How to Maximize Your TF $$'s & See The Truly Expensive Foods

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January 23, 2022

It's week #3 of our 4 week January series to start 2022 off healthy and it's time to talk about everyone's favorite subject, especially farmers 😂: money!

Seems like everyone has been sick recently so the concept of "health being wealth" might be a little more real for some right now too - can't do much with that wealth if you haven't the health to use it.

But, changing the way you eat and where you source your food can be, or at the very least, can seem to be, more expensive.

Grassfed beef has the assumption of being expensive.

When something is thought of as being expensive we can immediately assume that we cannot afford it and just dismiss any further thought on it.

So we are going to talk through a couple of things today: 1. Is it more expensive? 2. Tips to make it more affordable for anyone.

Know that I am not coming at this from the position of a flush bank account. If you think starting a farm from scratch is a get-rich-quick scheme and that Andy is still working off the farm full-time (outside all this winter 🥶) for funsies, you'd be mistaken.

But we do understand value & quality and that you get what you pay for.

If you have ever come to visit us at Burger Night you'll notice our buildings and the stone siding. You also might notice high-quality windows in the house and garage and metal roofs on all our buildings.

Andy is a contractor and builds houses for his day job so he knows materials & has the skills (and all the tools - don't let him tell you otherwise!).

However, we also have budgets.

So as things come up we have to decide what we value most and where we spend our hard earned money & time: the short-term or the long-term.

We almost always choose long-term.

The costs are:

higher up-front costs
(which means) fewer projects
(and ultimately) living in a smaller house.

But the short and long-term benefits are:

lower heating & cooling bills
practically zero maintenance work & zero maintenance costs
beautiful craftsmanship we can enjoy just being around
buildings that should outlive us and carry the long-term benefits on to the next generation.
Bonus: a happy husband that doesn't ever have to roof again! ❤

We think these benefits outweigh the costs....well, most days, having 1 bathroom can suck.

The parallels between a house and your only true home, your body, are pretty easy to see.

Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live. – Jim Rohn

If you're choosing short-term for your body by eating the equivalent of particle board (seriously, some of the "food" in the store is not much different!), cheap vinyl windows and patching asphalt shingles on top of old ones well, you can expect some trouble....especially if your foundational health is already weak - any stressor that comes along could completely collapse your home.

The short-term gains might be:

convenience
high palatability (although your taste buds can change pretty quickly)
targeted marketing that helps you feel included and validated
less cost (maybe)

The costs might be things like:

feeling tired and losing time & progress
losing time getting sick
medical bills
not looking great
not outliving your body (being kept alive by pharmaceuticals or equipment but with zero quality of life)
mentally being unable to cope with the seemingly endless stressors

I believe that just like a house, any time we can chose nutrient-dense foods over the ultra-processed foods (think the middle of the grocery store or gas station), we are investing in the short-term enjoyment and long-term health of our body.

The beautiful thing about life is that we are still mostly free to choose what we put in our bodies (those of you that reach out weekly looking for raw milk know why I say "mostly").

I just want to make sure you are choosing based on facts and not assumptions.

The only barrier to truth is the presumption that you already have it. - Chuck Missler

So I did some price-checking.

Our ground beef with no discounts is $8.95/lb which is $0.56/ounce, of course you can get discounts (see below) and we have lower cost items but ground beef is the item people are most familiar with (those superfood kidneys last week were $0.28/oz!!).

Here's a selection of some of the convenient/palatable/popular items available from Wal-Mart and Woodmans (except the KT snickers). You can play this game easily at the store - simply check the tag for $/oz and multiply by 16 (ounces per lb) or, if the tag doesn't show $/oz just divide the cost by the ounces in the container and then multiply by 16....

