This is where your food begins

This is where your food begins.

Good health starts at the source – and for good clean foods, that means farms you can trust.

This week Land Basket Farm launches on one of your favorites - Corn and Soy Free, Pasture Raised chicken – the tastiest, cleanest white meat protein around, possessing a nutrient density you can’t get in a store.

This is top shelf chicken for the reasons described, but also how it’s raised.

Our chicks hit the brooder this week – a warm, cozy environment designed to give a chick a solid healthy start – a 21% corn and soy free starter gives them the nutrient boost they need in these early days. On day 5 they get grit that starts to prepare them for the hunter gatherer phase of their lives.

The chicks are on pasture in week two - eating bugs and fresh grass daily. Livestock guardian dogs live with them, protecting them from predators, while 20 x 20 carport patio shelters protect them from the elements – no stress. The high ceilings of these structures keep the birds alot cooler that short structures where birds can suffer from heat stress. Additionally, heat shields on the sides keep afternoon sun off the birds. We believe our no stress policy is a significant component to our meat quality.

  On the one bad day, birds are crated quietly in the dark and moved on a flatbed wagon a short distance to the on-farm facility – no trucks, no highways going 60 MPH, just slow and steady move in the dark by people who care.

    Before the sun comes up, all birds go from being a live bird to a whole bird in an ice bath – the entire kill process takes less than 2 hours ( for 200 birds) – then butchery and packing.  A slow and steady team reduces stress to a minimum window. Birds are killed, chilled, butchered, vacuum sealed and frozen in a period of four hours.

We believe this matters. Small batches of birds can be handled with a level of care those truckloads of birds don’t get.

Meat safety. Factory chicken is chlorinated in chlorine baths. Our process uses sterilized bath tanks, about 400 pounds of ice and slow and steady pace that gets the meat to flash freezer within an hour. Once birds are killed, eviscerated, washed and inspected, they spend the remainder of the morning in a bath of ice. These ice baths rapidly bring carcass temperature within specs and the birds stay at that temp until the “engine cutter” pulls the bird from the bath and breaks it down.

Butchery. The cut table consists of about 6 people. The idea is to move the meat down the table as efficiently as possible to the packers who operate twin vacuum sealing machines (one is always running). The whole process from ice bath to vacuum seal bag is about 20 minutes.

Freezing is accomplished using 5 upright freezers. The chicken remains in the freezers until the next day when the value-add team comes in and inventory’s and store the different cuts in the respective freezers.  

Land Basket Farm is proud of the processes we’ve developed over the years serving you – our customers. And we look forward to bringing you great chicken once again – starting on May 30.(ordering newsletter posts to email 0600 on 27 May for a 30 May fulfillment.

Farmer Kevin