Category Archives: Frugal Living

New Lower Pork Prices

New Pork Pricing

We started this ranch from nothing a short 6 years ago. It’s been an intense, never-die experience that is harder than we ever imagined. It may not seem like it, but we are still tiny in terms of farm sizes, producing only a few tens-of-thousands of pounds of meat per year compared to the millions of pounds produced by a single feedlot or confinement location. Translation: One customer makes a much bigger difference to us than to the Big Guys. Your one little purchase is really significant when made with a small-time farm like ours. You see, the odds are definitely stacked against small farmers, with laws and economies of scale and the convenience of supermarket shopping always falling in favor of corporate farms. That’s why there are so few farms like ours.

But we are hard-headed. And we love what we do. And we realize that if we don’t do it, who will? This is a TOUGH way to earn a living! But we need this kind of food. You need this kind of food. Our nation is sick because of the poor quality of its food. Our country is well-fed, but it is under-nourished. Food production practices matter, and people are beginning to realize that, but they don’t always know where to turn to find really-natural food.

Great news!

God has blessed our work and we have been able to grow rapidly in this 6 years. We started with 9 little pigs, about 15 cows, 12 laying hens, 50 broilers, and 4 turkeys. Now we have over 200 pigs, 100 cows, 500 laying hens, and we produce 7,000 broilers and 60 turkeys annually, with plans to continue adding more numbers and more species in the very near future. We’ve been blessed to increase in number and in knowledge, and we are ready to pass that blessing back to you in the form of lower prices. But there’s a catch…

Sustainable farming is just as much about sustainable growing practices as it is about sustainable profitability. We’re not out to get rich, and for those of you who have met us in person, we hope you know that. We work hard and live simply. We have tremendous family support and we love being able to work as stewards of the earth. We have steadily increased the efficiency of our infrastructure so that we can produce more delicious, nutritious food for you and for us.

We are ready to reduce our prices significantly, and to keep our prices at this new lower level, we must see a boost in overall sales. Two key factors in our ability to do that are:

Encouraging our customers (that’s you!) to increase the amount of Shady Grove Ranch products you consume; and
Increasing our customer base to reach new people.

So how do we increase sales in this tough economy?

As I said, we’re a very small company. We have roughly 400 actively buying customers. That’s tiny! We have just under 2000 email subscribers, and even more Facebook page followers, which is still tiny compared to the populations we serve. So I know we haven’t reached our full potential. Many people are still unaware of the problems with so-called “natural” labels at the grocery store. Even more than that, there are plenty of folks out there that don’t even realize they CAN buy directly from a farm right here in East Texas!

A lot of people think the cheaper products they find at Big Box stores are “good enough.” Please remember when you see labels at the store that make natural claims about meats and eggs, you must educate yourself. We meet people daily that still think that “Free Range” or “Organic” or “Cage-Free” or even “Grass-fed” resembles what we do here at Shady Grove Ranch. The fact is that all of those labels are so far below our standards in terms of soil and land management, pasture access for livestock, exclusion of genetically-modified products, rampant antibiotic use, estrogen dosing, feeding grain to the cows (yep, even that’s allowed under the “Grass-fed” and “Organic” label), unlisted chemical additives, and the list goes on.

It is so disheartening to hear that people still think that stuff is even in the same ballpark as our products. It’s not! There are all sorts of loopholes and vague definitions. Consumers have been duped! It’s time to Know Your Farmer. We encourage you to visit us, shake our hands, ask your questions, and support the people that you know are growing your food the way you want for your family.

How You Can Help

We can feed you for less if you will each tell a few friends about us, and perhaps commit to spending $10 or $20 more per month either by purchasing directly from us through one of our local pickup options, or by purchasing at a store in your area that carries our products. Tell the manager there that you love our stuff and want to see more variety on the shelf (none of our stores carries everything!). Hang in there with us as we continue to expand and improve our variety–that means choose from what’s in stock, even if it means changing up the meal plan a little.

We’re going to try out some substantially reduced pork prices in the month of October–can you recruit friends and family to start buying from us? Can you increase your own buying, even just a little? We’re trying to launch this big ship of best-and-most-affordable-meat-in-East-Texas. We’re trying to cut the right kinds of costs, and a big one is marketing. That’s where you come in!

