Photo by Howard Owens.
Crystal Casper said she and her family love what they do -- farming, raising cattle and hogs ethically and providing customers with healthy, natural foods.
"When you come here, what you're getting is true farm-to-plate goodness," Casper said. "You are meeting the farmers who are raising it. It's right here. I mean, it's my husband and myself. That's my daughter-in-law, my son. And then we have my other three sons and my daughter, who are all part of what we're doing here. So when you come here, you see us. This is the face of what you're getting. And if we tell you, you know, that this is what it is, then this is exactly what it is."
And it is meat raised in pasture, hay, and additive-free feed. That's what the Capsers mean by "All-Natural," which is part of their logo.
"I truly believe that our cows -- we've got cows out here in our pasture that are 15 years old -- so we firmly believe that as we raise our animals as stress-free as possible. We raise them natural. The cows have their calves out in the pasture. We raise the calves on the moms and through November, and then we wean them off their moms where we put them in our feedlot, and then we feed on choice feed. We have fans on them in the summertime. We do everything we can to keep cows comfort to a high point."
The Caspers hosted an open house on Saturday to help introduce the community to what they offer in their retail shop right on the property, which is at 6671 East Main Street Road, Stafford. Regular hours are Friday from 4 to 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with availability the rest of the week by appointment.
"Last year, we opened up in June, and we really didn't have an open house or a grand opening, so we wanted to do something special since we won the GLOW award for the best farm in the GLOW region and we got third for the fresh meat," Casper said. "We wanted to do an open house to showcase our farm and let everybody see what we have available."
The event featured vendors that serve Casper Farm meat -- such as the Carve'n Curbside food truck -- or that the Caspers carry in their retail shop. That included Blue Groove Coffee, Petals & Flour, and Black Creed Cidery.
"This is a grand opening for people who don't know we're here," Casper said.
The focus is clearly on the meat the Caspers sell, which isn't just beef, but also pork and chicken, all with the goal of raising animals in stress-free environments.
With pork, especially, stress affects the flavor and tenderness of meat. Stress lowers the PH levels in the animals' muscles. Higher PH levels are desirable, so the pork sold by Casper farms is raised close to the meat processor in Penn Yan so the animals need not be trucked to another location, which increases a hog's stress level.
All of the meat sold by Casper is processed in Penn Yan and Romulus, where the processors are USDA-certified and inspected.
"Everything here has to be USDA inspected," Casper said.
Their meat is also hormone-free.
"When you have your animal processed, if people are using hormones, the internal organs are usually no good," Casper said. "There are a lot of people who want to buy liver, kidney heart, those products -- if our animals were being fed hormones, those products would not be good. We've never had a kidney or a liver refused or come back to our processor."
Because it's a family operation, Casper said, customers can be sure about the quality of what they're buying.
"You know exactly what you're getting," Casper said. "It's coming right from here, right from the processor's freezer right to our freezer. There are some people who have a fresh case. When it's in that fresh case, and it's not frozen, you don't know, you, the consumer, how fresh it is. With our meat, it goes, like, boom, boom, boom. You know exactly what you're getting. If you pull it out of our freezer, then it's going to be right."
