food-riemerfamily-pasture-04-30-2020
The Riemer family offers pickup on its farm outside of Brodhead. Home delivery is another option.
Business has been booming at the Riemer Family Farm in Brodhead since the outbreak of COVID-19. “There’s been a huge increase in sales,” says Anastasia Wolf-Flasch, who handles marketing and outreach for the farm.“Our sales doubled in the last two weeks.”
The Riemer farm has been in operation since 1927 and run since 2010 by Bryce and Jen Riemer. The Riemers raise grass-fed beef and lamb, heritage pork, pastured chicken, and turkey and offer home delivery to Madison and other cities and also curbside pickup on the farm.
“Since the coronavirus started, we’d been doing an impressive amount for us, 30 or 40 home deliveries a week,” says Wolf-Flasch.
Now, with COVID-19 outbreaks in large meat processing plants prompting dire warnings from big companies like Tyson Foods that the food supply chain could be breaking, Riemer Family Farm home deliveries are up to about 70 a week.
These sales include various meat bundles, from all ground beef, to a selection of different cuts including steaks and roasts. The Riemers also sell products like bone broth, lard, bone marrow and bratwurst.
“We’ve had more requests for halves and quarters [of beef] in the last two weeks than I’ve seen in the last two years,” Wolf-Flasch says.
There’s also been an increase in pickups at the farm, located about 35 miles south of Madison. “We did 25 or 30 this week. We would have three to five before coronavirus,” says Wolf-Flasch. Though it’s a no-contact pickup, Wolf-Flasch thinks people may be choosing this option “just to get out of the house,” and has had customers drive all the way from Chicago.
The increase in demand is working out for Riemer Family Farm, which had a surplus of meat this spring. The farm will continue to have a good supply, Wolf-Flasch says. The animals are processed at AJ’s Lena Maid Meats in Lena, Illinois, just over the Wisconsin border. It’s a small processor with “a small team,” says Wolf-Flasch. “They can keep tabs on everybody’s health.”
Wells Farms of Rio, northeast of Madison, is also seeing high demand for its beef and a lot of new customers. Its online store is sold out, and a message reads: “We are currently experiencing high volumes of orders and are working hard at restocking our products.” The farm restocked last week in time for weekend sales at the farm, and it plans to sell at the Sun Prairie Farmers’ Market which opens (with new social distancing measures) on May 2.
“I did save some meat for the market,” says Sarah Wells, “to make sure we would have some, but I expect to be selling out quickly, judging from what we’ve seen from orders.”
The Wells launched their beef retail sales in 2017, raising stock on rented pasture outside of Sun Prairie; they bought their farm in 2018.
Wells says they have had steady growth since then and have sold out before, but that was “more predictable. This is different.” Raising cattle is a two-year process, she notes. To ensure that their supply will meet demand, they have added some stock from neighbors “who raise cattle the way we do.”
“As we get back to normal, I hope consumers will continue to support their local food community, the many farmers — vegetable, pork, egg — who worked really hard to provide a source of local food during trying times,” says Wells.
“It’s been neat to see customers who come to the farm show that sense of, ‘Wow, now I know, now I’ve seen where my food comes from,’” Wells continues. “People are more connected to their food and food system when they get to know their farmer. They can ask things like what kind of roast should I get and how to cook it. Once they have that connection, it’s a different experience, eating that food.”
Wells notes that when consumers buy from local farmers, more money stays local, too, as they in turn support area feed stores, equipment dealers and meat processors.
The Wells and the Riemers are among a number of area farms that sell meat and meat bundles directly to the consumer (check the REAP Food Group’s Farm Fresh Atlas for a list).
While concerns about a looming meat scarcity may have prompted an increase in sales for local farmers, Jeff Sindelar, associate professor and Extension meat specialist at UW-Madison, says that the system “is not broken. It may be tested and strained, but it would be hard to break it.”
Nor do local farmers predict running out of local meat.
Peter Allen of Mastodon Valley Farm of Viola has seen “an uptick in business, but not more than we can handle.” Mastodon Valley offers grass-fed beef and lamb and pastured pork and poultry. It also offers a meat CSA, which, like a produce CSA, asks for payment in advance and then delivers product to subscribers through the season.
Aaron Sommers operates his Valley View Organic Farm outside of Richland Center as a CSA. He raises grass-fed organic beef, pork, poultry and lamb.
“We have been seeing more and more interest,” says Sommers, which he attributes to customers not being sure of the conditions at big processing plants and being “afraid of a shortage.”
While he doesn’t expect demand to outstrip his supply, if it did, he has friends who also operate farms sustainably that he could refer customers to.
The CSA model allows Sommers to plan ahead for the demand: “This might be teaching some people that [planning ahead] is a good thing,” he notes.