Exciting Changes!

We’ve officially launched our lowest pork prices ever to see how things go. If we can boost our overall sales significantly, we can keep the new price structure and move on to working to reduce prices on other species. Keep in mind that our price cuts aren’t because the integrity of our products is less–it’s because inch by inch over the years, we have improved our efficiency and are finally rising over the hump of start-up expenses, particularly in pork. We expect chicken to be right behind it, and then hopefully eggs and beef. (Beef takes the longest because cows grow the slowest!) To keep the momentum going, we need more eaters! Can you help?

Here’s the plan: Starting now, specialty items like sausage links, smoked hams, and lower-volume cuts like tenderloin, bacon, and center cut loin will be $8.50/lb. The rest of the large-volume cuts, like breakfast sausage and shoulder roast, will be $6.50/lb. Easy, huh? We’ll reevaluate at the end of October to see if we’ve made enough new sales to keep it up. All you have to do is eat more good food and tell your friends to do the same. 😉

Action Time

We want to and can feed more people, and we’re excited about where we’re headed. Here are some practical ways you can sustain these great new prices:

Place an order! We’ve got a fresh round of deliveries coming up this month in Tyler, Shreveport, Longview, and Marshall. Or you can pick up at the ranch in Jefferson any time by appointment.
Jump over to Facebook to share this post and tell folks why you love our products. In the age of buy-by-reviews, this helps us tremendously! We’ve even started a giveaway!
Forward our email newsletter to friends, coworkers, etc.
Commit to adding Shady Grove Ranch products to one more meal each week. Your guts will thank you, and so will we!

Help a Farmer Out

How to See More of Shady Grove Ranch on Facebook for Your Phone

Go to our Facebook page here. “Like” us if you haven’t already, and then a little “Following” menu button should show up. Click it and select “See First.” That should help our posts show up in your news feed more often. We promise not to be annoying and spammy–we hate pages like that, too!

How to Turn On Notifications for Our Page on Your PC

Go to our Facebook page here. “Like” us if you haven’t already, then change the In Your News Feed setting to “See First.” Just below that, turn the Notifications setting to “All On,” or click the pencil icon to customize which kinds of posts you get notice for. You can choose among videos, photos, links, status updates (our favorite!), and events near you.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Many of you will find this blog post by following a link from our newsletter, meaning you’re already subscribed (thank you!), but just in case you’re not already receiving emails from us, please do so here. Again, we generate all our own content and try to keep it brief, relevant, and interesting because we respect your time and attention. Thanks for subscribing and reading our newsletter!

Three Things I Never Throw Away

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I was of a frugal nature before we started farming, and have become all the more so now that we are full-fledged self-employed workers of the land. We count ourselves as highly blessed, despite a tight budget most of the time. We have plenty to eat, sturdy clothes to wear, and a lovely farm to live on and work, so I’m not sure whether it’s the self-employed part or the our-own-farm part that makes me stretch every dollar or that makes me want to use every ounce of food that comes across my table. But the bottom line is that I do. I hate to see food go to waste because we’ve worked so hard to produce it, or in some cases, we’ve gone to great lengths to buy it from some other farmer, or from the best source we can find locally.

So what are three things I never throw away?

This thought process began yesterday at a lunch gathering after our church met for morning worship. We brought a simple meal for our family to eat there “on the grounds”—leftover butternut squash and grilled pork chops. Once finished, I tried to discreetly scoop up all the bones from our plates and hide them away near our things so no one would inadvertently throw them in the trash. “They’re not trash!” my inner crunchy weirdo shouted, so I brought extra plastic wrap with the intention of carrying them back home again. I always do stuff like this. Why?

Because there’s still a lot of good stuff in those bones! Even after we’d picked the bones clean of meat (and our pork chops are worth picking because the meat is soooo good!), I intended to make broth from those bones. And so I thought I’d share a few other things that I never throw away in the kitchen. Here are my top three:

Bones.