Snickers bar from Kwik Trip = $0.91/oz
--->This is $14.56/lb - grab our snack sticks instead for just 39 cents more! This time of year you can even just leave them in your car.
Protein powders seem to average about $0.8/oz with some going much higher.
--->This is $12.80/lb - just buy the OG whole food proteins, not ultra-processed protein - there are a LOT of options for less than $12.80/lb.
Wal-Mart brand kale salad kit = $0.63/oz or $10.08/lb
Doritos from Wal-Mart, large bag = $0.38/oz
--->I know this is less than our ground beef comparison (note that single-serving bags are more), but at $6.08/lb is this the best use of food funds and are chips as cheap as people might assume they are?
Kind granola bars (on sale even at Wal-Mart) = $0.89/oz or $14.24/lb
Annies organic granola bars = $0.69 or $11.04/lb
Nature's Valley & Cascadian Farms granola bars = $0.45 and twinkies = $0.46/oz
--->Again, very popular items that are assumed to be cheap snack foods but at $7.35/lb is this a good deal for practically no nutrition and lots of sugar bringing with it blood sugar/insulin spikes?
Realgood pizza = $0.80/oz or $12.08/lb
Amy's cheese pizza w/ veg crust = $0.77/oz or $12.32/lb
Realgood Lemon Chicken bowl = $0.61/oz or $9.76/lb
Good Food Made Simple Chicken Pad Thai = $0.63/oz or $10.08/lb
Catalina Crunch keto cereal = $0.78/oz + milk or $12.48/lb+
Kellogg's Snax cereal = $0.92/oz or $14.72/lb
Cream of Wheat (single serving container) = $0.52/oz or $8.32/lb
Single serving of breakfast cereals like Cap'n Crunch, Cherrios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch = $0.66-0.83/oz + milk or $10.56-13.28/lb+
Quaker and Full Circle oatmeal cups = $0.78/oz or $12.48/lb
Kodiak oatmeal with extra protein cup = $0.93/oz or $14.88/lb
Munk Pack Keto granola bars = $1.27/oz
--->This is $20.32/lb - you can eat STEAK and eggs (at $3.59/doz, each egg is $0.30) for breakfast for cheaper AND more bio-available nutrition
Clif protein bar = $0.95/oz or $15.20/lb and Clif nut butter bars at $0.85/oz or $13.60/lb

Just for fun, some drinks, since some people replace meals or have these with their meals or snacks:

Monster energy drinks = 0.12/oz or $1.92/lb
Starbucks coffee drinks = $0.25/oz or $4/lb

Somewhat ironically the keto and paleo foods targeting the health conscious consumer with ultra-processed foods in place of whole foods, especially protein, are the highest cost per lb, as are single-servings of course.

It's no wonder that, according to Diana Rodgers "Americans are spending less on meat today compared to years before, but twice as much on processed foods & sweets." We actually spend the most on processed foods & sweets now where once we spent the most on meat.

This all empties your wallet fast because the lack of nutrients and protein, turns on your stop-eating or satiated signals slowly and are engineered to make you want to keep eating past fullness.

Out of curiosity, I checked out some of the fresh meats and was pretty surprised to see that Woodman's fresh beef stew meat was $8.99/lb (TF stew meat is currently $9.95) and their boneless sirloin tip was $9.99/lb ($9.95 for TF's sirloin tips already cut up!).

So, what's this mean?

Swapping out an ultra-processed food product with no or low nutrient content for a nutrient-dense food from Together Farm's could actually SAVE you some moo-la or at least not cost you as much as you might think AND, at the same time, be a long-term investment in health, community & environment.

Of course, I understand that you can buy in bulk and find cheaper prices for those things listed above or not buy name brand, etc etc, but that's like buying a house-worth of cheap vinyl replacement windows - you might save a little now but if you do the math, it's probably costing more in the long-run.

It's also worth pointing out that you'll probably need to eat more to feel full and a nutrient comparison at $ per bioavailable unit (like iron, B vitamins, etc) would blow any bulk savings out of the water and of course, there are all the aforementioned costs and missed benefits.

You can also buy in bulk and find lower prices with Together Farms, but without sacrificing your health, the environment or the community.

But again, it's all your choice as to what you value, I just want it to be an informed choice.

Tips & Tricks to Save

There are obvious ways to do this:

Buy BUNDLES which are usually available
Stock up during a SEASONAL SALE
Get MULTIPLE PACKAGES at once
--->Watch for items with a drop down arrow
Look for bonus items that are put on SALE
--->To see all the items on sale at any given time go to All Products and click the On Sale tag at the top or bookmark that link.
--->You might want to see if we're doing anything cheesy for National Cheese Day today! 🧀

Those are pretty obvious but there are a few lesser known things you can take advantage of like:

TF's REFERRAL PROGRAM: You get $10 & they get $20!
--->We know word of mouth is King and we value your help in spreading the good news to your family & friends
--->Simply log in to your account, go to in the top right-hand corner choose Referrals from the drop down list and copy your unique URL to send to family and friends as a link!
30% off GRAB BAG items
--->If you love all meat and are feeling adventurous, you can stock up on the packages that are safe but flawed in some way.
Live alone or have a small meat appetite? Order SHORTS
--->These are packages of brats, chops, sausage, etc that didn't get to the quantity or weight specified - maybe there is 1 chop or 2 brats.
--->To order, send an email, they aren't posted in the store yet.
Take advantage of FREE delivery with orders over $149
--->What are the savings in time and money to skip a grocery store trip?
--->note that we are running the numbers now and it looks like this may have to slightly increase soon.
RETURN those shipping BOXES! $10/box adds up quick!

