We got home from work on the latish side of the evening, but we fired up the barbeque anyway. When it had heated up, Mike threw on a T-bone steak from the sampler pack I recently ordered from L.J. Helferty who raises cattle on a farm near Douglas Ontario (120 km from Ottawa).
The farm has been in the Helferty family for 100 years. While the farm is not certified by any organic certifying body, L.J. assures me that no pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers are used on any of their land. In the warmer seasons the cattle roam the pastures, eating to their hearts content. In the winter they are fed hay grown on Helferty land. But the naturalness of these cows doesn’t end with their diet. They are also free of growth hormones (except for the ones their bodies produce!) and antibiotics.
Besides all this naturalness, pasture-fed beef is supposed to be healthier to eat than grain-fed, something to do with the balance of fats. I’m not a nutritionist so I can’t vouch for the biochemistry of the product, but I can say that the steak was delicious, certainly amongst the tastiest meat I’ve eaten. I would highly recommend it to discerning carnivores and localvores.
Now here’s the most amazing part. L.J. charges just over $100 for a sampler pack of 20 lbs of this tasty, healthy meat, delivered to your door. The photo above shows the sampler pack taking up one of the drawers in our freezer. 20 lbs of meat is a lot of meat.
It might take a few days until someone from the family comes into Ottawa to run errands and can drop off your meat, but it’s well worth the wait. (If you’re going to be in the Douglas area you can pick up the meat yourself.)
L.J. Helferty, www.totallynaturalbeef.ca, 613-649-2482
