Always Something Farm

04/27/2022

Mark your calendars for May 14th, from 2-5 we will be having our first fresh chicken sale. We will be processing fresh birds that week and have them available to purchase on the 14th. These will be whole birds available for $5/lb, and we will also be running a sale on our remaining pork sausage for $10/lb.

If you’d like to save yourself a little bit we will extend the preorder sale through tomorrow. When you pre order you get your chickens for $4.75/lb.
#716food #buffaloeats #buffalofarms #716 #pasturedpoultry #bettermeat #winnerwinnerchickendinner

04/18/2022

As we’re all dreaming of warmer weather waiting for the snow tonight we wanted to remind everyone that pig roast season will soon be upon us.

We have partnered up with our friends @burninbarrelbbq to offer full service roasting capabilities. We will raise and have the hog processed, and Nick can handle your roasting needs. He also offers full service catering services as well, but he’s booking up fast.

Please let us know if you’d like to get on our list and make a reservation for your roasting hog!
#bbq716 #bbq585 #pigroast #buffaloeats #716 #premiumroastinghog #makingporkgreatagain

04/16/2022

If you hadn’t heard already- our friends/partners are all throwing a pretty awesome shindig at Community Beer Works tomorrow to celebrate their 10th anniversary

04/15/2022

We as a society need to shift our focus when it comes to sustainable food sourcing and understanding that not every cut off of an animal is bacon, filet, rack of lamb, boneless skinless chicken breast

It feels timely to reshare this post from last Easter. The differences of whole animal butchery are not always apparent to consumers who are used to the “convenience” of commodity meat. We find that the more people know, the more they appreciate the particulars of a local food system and supply chain. Not all meat is the same!

・・・
Holiday weeks tend to underscore some of the major differences of the whole animal approach to butchery.

Many more people come in looking for specialty cuts such as lamb racks. We’ll “only” have 12 racks this week because we brought in 6 lambs... but we also have the entire rest of those animals!! The philosophy of whole animal butchery is to mimimize waste by utilizing the entire animal.

We encourage you to come in with an open mind and try something new if your first choice is unavailable.

Shift your perspective: by selecting lamb neck or belly or shoulder, you’re participating in the communal consumption of an animal that was raised in WNY and you’re sharing with other neighbors who shop here.

We hope that as you know more about the chain and process of how food gets to your home, you’ll appreciate the differences and know you’re supporting a bigger, more sustainable and ethical system of meat eating.

📷 @shawphotographyco

04/12/2022

Our industrial food production system is a system built on cheap production models that drive profits, but fall short on issues of sustainability and whole animal utilization. When animals are raised for consumption we should respect them by utilizing every single last scrap of that animal in one way or another.

When it comes to our hog production model, these two products are too often over looked good items that not only taste great, but are actually nutritionally dense and healthy for you to consume.

If you’d like to see the process to produce them both take a peak at our story from yesterday into today.

Praise the Lard! Pass the pork rinds!
#lard #heritagecooking #makingporksustainableagain #realslowfood
#useeverything #eliminatefoodwaste

04/09/2022

Need something awesome to wrap up your Sunday Funday? Two hours of local food and five beers for $30!

03/31/2022

Hey friends, come on down, grab a beer and take a chance to chat with some of the best producers, brewers, bakers, and sausage makers in the local scene!

03/25/2022

Looks like it’s a week of babies at the farm! We had our first lamb born yesterday, and it’s a ewe.

This year with our partnership besides bringing meat chickens and soon turkeys back to the farm, we decided to add sheep to the mix. When we were looking at breeds we decided on Tunis, which will eventually be bred to a Katahdin hair sheep (more on them later).

Tunis are a heritage breed, linked back over 200 years, in fact it was one of the breeds Washington had on Mt. Vernon. They have a fairly large frame, but are truly a dual purpose animal in that they not only provide meat, but also fiber in the form of wool. Their true impact is beyond that even, with them being able to help maintain the pasture and fertilize it in a rotational manner, improving the land fertility as they go without the large impact of a herd of cows.
#farmknowledge #verticalfarmintegration #lamb #tunis #multipurposelivestock

03/17/2022

Let's talk chicken!

Whether you want to grow your own meat birds or have us grow them for you, we have the solution.

We currently have meat chicks available at $2.75 each.
You can also place a deposit and pre-order for our first processing day in May, $10 deposit off of the final price of $4.75/lb. Our regular price for the season will be $5.00/lb without pre-order.

Message us to put down a deposit on butchered birds or to come and purchase your own chicks to grow!

03/10/2022

The idea of climbing a mountain as insurmountable as helping to develop a sustainable local food system is a near impossible task. Attempting to do so alone is even more daunting. For the past several years we've tried to build a circle of people with the same goals, farmer entrepreneurs who are trying to impact the way people in our region eat.

Two years ago we met the Woodard's at one of our pop up markets, by the following month they were set up next to us in the driveway as @bwacres, selling their chicken, lamb, and vegetables along with many of our other friends. We all grew through that time, attending the same markets and have grown closer in friendship.

Recently, and collectively we decided that it was in our best interest to partner up to make both enterprises run more efficiently, while combining our products, and synergistically scaling to meet the volume needs of Western NY consumers.

