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A meaty endeavor: Farms add processing to family business

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Photo by Bill Olmsted

Jeff and Kathy Collins (with son Joe) are planning to turn their experience and interest in healthy meat into a new slaughtering/processing facility in Clinton.

Quick!

Buy local!

Call up your neighborhood farmer and order some homegrown steaks or chops.

Now wait six months.

While few would deny the benefits of buying locally produced meat, one thing has been causing a bottleneck between consumers and producers in Rock and Walworth counties: a limited number of local slaughtering and processing plants.

Sure, it’s not a pleasant subject. But the fact is we can’t eat a pork chop without killing a hog.

Two local farm families are taking their businesses to the next level in an attempt to meet consumer demand for custom-cut, locally grown meat.

--In downtown Clinton next month, beef and pork producers Jeff and Cathy Collins expect to open Country Pride Meats at 109 Church St. Construction is almost done on the new facility, where they will process their own animals and animals from local farms. The business also will include a retail storefront.

--In Walworth County’s Richmond Township, Steve and Darlene Pinnow last week started slaughtering and custom processing lambs from their own Pinn-Oak Ridge Farms, N5784 Johnson Road, Delavan. The new processing facility is on their farm and adds a new level of convenience to the business, Darlene Pinnow said. The Pinnows will process lambs and goats.

“The product’s here,” Darlene Pinnow said. “Right here where we can have complete control.”

The change is a natural response to customer demands, Jeff Collins said.

Statistics show that consumers are doing more than just talking about buying locally raised, value-added products.

The number of Wisconsin farms listed on the product directory on www.savorwisconsin.com has increased 21 percent in two years, said Robin Engle, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Organic farming in Wisconsin has increased 90 percent in five years, Engle said. The state now has 600 goat dairies, up 50 in the last year, she said.

Local processing and selling is more energy efficient than shipping meat out of the state for processing on the commodity market, said Walworth County UW Extension agent Peg Reedy.

And it keeps local dollars in the local economy, she said.

Country pride

Jeff Collins is tired of being “at the mercy” of local meat packing facilities. The price of beef can fluctuate quickly while retailers wait to get meat processed at local plants, he said.

Along with making it hard to price beef, the wait is inconvenient, Collins said.

“It kind of deters some customers,” Collins said. “They don’t want to wait.”

So, after years of bouncing the idea around, Collins is ready to start doing his own processing.

Collins and his family raise beef and hogs on their farm at 7641 E. Stateline Road in Clinton Township, where they have been licensed to sell frozen custom cuts out of their home. But it’s not always easy for customers to get out to the farm.

At the new 6,750-square-foot store, they plan to process about five of their own animals weekly plus an additional 15 or so for customers.

The Collinses’ new business venture will be “a little bit old school,” Collins said.

Collins and his employees will make their own bologna and sausages and smoke meat right at the store, Collins said. And they will keep energy efficiency in mind while they work, Collins said.

“We want to focus on being green as much as we can,” Collins said.

The store will offer meat wrapped in paper rather than petroleum-based packaging. The building is 46 percent more energy-efficient than the state requires, Collins said.

Waste from the slaughter floor will be recycled. Solid wastes will go to a rendering plant, and liquid waste will go to the 2-million-gallon slurry store Collins and his brother maintain on the farm.

The Collinses collect liquid food processing waste, which they turn into fertilizer and knife into their farm fields.

A new twist

The Pinnow family already is selling its brand of WisconsinLamb cuts to grocery stores and high-end restaurants in Wisconsin and Illinois. They harvested 2,100 lambs in 2007 and have a goal of getting up to 3,000 per year in the next two years.

Now they’re taking a new step forward and doing their own processing, Darlene Pinnow said.

Since the Pinnows started direct marketing in 1997, organizing deliveries to multiple stops has been part of the business, she said. In-house processing will let the Pinnows check one stop off the list.

“It will be more convenient,” Pinnow said. “In the past when somebody said, ‘Can we come out and get it?’ we did not always have on hand what they wanted.”

Adding a new layer to the business will improve the way the Pinnows can market WisconsinLamb products and further enhance a locally owned business, Pinnow said.

Whether customers “come and get it” at Pinn-Oak Ridge Farm or at the table in a downtown Chicago restaurant, they’re spending their money in Walworth County.

“I don’t think, sometimes, the farmer realizes what an impact they can have on the community,” Pinnow said.

ON THE WEB

--Steve and Darlene Pinnow, owners of Pinn-Oak Ridge Farms, Delavan, sell their own brand, WisconsinLamb, to grocery stores and restaurants in Wisconsin and Illinois.

To learn more, visit www.wisconsinlamb.com.

--Direct marketing—selling products from the farm right to the consumer—gives farmers better control of their prices and consumers better control of what their eating.

The University of Wisconsin Extension offers resources for producers and consumers who want to sell and buy locally.

To learn more, visit www.uwex.edu and type “direct marketing” in the search field.