Meet Your Farmer’s Market Vendors: Skagit River Ranch
Second on today’s double-featured Meet Your Farmer’s Market Vendors - Skagit River Ranch. Skagit is one of my favorite vendors at the market, not only because of the high quality of their products, but because Eiko and George are such fun to talk to. I was able to interview them a little over a week ago while George was cooking up some of his fantastic sausage for the University District patrons to taste.
George and Eiko from Skagit River Ranch
More after the jump.
How Long At The Markets: Skagit has been selling at the markets for about 5 years now.
Where Can Skagit Be Found: They sell at the West Seattle, Ballard, and University District farmer’s markets. Every other week, they also sell at the Bellevue Farmer’s Market. You can also buy some of their products at Madison Market.
How They Got Started Raising Cows: Years ago, George started to have heart problems. He reports it was due to all of the chemicals in the foods he was eating. So the whole family switched to a very clean lifestyle with fruits and vegetables they raised themselves. But George missed beef. So they started looking into grass-fed beef. Their cows are fully pasture raised and finished. At no point are they fed grain, antibiotics, steroids, growth hormones, or animal by-products. As a result of this, the beef that comes from these cows has 25% less fat than regular beef and a very high level of Omega 3 fatty acids (the same type of fatty acids that are found in salmon). They started raising chickens for their daughter, Nicole. They wanted to provide a variety of meat with no arsenic or antibiotics for her. Pretty soon, they had a surplus of beef and started selling at the farmer’s markets. They try to eat a well balanced diet. At their farm store, they also sell raw milk and Eiko makes overnight cheeses for the family all the time.
Their Products: They sell beef, pork, chicken, and eggs. You can even order a half or full side of beef from them. I think I’ve tried nearly everything they sell and it’s all been fantastic. George likes all of their products, but when I asked him for his favorite, he chose the sausages. They sell beef sausage as well as mild and hot pork sausage, breakfast links, and andouille sausage.
Favorite Part of the Market: George’s favorite part of the market is talking to people. He’ll talk to anyone about biological agriculture and is even teaching classes on the farm this year. He believes we have to farm well to save the planet. When done right, farming is healthy for us and healthy for the environment. He also mentioned that Skagit River Ranch is not at all government subsidized.
Skagit River Ranch
360-856-0722
Remember… if you try one of the vendors we cover in this series, be sure to tell them you read about them on MetBlogs!
Previously.
Neat! It’s available through Pioneer Organics deliveries too, every time I get my order I’m tempted to add a couple filets on–now that you’ve interviewed them and all, I guess I’ll have to :)
Skagit’s beef cooks faster than the beef you’ll find elsewhere. It has to do with the type of fat in the meat. So if you try it (and I hope you do), back off the cooking time a bit from what you’d normally do. We’ve overcooked our fair share of Skagit beef, though even overcooked, it’s been better than just about anything else we’ve had before.