Family Tree Meats

We want to thank you for being such faithful customers and friends. We appreciate your business and are always glad when you call to say things are great or call to discuss a problem. Problems happen and we are always glad that you give us a chance to fix them if we can.

Here are some things we would like you to know and remember so that we can continue to serve you to the best of our abilities. Some of these things are for our benefit – to keep us healthy and rested and safe and some of them are for your benefit – to make sure we do a good job, are accurate and things are all done in a timely manner. Anything that helps us run “smoother” means “cost effective” which means we can keep our rates reasonable.

1. Please note our hours. We are closed from noon to 1pm but some show up at that time and we feel obligated to serve you. It is hard to say “No” and make you sit and wait. There are really very few of us and our job is very physical so we need time to eat and rest a little before going back to work. We are not WalMart and don't have people hired to work the “lunch shift”. So. . . if we are loading out your meat at 12:15 then we may not get lunch at all or at the least not much of a break. We do not want to lock the doors and make these few who forget or don't know wait outside.

2. Please use our voicemail! We have two phone lines but many times Joanna and I (Paulette) are both talking with customers or one or both of us are assisting someone who is picking up their processed or retail meat. We check it frequently and return calls as soon as possible. Please leave your name and number. We want to help you.

3. Booking Animals: October through end of May are our busiest time of year. We recommend booking ASAP. Many of you know how long you are “feeding out” your animal so you can call 60 to 90 days in advance. I have several customers that book beef at the same time each year which is helpful to them and to us. We do try to work in emergency's and those animals bought at sales. If you wait until you think “my beef is really fat – think I'll call the butcher and see if I can get him in this week” you will probably be disappointed. You might even think about changing what you “normally” do. Maybe you can buy or feed out a beef during our slower time of year and that would help you and help us. We will do the best we can and we can put you on a waiting list in case someone cancels.

4. When you book animals – it is your responsibility to tell your customers to call us. If you are booking hogs we need all of the cutting instructions before you bring the hogs. Note the words “ALL” and “BEFORE”. This is very important because we sometimes start processing hogs the next day! So all instructions must be in the computer and organized before then. If you have booked beef we need all instructions by end of day the following Wednesday. That allows us plenty of time to input everything into the computer or make any changes needed for continuing customers. If we do not hear from you we will use what instructions we have. If a new customer neglects to call we will do “Standard for Two” cuts. We slaughter 30 to 40 animals per week which can total (think ½ or ¼) 30 (at the very least) to 60 or 70 cutting instructions that need to be corrected, copied and organized in order for the week. This is all very time consuming and we cannot (and will not) call 70 people (all long distance) to pester them into giving us instructions.

5. Unloading times: We slaughter on Thursday mornings. You may bring your scheduled animals on Wednesday from 4-6pm or on Thursday morning from 7:30 to 8:30. All sheep, goats and small breed hogs must be brought on Thursday morning because our pens are made for large animals so small animals can “escape” the pens. Long-horn cattle that won't fit in the chute need to come on Thursday morning. We can then shoot them in the trailer and hoist them out. There is an extra fee for that ($20). We are closed to other customers on Thursdays.

6. Call us if you are not coming! If you decide to book your animal somewhere else due to us being too busy to get your animal in when you wanted – that is fine. Or if you have to work, or your trailer broke down (or whatever reason) - we understand. But please let us know if you need to cancel your appointment so that someone else on our waiting list can have your spot. Please don't be a “no show”. We need a certain number/pounds of animals per week to keep our employees busy 40 hours per week so they get a full paycheck. Our job is to keep them employed for their families sake and keep as many of our customers as possible booked when they need it.

7. When you are notified (we call and/or email everyone) that your meat is finished you will have two weekends and the week between to pick up your meat. After that we will add a storage fee each week. We do not “do” long term storage. This keeps our freezer space from getting overcrowded which prevents things from getting misplaced or forgotten. Meat left longer than 30 days become ours to dispose of. BUT – if you have an emergency/problem please let us know because we do have a heart and want to help (with storage and prayer) if the need arises and there will be no charge.

8. You get a discount! When you pick up your processed meat you are entitled to purchase any of our retail beef or pork products for a 10% discount. We carry most cuts of beef and pork in our retail cases. Our hickory smoked ham and bacon is Tom's special recipe (not a box cure) that our customers seem to love. We also make some specialties: 3 flavors of bratwurst, saucy bacon patties, cheesy potato sausage patties, summer sausage and snack sticks. We also have many other products that you might want to purchase while you are here.

