Black Earth Meats is an old style butcher shop with a long reputation for quality meats.  We have upgraded the facilities, are USDA inspected, and certified humane in our treatment of our animals.

We have an approach to farm management which sustains and nourishes the environment through restoration and soil improvement techniques. Our cattle are bred for the quality of their beef and receive a forage diet free of pesticides as they are continually rotated to fresh new pastures. Our animals are never held in confinement, are never fed antibiotics and never receive synthetic growth hormones.

We supply fresh meat products to retail markets and sell to individual consumers on a year round basis.

Our focus is on organic, pasture-based agriculture. Our cattle are allowed free range on fertile pastures rich with naturally growing legumes and grasses.  We raise them using a strict quality assurance program without antibiotics, synthetic hormones, or other feed additives commonly used in the commercial cattle feeding industry.

All of our animals are purchased locally from farmers who we know raise them with the highest standards for humane treatment and overall quality. Our farmers include Nick Zimmer, the 2008 Organic Farmer of the Year, and many Amish farmers who need someone to market their products for them.  We match the quality meat with an artisan sausage-maker for an incredible product.

The integral people of Black Earth Meats.

MARY ANN and ROB LITCHFIELD
Our interest in organics and raising animals on their natural diets goes back over 50 years for my husband who is 80 years young.  I am in my late 60’s and we are today enjoying good health which we feel is in large part due to eating food that has been raised sustainably.
 
Rob and I were blessed in our younger years to have been able to grow our own organic vegetables and to have organically raised pastured beef, pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, and turkeys which we produced on our 27 acre homestead in the beautiful Finger Lakes area of New York State.  So it is a logical extension of this life style and humane tending to animals for us to want to enable others to enjoy “real” food as Nature intended.  Hence our interest in being a part of Black Earth Meats because we know from personal experience that the quality of meat from an animal which eats its intended diet is unsurpassed both in flavor and nutrition.

BARTLETT DURAND
Bartlett Durand, the Farm Administrator, is a lawyer by training and profession. He is heading up the marketing efforts for Otter Creek’s unique value added products. He is the president of Local Choice Marketing, a tiny distribution company focused on a cooperative arrangement with artisan producers in the Spring Green area to get their products to market efficiently and cost-effectively.

GARY ZIMMER
Gary Zimmer is a pioneer of a special type of farming called ‘mineralized balanced agriculture,’ which has farmers growing their own fertilizers, learning which fertilizers are best for their farm, and using farming practices that encourage beneficial organisms living in the soil.