Lastly we are working on accepting EBT for food items this winter, stay tuned for that update.

Hopefully you found a gem or two tucked in here that can help make eating nutrient-dense foods the easy choice - the more people that opt in to supporting their local farmers directly, the more prices can normalize as systems become more efficient too.

If you want to make small changes, change the way you do things. If you want to make major changes, change the way you see things. - Gabe Brown

Wishing you health & happiness in 2022!

Order by midnight on Sunday for pickup or home delivery next week!

Yes! Deliver Good Food to My Door!

“Why Burger Night?” (A Long Answer for the Curious, the Hungry, and the Miracle-Seekers)

“Why Burger Night?” (A Long Answer for the Curious, the Hungry, and the Miracle-Seekers) If you’ve ever sat on our farm with a burger in one hand and a beer in the other, gazing at the cows on the hill and wondered: “What made them decide to do this?" well, friend, settle in. The short answer is: we wanted to bring people to the farm and pizza was already taken. But the long answer? The long answer involves 60 acres of overgrown dreams, a barn on the brink of collapse, a freezer full of lard and the sort of miracles you only recognize in hindsight. It All Started With a (Totally Normal) Idea… Back in 2009, when we bought this place, we had no intention of selling meat, inviting strangers over or running a seasonal restaurant. Heck, we didn’t even have farming experience. The idea was simple: raise our kids in the country, grow some of our own food, and enjoy a little space. That’s it. We bought the property when Mady was three and Adeyle was six months old. If you had told me then that someday we’d be hosting live music, running a bar and serving 300+ burgers on a Saturday night… I’d have assumed you were drunk. And then I’d have laughed until I couldn’t breathe and pointed out that neither Andy nor I had ever farmed a day in our lives and we knew even less about running a restaurant. But life’s funny like that. The Dilapidated Farm This farm hadn’t been used for animals in ages. It was more of a rural junkyard with a leaky house, decaying buildings and enough broken stuff to fill a dozen dumpsters. It took us a full year just to clean things up and find our starting point. But then came the animals. We started with a couple pigs and cows for ourselves. Then came chickens. A few geese. Some ducks. A pair of goats that may or may not have been invited. A sheep. A milk cow. Turkeys. More pigs. (You get the idea.) And then we reasoned amongst ourselves: “Well, if we’re already feeding a couple pigs, what’s a couple more? We can sell the extras and get our own meat for free!” HAHAHAHAHAHA. That was cute. Because spoiler alert: there's no such thing as "free" meat when you have now created an entirely new division called SALES. (And, pro tip: marketing and sales is way harder than production. By a lot. Sigh, what young, naive fools we were.) But we had convinced ourselves it was a great idea (another pro-tip: always run your ideas past people smarter than you and with no skin in the game). So we expanded. More pigs. More cows. And just when we were starting to feel like maybe we were getting the hang of it, corn prices shot through the roof and feeder pigs became impossible to find. Which meant: time to make our own piglets. But you can’t just have one sow. The efficient number is closer to six. So… guess who’s now drowning in pork? You're a good guesser! It was us. The Farmer's Market Fizzle At this point we needed storage, so we added a walk-in freezer. Then we needed to sell all that meat, so we hit up every farmer’s market we could get into.Which was exhausting (remember, we both had day jobs during all of this too). And limited. And frustratingly political. (If you think farmer’s markets are all kumbaya and holding hands, think again.) This meant we couldn’t get into the big downtown market or winter market, so we did 3-5 small ones every week, and we couldn’t go to the nearby Twin Cities markets because our beloved butcher is only WI-inspected and using them is a non-negotiable (truly uncured meats (no celery either!) and no weird stuff is nearly impossible to find).We knew farmer’s markets weren’t going to be a long-term plan anyway. I had quite the knack for bringing the exact wrong products on any given day and hated how weather-dependent they were, not to mention seasonal (This was 10+ years ago before social media was the force it is today and before winter markets were much of an option around here.)So the wheels started turning…What if, instead of us chasing people down in hot parking lots, we could get people to come to us (and yes, this is also when we started the online store)? The Farm as a Destination? Our friends and family had started commenting on how beautiful the farm was. And once we looked up from our grindstones long enough, we saw it too. The view. The peace. The potential.Meanwhile, farm-to-table restaurants started popping up in Eau Claire and we started supplying a