True & Essential Meats

T&E Meats is the health business: creating healthy customers, healthy regional farmers, healthy workers, and a healthy food community by connecting local farmers to local eaters, retaining food dollars in our local communities, providing a safe, healthy, and affordable food supply, and healing the earth by promoting ecologically sound farming practices. T&E is recognized around the state as a unique resource in the local food community, working with Virginia farmers to promote the availability of a healthy grass-based red meat supply, while at the same time educating and providing customers with the highest quality professional processing and packing services. T&E customers find: In 2007 Joe Cloud joined forces with farmer, author, and food activist Joel Salatin to save one of the few remaining independent, USDA-inspected meat processing plants in the Mid-Atlantic, T&E Meats. They purchased the plant, built in 1939, from the then-current owners, Tommy and Erma May, who had owned the business for thirty-five years. Joe and Joel purchased the plant with the goal of serving local farmers who wanted to make their meat products available to local consumers. At the time Joe and Joel purchased the plant, the business was a three-tiered operation including a slaughter and processing plant, a retail butcher and grocery shop, and a wholesale meat and grocery delivery business serving small and remote grocery stores in Virginia and West Virginia. By 2011, T&E Meats had closed the retail and wholesale operations to focus solely on the meat slaughter and processing in support of the company’s mission to “help farmers feed people.” When Joe and Joel first purchased the business, T&E served only four local farmers who sold their meats under their own private labels. Now, T&E serves over 60 farmers who brand their own meats as well as many farmers and other clients who bring animals for processing for their own personal use. Quality local meats processed at T&E are found in the area’s finestrestaurantsandretail establishmentsin Harrisonburg, Charlottesville and Washington, D.C. Lauren Iversonserves as T&E Meats Managing Partner. Rueben Gobezie, MD, Maranatha Farms. Located in Forest, Virginia, Maranatha Farms focuses on regenerative agriculture to raise cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens. We have both pick up and delivery services available. You are able to select a day and time most suitable for you and have our products delivered straight to your home or business. We are a family farm focused on making high quality food available to all. Joel Salatinis typically found operating Polyface Farms in Swoope, Virginia or traveling worldwide to lead seminars on the farming practices developed and implanted by his family. He is an internationally-recognized thought leader in the development and communication of successful practices in sustainable farming. The staff at T&E Meats is a dedicated and diverse group of individuals who are ready and willing to serve our customers. Our key employees include: The mission statement at T&E Meats has included a focus on education since its inception. In support of our mission, we provide tours of our plant for individuals and groups. Positions include: Packing Floor, Kill Floor, and Grind Room