Small Farmers Need Small Slaughterhouses

Small farmers in the West who are raising meat and poultry need affordable – and legal – slaughterhouses. Nearly all the meat and poultry consumed in the US today comes from just four companies that operate their own USDA-inspected processing plants. Most of the remaining meat processors – beef, pork, lamb – do not process poultry.

Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land by Kurt Timmermeister

Told in Timmermeister’s plainspoken voice, Growing a Farmer details with honesty the initial stumbles and subsequent realities he had to face in his quest to establish a profitable farm for himself. Personal yet practical, Growing a Farmer includes the specifics of making cheese, raising cows, and slaughtering pigs, and it will recast entirely the way we think about our relationship to the food we consume.