UT Natural Meat

Last Friday afternoon A~ and I needed to head into Salt Lake for some errands and scheduled a part of the trip to stop by what turns out to be one of our areas only small farms that sells locally raised pastured meat in smaller quantities.

As we spent some time earlier this year tring to find as good source for better quality, more sustainable meat, I thought we were in luck with our local butchers. Wrong! Dons meats, the one in Syracuse at least, was a total flake. He told me that they would be able to order meat in for me from a local producer and that he also brought it in from time to time to just be able to sell it. I've checked with him a number of times, and told him what we'd like to buy but never managed to have him have any on stock but for the first time I was in there. I wonder if I wasn't duped that time and just told it was local.

Of course there's really only one way to make ABSOLUTELY sure that the meat you get is actually a locally grown and pastured product. Go to the farm! So we did.

UT Natural Meat is located on the WEST side off the valley on a pretty modest piece of land, no sprawling pastoral hills our anything like that, but they're average people that care about their animals and about the food that they will one day bring to their and their customers tables.

We had a great time at the farm talking with Kristen and briefly with her husband Shayne in between his caring for a sow pig that had just birthed the night before. It was readily apparent to both of us that they are very interested in making their small farm a local source for grass-fed, hormone free meats. She even had a table full of all the "required reading" for any aspiring localvore like _Omnivores Dillema_, _Everything I want to Do is Illegal_ and videos like Food inc for example.

No doubt though, one of the best parts of the day was getting to see the piglets prancing around their spacious new digs. This is the part of visiting and making an effort to get to know the people that produce your food that cannot be beaten.

At the end of the day, we brought home a couple of Corriante (a heritage breed of cattle) beef roasts, some ground beef for the periodic recipies that we use it in, and a few packages of pork chops. It wasn't a huge order, but that was part of our attraction to this farm. We wanted to get a good sample of what the product that they offer is like without having to invest hundreds of dollars in it. The other reason was that we really don't eat a ton of beef or pork at our house. A~ is largely vegetarian and our kids are picky about meat. Mostly because they don't like the heavily fatted nature of traditional meat. Hopefully this will help with that too.

If your in the General Salt Lake City area, I definitely recommend you check out UT Natural meat. Very Nice people running a small operation and trying to make a good go of it. As for the product, I have great hopes but have not yet had opportunity to cook any. As soon as I do trust me you'll be first to know!
Local First..
P~