9. Check out the rest of our website.  There is a lot of information here. Also you may email us from here if you need to contact us. Email is quick, easy and free and saves us time and money. Email is checked frequently so we should get back to you fairly soon.

Again, thank you for your business. Don't hesitate to let us know if you need something special for any event. We do have access to things that we may not carry all of the time in our retail area but can get for you if we have some time to plan for that.  When we work together you are served well and we can keep costs down.  That is a win-win!

No Such Thing as Unhealthy Foods

Sometimes when I order a salad at restaurant my colleague might ask, “Are you eating healthy today?”  “No,” I usually reply, “I’m not eating healthy, I am eating hungry today.”  Generally there is nothing healthy or unhealthy about my Cobb salad dressed in blue cheese dressing, bacon and egg along with the lettuce, tomatoes, etc.

I have cautioned food companies not to get overly excited about the healthy options in their products.  There are a number of reasons I besmirch “healthy” foods.  But first let me provide some definitions that I work with.

I don’t know if orange juice is a healthy food but I know it is loaded with vitamin C, so it is good for you and it tastes great.  I know milk is loaded with essential vitamins, minerals and protein and can have low fat.   I think mild tastes great, too.  I don’t think of these as healthy foods but rather as delicious foods that have some nutritional advantages.  I also know orange juice has a high sugar content (fructose) and too much orange juice may not be especially good for you.

I have three questions.  First, who says which food is healthy?  Personally, I find the advice given by health professionals is usually wrong.  Remember when we should eat no eggs, now eggs are OK.  How about “use margarine instead of butter”?  They forgot about trans fats, didn’t they, so now butter is not so bad.  They said “cut out foods high in cholesterol” until it was decided that dietary cholesterol had little effect on serum cholesterol.  How about high fructose corn syrup?  A scourge?  It is being replaced by other sugars.  Is fat the bad guy?  But then we learn not all fats, just some fats, are bad.  We should eat more fish, but not too much fish because fish has mercury and other heavy metals, and besides if we eat a lot more fish, we will deplete the fish stocks around the globe.

But my personal favorite is salt.  While there is a significant amount of data that sodium is not the bad guy it is made out to be, the lay press excoriates salt as a murderer.  Yet Dr. Heaney, professor of medicine at John A. Creighton University stated, “Several years ago, the editor in chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association was quoted in an article in Science as saying ‘these current recommendations go way beyond the evidence.’”

That was not a solitary dissent by any means, as other prestigious scientific journals have recently published editorials making the same point – namely that there was no evidence of benefit from low intakes of sodium, and, in fact, no assurance that they were not actually harmful.

Remember the Wizard of Oz, “the great and powerful wizard.”  He was treated as all knowledgeable until the curtain was pulled back.  Are those people providing our healthy food guidance just another wizard yet to be exposed?

My second question is, if consumers want healthier foods why are we still becoming a more obese nation?  My research has been consistent over the years:  People don’t get fat because they eat the wrong food, they get fat because they eat too much food.  Years ago, working with NHANES (CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) at Campbell Soup Co., we wanted to find which consumers in America got 100 percent of all the RDAs.  We found one significant point in common:  most of them were obese.  This research eventually led to the campaign “soup is good food.”  But that eventually was dropped because a “Center in Somebody’s Interest” said soup had too much salt to be healthy.

You occasionally read that if you eat a McDonalds Big Mac every day you are not getting a healthy diet.  If you eat a Big Mac every day YOU are not very bright; the hamburger is not at fault.

My final question is, who is your target market?  I hope it’s not the various public health groups that have agendas and are not representing consumers.  I know there is a target market that values healthful foods above all else, but I am also quite sure there is a larger target audience that wants delicious food that can be good for you.  Go after both if you wish, but recognize that they are different markets.

What can a food processor do?  You can make great tasting food without trying to fool people.  There is no such thing as unhealthy foods, just unhealthy eating habits.  The food industry needs to go back and read the USDA guidelines from the 1980s.  The first two guidelines were eat a variety of foods and maintain a healthy body weight.  Eat potato chips, or chocolate, or a prime rib of beef…just don’t do it too often, or eat so much that you gain weight.  It is really that simple.

The problem is the simple advice first given by USDA is just not sexy enough.  We need pyramids, pictures of plates and stars on our food packages.  Let’s be honest, you can’t get on talk shows and say “eat sensibly.”  You need a gimmick.

The message of the food industry could be:  “We make safe, delicious and inexpensive foods that when eaten in moderation are good for your body and mind.”



 Taken from Food Processing Magazine, January 2014
By John Stanton, Ph.D., professor of food marketing at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and the editor of two food journals.