how our meat shop began with us

Growing up as a little girl, I remember my mom taking me to Ray’s Food Place in Central Point, where my grandma Bev worked. She always would give me some of the meat package stickers and show me the meat counter and I was always fascinated. Besides her being a great meat wrapper, she also could hold her own out fishing on the river or hunting in the mountains with the boys. She was a badass. Long story short, when I got offered the job in the meat department at Food 4 Less at 18, she was ecstatic for me. I took the job, and the first day I got off of work, I went over there and she helped me study all of the cuts. It took me way longer than a day of course, but I loved following in her foot steps, it made me feel proud. The smell of the meat department and seeing all of the stickers we used to label on packages of meat reminded me instantly of those days as a little girl going to visit my grandma at work. 

Fast forward 2 years later, when Nate and I started dating, (I was a meat wrapper and he was a meat cutter working for Sherm's. He was at Thunderbird at the time and I was at Food 4 Less.) We were cutting wild game in the garage in the beginning of our relationship to save money, pay bills, or to buy Christmas gifts for the family, it was a skill that we had that we could put to great use to create money when times were tough. While Nate was working for either Sherm's, Southern Oregon Fine Meats and when he was just starting out on his own business on the kill truck, or when I was working for Sherm's or busy as a stay at home mom, we were busy during wild game season cutting up deer and elk for friends and family. We’d put the kids to bed, go out in the garage and be up through late hours of the night, go to bed, wake up early for work and do it all over again, on top of us being very passionate about hunting ourselves and getting after it when we could. I remember Nate always talking about how it would be his dream to own his own meat shop one day, and I didn’t have any doubt in my mind that he couldn’t do it or that he wouldn’t do it. If you don’t already know Nate, he’s the most hard working, driven, self disciplined, get ‘er done guy that you’ll come to know. I don’t want to forget about his backstory, so he’s next!

Nathan grew up hunting and fishing his entire life. His dad Paul and his mom Sherrie  both were big into hunting and fishing. His dad was also a fishing guide and hunting guide most of Nate’s life. Nate spent numerous hours on the river or in the woods doing what he loved best (not much has changed at 42 years old either.) Starting at age 15, he headed to Alaska to stay with his mom for the summer and landed himself a job working on a charter boat for the next 3 summers. At 16 years old, he moved to Alaska and learnt how to be even more of an advent hunter. He started cutting up deer at the age of 16 as well. When he turned 18 years old, on his exact birthday, he got hired to work in the meat department at the Alaskan and Proud Market, in Alaska (if that doesn’t give it away already.) Nathan then pursued his career being a Meat Cutter, and he moved back to Oregon at age 20 and began cutting meat for Sherm's Food 4 Less.

​He’s been in the trade for quite some time you can say, and he started learning the kill truck process when he began working for Robert at Southern Oregon Fine Meats, in Medford. Nate worked a second job when we first got together, where we got to cut custom at SOFM, then later left Sherm's and went to work for Robert full time. That’s when he started learning how to work on the kill truck. Nate enjoyed it so much, and loved picking up these skills, he was put in a position to run the kill truck solo to make a little bit of extra money, then he just knew this was the career path he wanted to dive into. Nate came home one day from work and he asked me what I thought about him buying his own kill truck and starting his own business up. At this time, I was a stay at home mom, we were pinching pennies for the most part, and I honestly never doubted him. I knew if he wanted something bad enough, he’d get it, and I trusted he’d do it the right way, so I was on his side rooting for him to send it. Like any business, when you’re self employed, it’s not all dandelions and daises, but you eventually learn to roll with the punches. They come swinging more than ya’d like! We started the business Nate’s Custom Farm Butchering in 2016. Nate worked his full time job at SOFM and then worked after work and on the weekends on his kill truck for his new business that he was trying to grow. Trying to be all in with his full time job, new business and family was a lot for one man, so he said peace out to working for someone and had worked just for himself since. 
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When Nate first began the kill truck, he didn’t give up on the hopes of owning his own meat shop one day, this was just the step in the right direction. I went back to work for Sherms to provide benefits for the family, then in 2019 we had a home fall in our lap, well kinda, we had to pay money and all that fun stuff, but you get the point. We’ve tried buying land, homes on land, etc, things just didn’t work quite in our favor at the time. Nate had a couple of friends that he grew up with, Luke and Emmy, and they were wanting to move and rent this home out to us, on property and had a built in meat cooler. It was really just a barn, with a cooler attached, not any way a running cooler, but what are the odds? They knew Nate wanted a meat shop of his own one day, and this came up and we obviously didn’t turn this opportunity down. We moved in November 2019, before COVID hit. Nate was slowly getting the process rolling, then after COVID hit in March 2020 and we found out we were pregnant with our last kiddo, Nate hit the send button and full force with a ton of help from our good friends and family.

The meat shop was just about ready in September, then the wildfires around here hit, it put a damper in getting it finished for a little bit, and I remember the cops telling us to evacuate our home, Nate was like nah, we just built this meat shop, I’m not letting this sucker burn down. (Haha) Well, good news, it didn’t burn down, and it’s still standing. We had our grand opening the first Saturday of October 2020!

We mainly just still killed for other meat shops, not much went into our coolers from the start, our cooler was small and could only handle so much and we just didn’t have the cliental back then that we do now. It did not take long though. January 2023, we stopped butchering for other meat shops and purely butchered for ourselves, it was a scary leap for sure, but that’s what it’s all about in your own business. We’ve gone through a lot, a lot of good, a lot of not so good, anybody who has their own business knows what it takes. Taking those big leaps, even the little leaps are better than nothing, then you also have the giant leaps. Sometimes you’ll have set backs, well probably more than sometimes, but it’s all apart of the game, and if we didn’t take these chances on our business, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

We’ve grown so much within the last 5 years since we opened Nate’s Custom Farm Butchering, and we have grown immensely since Nate buying his first kill truck in 2016. We truly have such amazing customers, we are so thankful, there’s been some customers since the very beginning that have also watched us grow from 1 cooler to 2 coolers, 1 freezer to 2 freezers, hand wrapping burger to finally having a meat stuffer machine to make life easier! (lol) 
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I won’t say it’s been a walk in the park, but it’s been a walk in field of tall grass on a warm summer evening with the sun setting and a little thunder and rain and lightning rolling in, because it’s been beautiful, exciting, fulfilling, chaotic, anticipating, and a bit stressful. (If ya live in Oregon, you know what I’m talking about in a field of tall grass in the summer with lightning.) I wouldn’t trade any of it though, and I’m really proud of how far we’ve came together, looking back at the beginning is a trip, it keeps me humble, now we are here, this is where it all began for us.