North Fork Packing

09/05/2026

Seriously though, cows are amazing animals.

I often stare at our herd and marvel that these beasts wander around our fields, improve the land with their manure, and grow such muscular frames off of food that I wouldn’t eat and create such a high value protein for us to consume, that tastes incredible and has such dense nutrition. 

Blessed to live in a world where they exist.

09/04/2026

For Fall 2026 we will be in the office Tuesday - Saturday.
Closed Sunday & Monday.
Our hours slightly vary depending on the amount of animals that have come in for the week.
Customers will be made aware from week to week.

I will be out of the office this week Tuesday - Thursday for a small break / the calm before the storm, if you will.

Winter 2026/27
We will be completely closed December 23 - Jan 8.

If you plan on having us process beef in December or January, please plan ahead. We will stop taking beef in December 5 and resume again on January 8.

Pork and sheep do not dry age, so we will be taking them in all the way until our winter break and directly after.

If you would like to secure a slaughter date between now and the end of the year, now is a good time to reserve your space. This will, without a doubt, be our busiest season yet in operation.

09/04/2026

Let’s take a minute and thoroughly explain why a custom processor would not be able to accommodate this request.

Percentages will vary from shop to shop depending on their cut sheet selections, but in our shop, the minimum take-home hamburger that a 1/4 beef customer will have is right around 33%.
On a 1/2 beef order there are more cut selections, so the minimum hamburger that a customer could take home is right around 25% of their product. 

As a customer fills out their custom cut sheets and sends the cuts they don’t want to grind that percentage will go up.

In our shop, we keep a spreadsheet of the take-home percentages of every customer.
Last year we found that ground beef is 51% of the product we produce.
Granted, there is a decent amount of grind all animals in there (cull cows, bulls, and old beef in general are best to grind everything), so I would estimate approximately 40% ground beef is what the average customer is taking home.

We can do our best to minimize ground beef take-home by adding extra stew meat upon request, but other than that, we don’t have a lot of control here.
There is a lot of trim in a beef carcass that turns into the grind and only so many nice sized roast and steaks. It turns out that there is a lot of small bits and pieces from trimming up and cutting those nice steaks and roasts that add up quickly into the take home ground beef. 

This specific customer didn’t ask this, but decently often I have customers ask for only steak. Unfortunately that is not what they bought (a custom cut share of a beef carcass, which also includes a decent amount of trim that turns into ground beef, soup and dog bones, trim fat and suet, etc), and I am the one to pop their bubble and disappoint them when I roll out 40 lbs of ground beef with their 1/4 beef order.

We are happy to take the time and reach out to customers who have requests like this to explain how the process works. I sure hope they are happy with their beef purchase even though it does contain more ground beef than they originally wanted.

So for producers, I would highly encourage you to try to educate your customers about the general percentages of how a beef carcass breaks down.
Consumers, make sure you understand what you are buying and how purchasing a portion of a carcass and getting it custom processed works.

It really is such an abstract concept for most. I personally didn’t understand the process until seeing it in person.
This makes me want to film a time lapse of processing half a beef start to finish and post it!
I will work on that.


09/03/2026

Take home burger bull math.

Slaughtered August 27
Processed September 3

Hanging weight / carcass weight / rail weight (three different terms for the same exact thing) = 1260 lbs

End result = 885.4 lbs of ground beef in 20 boxes.

70.3% take home of a bull carcass in ground beef after a five day hang.

Take home math not including soup / marrow bones & tenderloins = 70.5 lbs and in addition to that, two bags of knuckle / dog bones.

Estimated fat content: 95/5.

09/02/2026

Piglets! Get yer piglets.

Videos of actual piggies up for grabs.

Looking for fall piglets? We have the hookup, straight from a small family farm!

Crossbred
Will be 8 weeks old.
Batches ready mid Sept, end of Sept, and end of Oct
Pick up from us in Oso
Vaccinated
Males are cut

$100 each

If you are going to raise pork, I highly recommend these ones. I have seen and ate pork off this farm, and it is delicious.

Commercial meat hogs gain weight rapidly.
Perfect for a mid Dec-mid Feb butcher date, depending on batch.

Limited availability.
Deposit required to hold your purchase.

Message or text me to reserve.
360-631-1531

09/01/2026

Looking for fall piglets? We have the hookup, straight from a small family farm!

Crossbred
Ready mid Sept (will be 8 weeks old)
Pick up from us in Oso
Vaccinated
Males are cut

$100 each

If you are going to raise pork, I highly recommend these ones. I have seen and ate pork off this farm, and it is delicious.

Commercial meat hogs gain weight rapidly.
Perfect for a mid Dec-mid Jan butcher date.

Limited availability.
Deposit required to hold your purchase.

Message or text me to reserve.
360-631-1531

09/01/2026

I do not mean this post to be rude to this commenter, but this makes me feel like we are not all speaking the same language (custom exempt, state inspected, federal inspected) here.

Custom exempt is a niche market of processing that is done for the owner / end user of the animal.
Each product is marked “not for sale” and not for distribution into retail: meaning stores or restaurants, even farm stands or farmers markets, any of the byproducts, etc.
Because the processing is done for the owner of the animal alone, we are “exempt” from federal inspection.

Truthfully, I love this industry so much.
This is the way it should be.
Custom exempt has my whole heart. I don’t have a lot of passion in my heart for getting infrastructure licensed as a federal slaughterhouse, a haacp plan, all that paperwork, federal inspectors, the works.
I enjoy our work as is: which fills local people’s freezers, with local meat, from local farms.

