Meet Your Farmers
This article is the first in a series that will profile farmer-producers who complete the New Leaf-NWTC scorecard.
In a recent communication, New Leaf introduced a scorecard to help you (and us) determine which farms are using authentic, sustainable practices not only for growing food, but also for taking care of the environment and the people who grow the food. We want to help you sort through the marketing messages and learn about the farms and farmers that make up Northeast Wisconsin’s sustainable local food scene.
Meet SLO Farmers Cooperative.
An interview with Heather Toman, manager of the Cooperative.
What does SLO stand for? It’s an acronym for Sustainable, Local and Organic. We are a group of farmers who all agree to specific production standards that include stewardship of our livestock, the land, and growing vegetables and other crops using organic production standards (not all our smaller, beginning farmers are certified organic yet).
We all raise ruminant livestock 100% grass-fed (cows, sheep, and goats); pigs and chickens require a grain supplement to thrive, but this must be non- GMO. All animals are rotated on pasture while the grass is green and provided with spacious outdoor access all year round. Also, all our products are grown on our member farms within 75 miles of Green Bay.
What makes your products stand out? Well, besides the ethics of animal welfare and care for the environment, everything is of the highest quality. Pasture-fed meats and eggs, and organic vegetables are about as healthy as you can get for your family. Every farm must have a produce safety plan in place so that the produce is as clean as possible. Lettuce from our farms easily lasts 3x as long as lettuce from the grocery store because of our hydrocooling process and “just picked” harvest the day before it’s delivered. The pastured products also have outstanding flavors you just don’t get with corn-fed animals.
Where can a person find SLO products? The cool thing about our Cooperative is that we’ve partnered with Farmer’s Best Home Delivery so that you can get everything delivered to your door. We also have subscription packages that give you a discount on pricing. And, you can customize your vegetable subscription….which means you essentially get to shop an online store to fill your weekly share box with the vegetables you like most. We will also offer a subscription meat-share box that will soon be customizable as well. We want to make it easy for people to get the good food we make.
Your Cooperative scored 4.8 out of a possible 5 points on our scorecard. How does that make you feel?
We are proud of the high ethical and quality standards we maintain as a co-op. These ethics are what bring us together and keeps us going in the face of struggles. Farming the way we all do takes extra work and resolve. We must continually work through and maintain fair prices that will make us able to keep doing what we are doing. The same goes for the co-op itself, we must make enough of a margin to keep providing this valuable sales outlet to our member farms and pay everyone involved a good wage. At the same time, we also work to support each other and bring new, beginning farmers into the fold. We know our prices are a bit higher than some, but we also know that these are fair prices that help us treat our workers and farmers right.
What’s happening right now with the group? We are nearing the end of our sign-up period for our veggie subscription CSA boxes, this is the customizable box that can be delivered right to your door each week through Farmers Best Home Delivery. It was a weird year last year with COVID and we sold out right away since people wanted to secure their food supply. We hope people continue to support their local farmers whether they buy from us or from others, locally. We are expanding the Cooperative and now have room for more people to join our CSA subscription program. People can also join the Cooperative itself as a supporting member. We always need volunteers to help us get more projects done!
How can people be in touch with the Cooperative?
Visit our website at slofarmersco-op.com. There is a form on the home page to sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on what our farms are doing and what products we have available. If you are interested in the Customizable Veggie CSA, you can read more about it on our website, and sign up directly through Farmers Best Home Delivery.