few. This gave us hope and contacts. But while other farms were doing pizza nights, I couldn’t make that fit for us.For one, I have a terrible relationship with dough and baking (just ask my mother). And two, we’re not a dairy, wheat, or veggie farm, we’re a meat farm. Pizza just didn’t check enough boxes for the ingredients we had and wanted to keep having.But burgers? Burgers are just as versatile as pizza, the focus is MEAT, specifically BEEF. And, BONUS: they go really well with fries and cheese curds.Which brings us to what I'll lovingly call my "lard problem". A Fat Problem (and a Deep-Fried Solution) We had rendered all this gorgeous lard from our pastured pigs and were using some in soaps and balms (shoutout to Good Fat Skincare, formerly Stephanie’s Super Swine Soap), but it was piling up. And while tallow is currently having quite the moment in the spotlight, lard is still a four-letter word to many people (but pro-tip: it's even better for you in lotions!).So I was venting to a chef friend about my lard conundrum when he casually mentioned, “You know, you could use it in the fryer.” EUREKA. That was it. The vision was born: Burgers and fries. Made with our beef. Fried in our fat. Done. Now we just had to figure out literally everything else. 😂 No Experience? No Problem! (Kinda.) We didn’t have restaurant experience or restaurant-investor money. So we did what we always do: figured it out one painful, hilarious, miracle-at-a-time step after another.We leaned on our restaurant friends to help us figure out menus, sourcing, kitchen layout, vent hoods, fryer safety, grease disposal....the million things you don't even know are a thing until you start planning and talking it through. We also knew we wanted everything made fresh to order, not precooked or being held. (Again, there’s a reason you don’t see many burger farms. It’s a trickier & more expensive setup than pizza....especially when you have no idea what you are doing.) So we did pop-ups to test this little theory of mine that if people would drive out to veggie farms for pizza, maybe they'll drive out to a meat farm for burgers??And lo and behold…during one of those pop-ups, who should show up but PBS’s Wisconsin Foodie, a show that had rarely (never?) come this far west and didn’t waste airtime on dumb ideas. They liked what they saw. The wind was now in our sails. Lightning Strikes (Literally) So we got to work. We worked with our health inspector to find the best way to use our existing farm spaces safely. Since banks are pretty well-known for not funding build-it-and-they-will come types of operations we had to get creative with funding and are grateful to have received a loan through our county’s Revolving Loan Fund (because we were creating jobs) and a USDA grant that helped with marketing and startup costs.But the real turning point? That WI Foodie episode that made us believe it really was a good idea and gave us a platform before we really even opened! How crazy is that?!? I'm not sure we would've been able to financially survive those first few years of start-up expenses without it. And the only reason I even saw the post from WI Foodie looking for new farms?I woke up in the middle of the night to a thunderstorm and started scrolling Facebook.I woke up in the middle of the night to a thunderstorm and started scrolling Facebook. Lightning. Literally. ⚡ Burgers, Fries, and Big Dreams So that’s how Burger Night started: A daunting pile of lard, a string of well-timed miracles and the belief that people might just come to the middle of nowhere for something delicious, meaty and fun.Today, Burger Night is burgers, fries, beer, music, bingo, trivia, community and the most magical little farm in the hills of Mondovi.Has everything gone according to plan? Absolutely not.We thought we’d be building a permanent restaurant building “in a few years”. That was many years ago. Reality (and weather) had other plans. And covid struck when we were just two years old so we had quite a baptism-by-fire for those first couple of years (if you came out during 2020-2021 you should give us another try, pretty sure more than a few wrote us off during those crazy years). But now we have our legs somewhat under us.I also loved the idea of turning the used fryer oil into biodiesel for the tractor to really complete the circle but that hasn't made it to reality yet. But there's a million other ideas cooking.The next BIG goal is to build a new building for farm operations so we can convert the barn into a bar with indoor seating. (We’re just waiting on a cool $200K to fall from the sky. Lightning, take the hint.) From Lard to Legacy So why burgers?Because they made sense for our farm, our products, our weird little challenges, our personalities and our beautiful patch of land. Because we wanted something fun & creative. Because fries and cheese curds. But ultimately, because we wanted to share the farm with you.And somehow it all just came together.

How to Maximize Your TF $$'s & See The Truly Expensive Foods

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