This is a bit of a “buyer beware” industry, but like I have stated: I personally would trust every custom exempt processor I have ever met over a federally inspected mega slaughterhouse somewhere far away.

Custom exempt means:
A farmer raises a beef —>
sells it to an individual—>
us with a licensed facility for processing that is inspected for safety practices but doesn’t have an on site federal inspector processes it for them —>
Customer picks up from us, puts it in their own freezer, eats it, end of story. 

Does that mean we can sell or give away unwanted byproducts: no, but at the end of the day, that isn’t really what matters most here.

We are in an integral part of a small local supply chain for farm direct meat, and that is our whole desire and purpose.

09/01/2026

This post has been a bit wild.
Up until three weeks ago, my content was only distributed to my local followers. In the last couple weeks Facebook was like: we’re gonna now send this little post of yours worldwide.

Just to clarify a couple of things:

We are a licensed custom exempt shop only in the state of Washington.
There is no state inspection program here.

Getting licensed USDA for slaughter is not an option due to local building code and cost of new infrastructure.

I fully support a federal inspection program for national distribution.
Best case scenario, my state could adopt a state inspection program.

Personally, I don’t believe every supply chain deserves the same level of oversight. If beef is being raised internationally, slaughtered internationally, processed internationally, imported, or go through a big facility: yeah, it needs needs a federal chain of inspection for health and safety.
However, if the chain of custody is all local: a local farmer, a local processor, a local customer: I don’t in my heart of hearts feel like a federal inspection program should apply to that.
The overall problem with government policy *in my opinion* is that it treats every scenario the same. Not all beef situations are the same and need the same level of oversight, in my opinion.
A small farmer selling a steak out of the freezer by the cut to their neighbor is not the same as random beef being imported from foreign countries, nor does it need the same level of USDA oversight.
I had a commenter post a comment: why don’t we just label meat ‘inspected’ or ‘not inspected by usda’, and let the consumer decide; I freaking loved that comment.
I trust every custom exempt shop around me 10 .. 15 .. heck, a 100 times more than I trust any kind of huge slaughterhouse in a far away land.
However, I don’t make the laws. I am just stuck here following them.

So to clarify, we are a licensed custom exempt shop. We don’t run a state inspection license and we don’t have a USDA inspector. No we can’t sell anything.
No we can’t give away anything.
No we can’t donate anything.
No, we can’t do anything with anything.
No, we don’t do cash deals in the alley.
No, we don’t take anything home and do anything from there.
No, we are not making soap.
No, we don’t distribute it to a third-party to then do some kind of backyard something: no.

However, I really do appreciate all the engagement. The more awareness to this industry, the better; even if that means me getting PMed some death threats over it.

With hunting season here, this is something I explain to disappointed callers multiple times a day.
Also, no, we are not allowed to by law give it away either.

When we first started this business, I was not familiar with the CFRs and gave away fat and bones just to help the community out and get rid of them.
This triggered a USDA inspection and red taping of my freezer, (triggered by a neighbor’s complaint), and now that I know, I am not willing to ever go down that road again.

We are subject to random USDA FSIS inspectors who check our freezers for product that isn’t tracible back to the original owner.
Therefore, I do not have a freezer full of fat to distribute, even though we process these animals.

This is routinely very disappointing to people who call and honestly frustrating for us in the custom exempt industry.

Even though we are left with the byproducts, we are not allowed to do anything with them by law.
The only way to do anything with our byproducts by law to becoming a licensed renderer. Currently, I only know of one in the entire state.

If there was only one regulatory change in the custom exempt vs inspected world that would benefit us and our local consumers, I think it should be that if a customer declines keeping byproducts such as the fat, organs, and bones, they could go back to the farmer or are now in our possession and thus now are the farmers or ours to distribute or give away.
That is a policy / processing relaxation that could benefit our local industry, distribution, community, and byproduct disposal choke point.

However, because we do not have a federal inspector on site when we slaughter, we are not allowed to retain or distribute the byproducts.

Therefore, answer is NO ….
I do not sell or give away fat. 

Would I like to? Yes.
Are my hands tied by the USDA? Yes.

08/30/2026

With hunting season here, this is something I explain to disappointed callers multiple times a day.
Also, no, we are not allowed to by law give it away either.

When we first started this business, I was not familiar with the CFRs and gave away fat and bones just to help the community out and get rid of them.
This triggered a USDA inspection and red taping of my freezer, (triggered by a neighbor’s complaint), and now that I know, I am not willing to ever go down that road again.

We are subject to random USDA FSIS inspectors who check our freezers for product that isn’t tracible back to the original owner.
Therefore, I do not have a freezer full of fat to distribute, even though we process these animals.

This is routinely very disappointing to people who call and honestly frustrating for us in the custom exempt industry.

Even though we are left with the byproducts, we are not allowed to do anything with them by law.
The only way to do anything with our byproducts by law to becoming a licensed renderer. Currently, I only know of one in the entire state.

If there was only one regulatory change in the custom exempt vs inspected world that would benefit us and our local consumers, I think it should be that if a customer declines keeping byproducts such as the fat, organs, and bones, they could go back to the farmer or are now in our possession and thus now are the farmers or ours to distribute or give away.
That is a policy / processing relaxation that could benefit our local industry, distribution, community, and byproduct disposal choke point.

However, because we do not have a federal inspector on site when we slaughter, we are not allowed to retain or distribute the byproducts.

Therefore, answer is NO ….
I do not sell or give away fat. 

Would I like to? Yes.
Are my hands tied by the USDA? Yes.