Why we need your help to build a better food system

Hear from Jack as he shares what he and Betsy have learned about local food over the last 13 years and why a new food system is needed.

A grocery store can't offer a meaningful amount of local or better-raised food.

Grocery stores have very limited storage space. This means they require deliveries from big distribution trucks multiple times each day to restock the shelves. 

A farmer can not deliver a case or two of cucumbers to every store multiple times a week. 

Groceries often buy a small amount of an item from a farmer so they can use their images in marketing material. However, the actual food on the shelf is typically from regular distribution, just like you'd find at a big box store. 

This is especially prevalent with meat items. A local farmer gets a small order, while the rest comes from regular confinement operations and is not labeled any differently. 

For over a year, a co-op was selling factory meat and labeling it as TC Farm. They were not even buying any products from our farm.

Why we started TC Farm

We found that farmer's markets and grocery stores didn't have meat that was raised in a way we were comfortable with.

We wanted the healthiest, best tasting, and most respectfully raised food, so we made our own hobby farm.

We decided to share what we learned and started a small CSA offering our amazing heritage chickens, pasture raised pork and grass-fed beef. 

We called our CSA True Cost Farm because we believed that others would want meat raised in a more transparent way.

What worked, what didn't

We quickly realized that the model for local food just doesn't work.

Without year-round weekly deliveries, each farmer has inconsistent income.

It is impossible to hire a team if you only deliver part of the year. Each farmer typically operates independently, making their own deliveries and only offering a small number of items.

These inefficiencies artificially increase the cost of local food and frankly make the farming lifestyle very difficult to sustain.

In order to raise better food and stay in business doing it, we needed our members' support year-round.

We had to pick:

Increase the cost of our better raised food.

OR 

Start to deliver more complimentary items.  

We needed to offer full grocery and ready to eat meals

It became clear that without the additional revenue from grocery items, we could not continue to farm the way we believe animals and produce should be raised. 

Without our own kitchen to make organic ready-to-eat meals from scratch, we couldn't use all our produce and meat items either. 

To make local farming a sustainable business and a livable lifestyle, we simply need our members to shift their purchases from grocery stores to our farm. 

By purchasing your grocery items from us, you lower the cost of our delivery and thus lower the cost of raising our better raised meats and produce. This in turn makes better raised food more accessible for all.

With your support, we will build a new system that enables farmers to not only compete, but thrive and expand our impact on the local environment, animal welfare, and the overall health of our community.