes. You will need to have a chest or upright freezer. We typically recommend that you have a 13 - 15 cubic foot freezer for the RED option. Remember that you will not be putting all of the meat in the freezer at once because you will pick it up at different times of the season and you will be eating it. The rule of thumb on freezer space is that it takes about 1 cubic foot to store 25 lbs of frozen meat cuts. Whole chickens take about a cubic foot for every 6-8 birds.

You pick up your meat at Maple Valley Farm just northwest of Bloomington (about 14 minutes from downtown.) The animals are butchered seasonally with chicken available on a weekly basis throughout the summer, lambs from mid-summer to fall, beef in mid-summer to fall, pork throughout the year and eggs all year long. Thanksgiving turkeys are butchered the week prior to Thanksgiving.

You can come as often as you like or as little as once every four weeks. Eggs from your hens are allocated to you every week and will be held for you until pickup. You can schedule chicken pick-up as often as once per week during the summer or pick them up in just two or three trips during the season (using our on-line chicken scheduler.) We'll notify you at least two weeks in advance for beef, pork or lamb pick-ups.