Any bone that comes across my table is broth-worthy. It’s like free food, and you’d be surprised how fast a stash of bones will grow into a large enough batch to make some broth. I just keep a plastic grocery sack in the freezer, and into there the bones and bits of veggie trimmings go until it’s full, a handful at a time. Once it’s full, I start another, and when I have two full bags, it’s time to make broth.

Other kinds of things I save for broth: Onion Scraps!

My favorite thing to save for broth (besides bones) is corn cobs and potato peelings. The flavor they add to the broth is so delicious. So as long as whatever I have isn’t rotting or moldy, it goes into the broth bag. Even after it’s made into broth, all the well-cooked bits then win their place as compost and dog food. The dogs have no problem chomping through the softened bones after I’ve cooked them for 48 hours. They turn their noses up at kibble when they have bones to chew. Every scrap counts!

Grease.

As a kid, you and I were taught clever ways to dispose of the grease that cooks out of hamburger meat, sausage, or bacon, like pouring it into a tinfoil-lined bowl and sticking that in the freezer. And of course, we were taught NEVER to pour it down the drain. Right?

But once I learned about the benefits of pasture-raised meats, my cleverness was diverted to thinking of ways to incorporate that “grease” into our diets! Yes! The fear of the fat clogging the sink should not mislead the eater to thinking that same fat will likewise clog their major blood vessels. Nope. Doesn’t work that way. At least not the right kind of fat. Animal fat. Yep. Read about it. No more fat phobia!

So now I try never to waste any fat. I save it in little containers on the counter for basting the next chicken or for greasing the egg skillet or for frying some potatoes. I even take a little pleasure in the ability to transfer the unique flavor of a particular batch of fat into some new dish. Like bacon flavoring for the chicken I’m roasting. Or onion ring flavoring for the eggs I’m scrambling. Fat is so interesting and so filling. So I never throw it away. Even when I clean out the fryer, that grainy, dark brown gooey stuff just goes to the dogs. They like it salted. Yep. Salted fat dog food. No waste.

Sour milk.

Once upon a not-so-long-ago time, we had milk cows. And it was a lot of work to get out there every morning and evening to milk those cows, on Christmas, on Thanksgiving, on birthdays, rain or shine, at 20 degrees and 110 degrees outside. So the milk became quite precious. And though we now purchase our raw milk from another farm instead of raising it ourselves, it’s still regarded as super-valuable, and you do your best never to waste it.

So when our raw milk gets to be about two weeks old and starts to turn “wonky,” as we call it, I begin to find uses for it other than just drinking. Unlike pasteurized milk, which goes truly gross when it sours, raw milk sours by transforming into buttermilk, so I start using it in pancakes or biscuits. I’ve even had great success using it in gravy and cheese sauces! It is cheese, in some sense, or at least the beginning of many types of cheese. And it will keep in the fridge as “buttermilk” for a month. I’ve used the same gallon of milk for 6 weeks! Talk about shelf life!

Here I am being excited about raw milk.

I know, I’m weird. But maybe there’s something to this. We can get a lot of miles out of a little bit of high-quality food by taking care to use every last bit of that food for something in the kitchen. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “But I don’t have grass-fed burger or raw milk. Is it safe to save the bones/fat/sour milk from conventionally raised animals?” Well. The truth is, I don’t know. It begs the question, is the protein portion safe? If the bones and fat from cheap, poorly raised meats aren’t safe and nourishing, why would the protein from those sources be safe and nourishing? But cheap protein is still protein, right?

That’s a question we all have to deal with. I dealt with it after the last time I ever bought conventional ground beef. I made spaghetti for my coworkers one summer (they were starving bachelor students, and I was newly married with a heart for cooking and a love for nourishing food). At home we used grass-fed ground beef, which was quite expensive, so I decided to go halvsies and do a chub of cheap stuff and a couple packs of premium grass-fed. I’ll never forget the stark contrast in texture of the two meats in the sauce. You could plainly tell the difference, and the store-bought stuff was DISGUSTING. It reminded me of canned Beanie Weanie. I never bought hamburger at the store again.

So I hope this article has given you a few tips to save money so you have more money to put toward the good stuff. Happy eating!