One of the emphases of Michael Pollan’s book “In Defense of Food” was on unprocessed foods. The reason for this are the as-yet unknown factors in the Western diet that lead to the various diseases of modern civilization. As I suffer, after one fashion or another, from most of those diseases I’m interested in delaying or halting those problems myself. One of the things I’ve been trying to do is locate suppliers of grass fed meats, milk, eggs, butter and cheese.
One resource that Michael Pollan recommended is the “Eat Wild” site. This is a good site, which has a page on which you can find Georgia farms that sell their products into the local markets. Using the map, you can find, for example, Country Gardens Farms and Nursery in Newnan, GA. This farm will take orders to be delivered to the Peachtree Road Farmer’s Market (open on Saturdays). Their prices are competitive, and the farm is nearby.
It isn’t just nearby farms that affect the availability of produce in the Atlanta area. South of Atlanta proper and close to the Alabama border is White Oak Pastures, of Bluffton GA. White Oak sells grass fed ground beef to Whole Foods and also to Publix. I haven’t seen the beef at Whole Foods, and I haven’t seen it at any Publix in Snellville. I have seen it at the Publix in the Prado, in Sandy Springs GA. Cost for a pound of White Oak ground beef there is $7.00 a pound. Correction: I’ve found two kinds of grass fed beef at the Publix on the corner of Ronald Reagan and 124, in Snellville.
This lack of product also affects suppliers such as Organic Valley. If you look them up, they supposedly supply Publix too, but typically the closest I can get to their pastured eggs and pastured butter are Organic Valley organic egg whites. Availability just isn’t there. To note, the Eat Wild site thinks highly of Kerrygold butter (Irish cows evidently are largely grass fed). Kerrygold butter can be found in most Publix supermarkets. Presumably, the same benefits apply to the Kerrygold cheeses as well.
For those of us in Snellville, the upcoming Snellville Farmer’s Market will offer some access to a good local farm. On the Eat Wild map, there are five push pins west of Atlanta. The third of these, smack in the middle of the group of five, is Nature’s Harmony Farm in Elberton GA. They sell grass fed beef, chickens, and eggs. If you look in the right place on their web site, you can see that they plan to attend the Snellville market on the first and third Saturdays of the month.
Interesting online suppliers of grass fed beef include Hearst Ranch and Slanker’s Grass Fed Meats. Heart is a little more conservative while I find Slanker’s to be entertaining in their zeal. Slanker’s though, has some real cooking tips and therefore worth a browse.
May 28, 2010 at 1:27 pm
The Whole Foods in Sandy Springs seems to always carry White Oaks Pastures beef, both ground beef and various cuts of steak as well – it is sold in the meat case. And it’s amazingly delicious! According to the White Oaks Pastures facebook page, they are starting to raise chickens as well. As for dairy, I have been purchasing Sparkman’s Cream Valley butter and milk from Whole Foods. They are a Georgia dairy farm and I’m pretty sure they are grass fed cows. Hope that helps.
May 28, 2010 at 9:53 pm
If you ever get to the Pendergrass flea market, about 20 mins. north of the Mall of Georgia every weekend, there are a number of vendors with flats of delish farm eggs. They had both single and double yolk eggs. We bought the single yolks and these babies were huge-too big to even fit in my egg poaching cups. V. tasty and well-priced.
Also, off-topic, new ethnic supermarket alert! Just went to the “pre-grand-opening” of the new Great Wall Chinese supermarket on Pleasant Hill in the Gwinnett Prado center. This store is part of a chain that has a number of stores in the NY/NJ areas. It’s quite large- used to be a Target store, I think. It has a more Chinese-centric focus than H-Mart and the other mega stores. The produce was lovely and very inexpensive. Fresh fish counter looked nice and there was a city block of frozen dumplings. The food court is not yet open, but we saw a pho place is planned. Think you will want to check it out.
Cheerio.
January 28, 2011 at 10:51 am
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