Market Meat
Market Meat contains 1 pack bacon, 1 pack ground beef, 1 seasonal fish (typically albacore tuna back/belly), 2 seasonal salmon fillets, and 1 full 3-4 lb. pastured chicken.
Kirsop Farm: Colin and Genine Bradwin raise the fittest chickens we've ever seen on the rolling hills of their 150 acre Chehalis land trust farm they call Kirsop. Every year, chicks start for several weeks in their brooders, heated open barns full of hay next to the sheep pens on their farmstead home. Once they're big enough to move around, they cluck and forage in groups across a new massive open tract of Chehalis riverland hills every day. While pastured birds can appear lean compared to the chickens we're typically sold in stores pumped with saline brines and preservatives, their rich, buttery, archetype-of-concentrated-chicken-flavor is the finest we've had the pleasure to experience.
Skagit River Ranch: Skagit River Ranch is run by Eiko, George and their daughter Nicole, drawing the largest pre-market lines at Seattle street markets for decades. Their biodynamic farm is located on a gorgeous plot directly on the Skagit River in Sedro-Wooley, WA. All of Eiko's animals are happily pastured and fed grasses and herbs grown on the land. Non-ruminants' diets are supported by the finest organic non-GMO whole grains that are milled fresh onsite.
The quality is almost inconceivable. I've been ruined on their uncured bacon, thick and syrupy-sweet. Side-by-side tasting of their ground beef with three other competing small farms yielded an obvious winner in Skagit's wagyu cattle quality, a grass-fed sweetness and tender lack of gristle that clearly reflects the good practices of folks raising animals kindly on some of the finest riverside pastureland we've ever visited.
Sam's Salmon: Sam Mitchell and his father Steve run a single fishing boat in Alaska's Bristol Bay: a fishery that consistently sees the largest sockeye salmon returns in the world through careful management by Alaska's Fish & Game, and is fished exclusively by independent vessels. Steve's been licensed there since the 1980's. Once a Seattle schoolteacher, Sam now leads their crew every summer to fish for 100% wild Alaskan sockeye salmon that are hand-harvested and keep in refrigerated seawater until filleted into portions, pinboned (bones removed) and flash-frozen. Year over year, Sam's family operation has yielded some of the most delicious, visibly carefully handled sushi-grade sockeye we've ever eaten.
Salmon are a legendary fish, so central to life in the Pacific Northwest for truly thousands of years and yet incredibly threatened by dams, overfishing and the pressures of human industry. In almost every case, salmon sold to eat is either farmed Atlantic salmon that threaten local populations or otherwise unsustainable wild harvesting, but Bristol Bay is a rare exception. Sam and his crew are how we choose to source sockeye that we have the privilege to eat and enjoy.
St Jude: The St. Jude is a 95-foot troller that follows albacore tuna from the North Pacific in summer to the South Pacific in fall, 12 months a year. Jig-caught younger albacore near the surface of cold waters in the central and north Pacific feed on krill, and are both rich in Omega 3s and substantially lower in mercury. Albacore are exclusively individually caught on hooks, and lures dragged behind the boat. Each fish is landed and handled individually on a cushioned platform, brain-stunned (a painless step that stabilizes their body temperature) and immediately bled (essential for sushi). Each fish is then rinsed, processed and put into the on-board blast freezer in the shortest possible time. Says Joe, " None of the fish caught are wasted. In thousands of hours trolling, we never had a marine mammal encounter, we never killed a shark, we once gave a thrill ride to a three pound green turtle when he got tangled up with a jig line but he was released uninjured after we took a few pictures."
*Meat products are transported frozen in reusable insulated bags. Please return for pickup so we can sanitize for reuse.