Bear Creek Acres teams up with Natural Harvest and Fraboni Sausage

Most Rangers are familiar with Fraboni’s Sausage. They’ve been an Iron Range tradition for more than 65 years.  Our family has always especially enjoyed their Italian sausage.  We got to wondering if maybe, just maybe, they’d be willing to make some sausage for us – using our meat, their recipe, and put our logo on it.   I called over to their meat plant and talked to Don Johnson, the chief sausage maker.  It turns out that they do a lot of custom meat work, and they’d be happy to do some work for us.  I quickly called Ann at Natural Harvest Food Co-op in Virginia and asked her to take a chance on us and buy some. She graciously said, “Yes”.

Don’s been making sausage for many, many years, and he gave me a primer in the science behind sausage making.  It seems that fat content is critical to sausage flavor. He normally deals with meat from the big packing houses where everything is very  precise, and that this makes his sausage consistent from one batch to the next. He explained that the meat we’ll bring him from our processor in Cannon Falls will not be the exact same type of product he normally works with and that the consistency may vary a bit. I know that folks who eat locally grown, small farm raised meat expect slight variations. I seems to me that slight variations is how you know your meat came from a small farm rather than a cookie cutter factory farm.

A month ago we brought some hogs to Lorentz Meat in Cannon Falls, MN for processing. We got the call that our meat was ready, so off Shannon and I went to southern MN.   Some of the meat was destined for Natural Harvest Food Co-op in Virginia  - and it’s a good thing, too because they’ve been out of bacon for a while! Now they are all stocked up. Some was destined for our farm to be sold from here and at Farmer’s Markets – and it’s a good thing because we were out of chops and ribs! And now some went to Fraboni’s in Hibbing.

I can’t wait to taste the sausage. As soon as Don calls to say the sausage is ready we’ll bring it to Natural Harvest Food Co-op (did you know you don’t have to be a member to shop there?) I hope you’ll watch for it. They’ll be carrying both Italian and Breakfast sausage.  If you buy some, please let us know what you think. Click Contact US at the top or bottom of the page and give us some feedback!