There is a great moment in an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa decides to go vegetarian. Sitting at the dining room table, she begins to agonize over the lives lost for the sake of her dinner.
She imagines the chops falling out of a bleating, fuzzy lamb, the rump roast falling off a big-eyed cow’s back end and the breasts flopping out of a chicken. Then she visualizes a rat’s tail, a raccoon’s feet, a pigeon’s head and the tongue of a boot coming together to make a hot dog.
Unlike Lisa, I couldn’t go the vegetarian route. But, when it comes to hot dogs, I share her paranoia. Yummy as they are, I, too, fear raccoon bits. Growing up, my dad used to joke that hot dogs were made of… well, I better not tell you.
Thankfully, though, there are good people making unscary – and delicious – hot dogs right here in our region. A person needs to be able to enjoy a grilled dog in the summer, after all. Fear should not be an obstacle.
Last weekend I stopped in at Well Fed Food, a one-stop shop for locally-raised meat near Ayr, to stock up on some summer barby essentials. I came away with chicken breasts, wings, steaks, additive-free burgers, nitrate-free all-beef hot dogs, and some spicy pepperettes – and had to restrain myself from going nuts.
Well Fed Food is owned and operated by Mark and Cindy Gerber, who run it out of their home. They also run a farm, called Oakridge Acres, which raises about 100 head of Angus cattle (who go on, of course, to become those lovely burgers and steaks).
The Gerbers both used to work in the retail business, but left to take over Cindy’s parents’ farm in 1996. There were no animals on the farm at the time, just cash crops, but Mark and Cindy started with two cows in 2000 and slowly added more.
All the cows are registered purebred, which means their ancestry is tracked and the Anguses are always bred with Anguses. That results in well-marbled, short grained, tender meat that is naturally more flavourful. There are no drugs or growth hormones used and the cattle have plenty of access to pasture. They’re 80 per cent grass fed (never corn), with a little home-grown oats and barley added for fat. “If I don’t grow it, I don’t feed it to them,” Mark says.
When the BSE crisis hit in 2003, “a bull that would fetch $2000 to $4000 dropped to $300,” Mark tells me. The Gerbers didn’t want to sell their cattle at those prices, so they opted to sell the meat from their home instead.
They started with a freezer in their garage and sold quarters and sides of beef until one day, a customer came in wondering if he could just buy a couple of steaks. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Why not?’ ” says Mark.
From there, the Gerbers started talking to other farmers with similar ethical philosophies that were looking to sell their meat directly to customers, but didn’t necessarily want to do so at their own farms.
Now the Gerbers’ store is filled with chest freezers bearing various cuts of chicken, pork,
lamb, wild boar, elk, fish and more, all grown and produced locally. Frozen meat, they feel, is the freshest. Mark says it’s sitting out only two to three hours at most before it’s frozen, as opposed to grocery store meat that sits out for longer periods of time.
The Gerbers also sell honey, maple syrup, organic milk and other interesting bits and pieces at the shop. In August, they’ll open a stand-alone store on their farm – “So we can have our house back,” says Cindy – and plan to expand to organic and locally grown produce and other items.
“People are becoming more and more educated about the food they eat,” says Cindy. “It seems to appeal to people more now to know the farmer that produces the food. We’re impressed with how many people are researching and looking for alternatives.”
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She imagines the chops falling out of a bleating, fuzzy lamb, the rump roast falling off a big-eyed cow’s back end and the breasts flopping out of a chicken. Then she visualizes a rat’s tail, a raccoon’s feet, a pigeon’s head and the tongue of a boot coming together to make a hot dog.
Unlike Lisa, I couldn’t go the vegetarian route. But, when it comes to hot dogs, I share her paranoia. Yummy as they are, I, too, fear raccoon bits. Growing up, my dad used to joke that hot dogs were made of… well, I better not tell you.
Thankfully, though, there are good people making unscary – and delicious – hot dogs right here in our region. A person needs to be able to enjoy a grilled dog in the summer, after all. Fear should not be an obstacle.
Last weekend I stopped in at Well Fed Food, a one-stop shop for locally-raised meat near Ayr, to stock up on some summer barby essentials. I came away with chicken breasts, wings, steaks, additive-free burgers, nitrate-free all-beef hot dogs, and some spicy pepperettes – and had to restrain myself from going nuts.
Well Fed Food is owned and operated by Mark and Cindy Gerber, who run it out of their home. They also run a farm, called Oakridge Acres, which raises about 100 head of Angus cattle (who go on, of course, to become those lovely burgers and steaks).
The Gerbers both used to work in the retail business, but left to take over Cindy’s parents’ farm in 1996. There were no animals on the farm at the time, just cash crops, but Mark and Cindy started with two cows in 2000 and slowly added more.
All the cows are registered purebred, which means their ancestry is tracked and the Anguses are always bred with Anguses. That results in well-marbled, short grained, tender meat that is naturally more flavourful. There are no drugs or growth hormones used and the cattle have plenty of access to pasture. They’re 80 per cent grass fed (never corn), with a little home-grown oats and barley added for fat. “If I don’t grow it, I don’t feed it to them,” Mark says.
When the BSE crisis hit in 2003, “a bull that would fetch $2000 to $4000 dropped to $300,” Mark tells me. The Gerbers didn’t want to sell their cattle at those prices, so they opted to sell the meat from their home instead.
They started with a freezer in their garage and sold quarters and sides of beef until one day, a customer came in wondering if he could just buy a couple of steaks. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Why not?’ ” says Mark.
From there, the Gerbers started talking to other farmers with similar ethical philosophies that were looking to sell their meat directly to customers, but didn’t necessarily want to do so at their own farms.
Now the Gerbers’ store is filled with chest freezers bearing various cuts of chicken, pork,
lamb, wild boar, elk, fish and more, all grown and produced locally. Frozen meat, they feel, is the freshest. Mark says it’s sitting out only two to three hours at most before it’s frozen, as opposed to grocery store meat that sits out for longer periods of time.
The Gerbers also sell honey, maple syrup, organic milk and other interesting bits and pieces at the shop. In August, they’ll open a stand-alone store on their farm – “So we can have our house back,” says Cindy – and plan to expand to organic and locally grown produce and other items.
“People are becoming more and more educated about the food they eat,” says Cindy. “It seems to appeal to people more now to know the farmer that produces the food. We’re impressed with how many people are researching and looking for alternatives.”
-30-
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