03/04/2022

I’ve been ruminating on this post for a little while. The true constant to this life is the perpetual change and what constantly feels like a speeding up of time. Over time we evolve, ideas play out, goals change as certain ones are reached, the black and white start to fade to gray. As we have evolved, so has our farm and specifically our pork program.

I write this post with a certain somber tone, as the pig pictured here with me smiling represents a piece of our foundation. Lucy was one of original sows, nearly four years old, and where we started with breeding our own hogs. She had six litters over the course of her life with us, varying in size from 17 piglets down to 8. Her genetics still run rampant in our herd, and her daughter Sissy expecting her fourth litter any day now. In all she put 57 hogs out into the local food system, to families stocking up the freezer and to some of the best chefs in the region. In all directly produced over 25,000lbs of pork for local consumers to eat.

Lucy was one of our last two matriarchs, and as mentioned above her genetics will continue on in the herd from multiple other sows. We felt it only fitting that she be given a final salute, and could think of no one better than our friends @babsofbuffalo who would honor her with a certain flare that only could provide. I had no idea that they had planned to collaborate with another local chef @saynotoranch for a fundraising sausage for those affected by the war in Ukraine. The pig who gave so much to us, is still going on to give to others.

Thank you Lucy, and thank you my friends for honoring her.

02/28/2022

When good people come together they often do great things. Please consider placing an order with our community partners at BABS

We would like to introduce two new sausages to our lineup, the H.H. Borscht sausage and a smoked kovbasa! 100% of the profits from both of these sausages will go to @globalgiving to help aid the #ukraine refugees. Private message us if you would like to preorder. Thanks for Alex Diaczenko and Lindsey Marie Lima for coming to the sausage lab today to help us nail down these sausages. Some of the local companies we used for these were Always Something Farm pork, Crown Hill Farm eggs and cayenne peppers, Lockhouse Distillery & Bar vodka, Buffalo Barrel + Brine dill garlic sauerkraut

02/26/2022

Cornell Cooperative Extension - Event Registration for Programs

Hey everyone,
Next Saturday I will be speaking at this workshop hosted by Cooperative Extension about collaborative farming enterprises.

If you’d like to come check out what we have to say, I promise it’ll be interesting!

Thank you for your interest in attending the Western New York Collaborative Farming workshop on Saturday, March 5, 2022, from 10:00 am - 2:00 pm.

02/17/2022

Do you like brunch?
Do you love local farmers, and artisan food producers?

Then you should definitely come out to Community Beer Works the third Sunday of every month for the community market which is this Sunday from 11-2!

02/08/2022

We’ve been pretty quiet as of late on our social channels. The full bore of winter has been upon us the past few weeks and the daily hauling of water has taken up a lot of time (the barn hydrant froze, so one more thing to do this spring once the ground thaws).

We’ve also been diving headfirst into creating some custom sausage recipes that will be available at the new butcher shop when we open. If you hadn’t heard the news yet, we’re teaming up with Rise'n'Swine Farm LLC to form Alliance Farm Butchery, better yet go like both these pages to keep abreast of what is coming down the pipeline.

I’ve also been recipe testing custom sausages for the shop like this black garlic and ham sausage made with our pork and ham and @3guysgarlic for the first of many future collaborations!

01/03/2022

Biden looks to chop meat prices, will meet with farmers

The problem behind this is not the farmers- they’re still being paid the same prices as they have been for the past two years. This is the result of the monopoly of the packing industry being allowed to continue unchecked.

The Biden administration sees the move as part of a broader effort to curb rising inflation in the U.S.

01/02/2022

Here’s one more New Year hope and optimism post. It’s time for us to change the food scene again, and we know we aren’t able to do it alone. We’ve teamed up with our friends the Putney’s of RisenSwine in Holland to bring a new slaughterhouse and butcher shop online in the next few months.

Follow along for the next phase in the adventure…

The Alliance Farm Butchery is currently a work in progress - both the actual butchery and the social media pages. Follow for updates, coming soon!

12/28/2021

Tied up the tie stall project today, so winter can officially begin. We wound up taking out a wall, and adding this pretty slick set up for the ladies overnight. Once we’re back to milking again, there’s also a calf stall off to the side so we can calf share.

The girls don’t seem to mind coming in one bit either…

Any questions on keeping a family milk cow?

12/27/2021

Record Beef Prices, but Ranchers Aren’t Cashing In

To many farmers this isn’t exactly news. The amount of each dollar spent on food has perpetually dwindled over the past 75 years, and even more steeply over the past twenty.

To combat this we need a decentralized, regional, accessible slaughter/cutting for retail capabilities. Small farmers especially are not in the position to risk being price takers and instead need to set a fair price that accounts for their labor. As highlighted in this article, ranchers are being told what they will be paid, rather than asked what they require, meanwhile the large conglomerates who control the slaughter/processing bottle necks are able to entirely control the market to farmers and consumers.

If you want to have food security in your region and local communities, purchasing from small producers rather than expansive conglomerates is the single greatest step you can take. Find your local producers, buy their retail cuts, understand the cost that goes Into them raising your food, know that none of us are getting rich doing it. There are options there to save substantial amounts of money buying by the quarter, half, or whole animal.

Support your local butcher shops, and when the opportunity arises support them financially when you can!

“You’re feeding America and going broke doing it”: After years of consolidation, four companies dominate the meatpacking industry, while many ranchers are barely hanging on.