I’ll give you the answer upfront. “Farkha” = “chicken” in Arabic. But why does that matter you may be asking?
Recently our farm has been working on hammering out a deal with an Islamic Halal butcher. They reached out to us over the winter time, wanting our local and healthy chicken to offer to their customers.
They were looking for 25,000-30,000 chickens a year 😳
Through working on this deal, I have learned much about Islamic culture, especially their dietary practices.
For example, when you come to Freedom Valley Farm, you can see the animals walking around and enjoying their day. And when you are ready to make your purchase of quality meats, we head to the freezer and grab your order.
Not so at the Halal butcher. In stark contrast, you literally walk around their farm and pick out the animal that you want for your dinner table. Next, they proceed to butcher it right there on the spot, and you take it home with you, freshly prepared!
For my buisness oriented mind, this seems like a huge hassle on the part of the farmer/butcher. Somewhat lacking in efficiency and time management, if you can imagine.
Let’s not forget the shear culture shock aspect as well! This model of a meat business is so far removed from the American mindset. I mean, we literally have people in this country that think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. But that is a differnt story altogether 😉
So we raised a test batch of chickens for this butcher. They tried our chicken, and this is what they had to say:
“The flavor is very good”
“The meat is tender, but not soft and mushy”
“The yellow fat adds richness to the meat”
So I say, “Great, let’s sign a contract!” But they had a problem.
$$Price$$
They have been buying their chickens from a factory farm, where the chickens are raised inside their entire life and fed genetically modified cheap junk feed. Our price was about 50% more than the factory farm’s price.
They wanted to know if we could cut corners, like start feeding junk feed, and raise the chickens in a stationary outdoor pen, in order to get the cost down.
My answer was simple. If we make those changes, you will have the same unhealthy, flavorless and mushy meated chicken that you are already buying from the factory farm.
We ended up not being able to close a deal, simply beacuase they were wanting us to get way too far away from the way we raise chickens, on pasture, with high quality feed and plenty of fresh air and sunshine.
It just cracks me up that they could see and taste the palpable difference in the chicken, but then were not willing to pay the extra cost that goes into raising that high quality chicken.
Speaking of this high quality chicken, we just last week restocked our pasture raised chicken and grass fed beef inventory. It will likely go quickly, but we will be restocking our chicken monthly throughout the rest of the season.
I want to wrap this up by saying, I am SO THANKFUL for friends and customers like you!! Smart folks who understand the benefits of eating our healthy, pasture raised chicken, and willingly pay extra. That’s because you know full well that the money spent is giving you a far superior product that will wonderfully nourish you and your loved ones!