Finding High Quality Meat and Poultry

The farm

Your diet and the quality of the food you buy can have the single greatest impact on the health of you and you family.  The hardest part can be getting started.  I thought our first real blog post should be to direct people to resources for finding high quality food suppliers in Northern Virginia.

Our patients are always asking “Where do you by your meat?” We buy most of our meats and poultry from Polyface Farm.  Polyface Farm was made famous in Micheal Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. If you have not read this book it is worth your time. It may change the way you see where your food comes from and why, how it is produced, matters. Polyface is located in Swoope, Virginia (about 3 hours away) and makes deliveries to drop off points in Northern Virginia. We just put an order in at www.polyfaceyum.com and pick up the food in Ashburn about once a month. Mostly we order whole chickens, eggs, sausage, pork chops, grass fed ground beef, and large quantities of chicken necks and backs for making chicken stock.  All products are not available year round but that is how it goes when working with a farm.

Owen's Name Tag from Polyface Farm

We had the opportunity to see Polyface Farm in action at their Farm Field Day this past July.  The land the farm is located on is beautiful rolling green hills in what feels like the middle of nowhere.  It was a fun family experience to see the chickens, turkeys, cows being raised, hike all over the farm and listen to the various farm experts give talks about how they farmed.  Owen loved walking all over the farm but mostly just wanted to stare at the tractors. It struck both Michelle and I how happy the people who worked the farm were.  In the end we wanted to remain chiropractors and leave the farming and hard work of raising food to the experts.

You do not have to order form Polyface though. There are loads of great farms producing high quality food throughout Northern Virginia. Many of them can be found at www.eatwild.com This site shows the location of the farms on Google. Information such as the farms website, what they produce and prices are listed on each push pin on the Google map. On the Eatwild website just click on the menu on the left at the top that says “Shop for Grassfed Meat, Egg & Dairy” scroll down a little until you see the map and you can click on your state.  The same kind of meat can taste different from farm to farm based on what they feed them and how they are raised. You will eventually find the ones that fit your tastes.  Different farms often sell their meats, poultry and eggs at the local farmer’s markets and it is a great way to try them out before you buy a large quantity.  Many of these farms welcome visitors so you can see where your food is produced. I highly recommend going to see where the animals are raised and how they are treated.  Good luck trying your local farmers’ food. You will not be disappointed.

Here are some more pictures from our trip to Polyface. Owen was a little nervous about the baby chicks. He did not know what to make of all these creatures who were smaller than him.

   Joel Salatin on his way to give a talk about how they raise chickens.
One of the farms mobile chicken coups.

 

The Cows before they are the best burgers you have ever tasted!
One last cute picture of Owen!

 

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