The concept of watching your dinner grow and develop might seem at first a little odd. However, in my experience it is not really knowing about the process of food growing which makes it frightening and mysterious. Essentially that's what this site is about, understanding where your food comes from. Whilst not all food production is the same I hope it makes you think about some of the issues, like how much room the animals have, what do they eat, and at what age are they slaughtered.
There are so many types of animal rearing, free range, barn, welfare friendly and so on - I will write a blog on what they all mean!
If you would like to know exactly where your roast lamb, or pork is from, and how it has been raised then email with any questions. You pay for the production of the meat, slaughter, butcher and transport costs. As a rough estimate the costs work out to be about £400 per pig (average over a 60kg pig of £6.66 per kilo), and £150 per lamb (at 20kg it averages at £7.50 per kilo) but this varies depending on how you want them butchered and the final weight of the animal, our last ones were nearly 90kg each! Have a look at the supermarket prices and compare, bearing in mind it is an organic product which you can watch grow and you know how it has been looked after.
This is the sort of thing you get as standard, although it is possible to pay more and have the meat vacuum packed. We get ours like this and then bag it into portions that we think look right for us. This is about half a lamb size, so roughly two of these per whole lamb, and then a pig gives you about four of these, so you need allot of freezer space or allot of friends!!
kayt@virtuallynatural.co.uk with ideas, questions and comments.