Lima family farms owns and operates a 350 acre farm in hillsborough, new jersey, where we raise 100 % grass FED beef, as well as pastured pigs and poultry

Lima Family Farms Inc. received a $200,000 Project Grant award from the US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service under the Meat and Poultry Inspection Readiness Grants – Supplemental Funding program (CFDA 10.180). The grant will support Lima Family Farms' expansion of on-farm meat processing capabilities to include pork and beef slaughter and processing for retail sale. Currently, the farm slaughters and processes its own poultry but relies on off-site USDA-inspected facilities for beef and hog slaughter and initial processing before final processing by a third-party. Funds will be used to design and construct an approximately 2,500 square foot addition to an existing building to establish on-farm facilities for pork and beef slaughter and processing. This is intended to improve the farm's capacity and efficiency in meeting increased consumer demand while reducing transportation costs and animal stress. The project is scheduled for completion by September 2024.

We slaughter and process our own chickens on the farm and send six head of cattle and 10 hogs every month to a USDA inspected facility in pennsylvania for slaughter (springfield meats) and then send the 1/4S to nellos speciality meats in nazareth, PA for processing. We sell our meats to retail customers at our farm market at 826 amwell road in hillsborough, NJ and the weekly princeton farmers market. When large meat processing facilities closed due to covid in 2020, the local shop rite told their customers that they were limited to 1 pound of beef. We received a good deal more customers at our store, and were shortly out of inventory. We quickly learned that while we had plenty of inventory "on the hoof" there was no way to get new appointments for USDA approved slaughter and processing in the region applying existing best practices; this grant aims to apply lessons learned through the niche' meat processor alliance and rutgers department of food science to expand the lima family farms existing poultry facilities by adding the capability to slaughter and process pork and beef for retail sale at our market. This would improve our capacity to efficiently meet consumer demand, and create a more resilient local food supply. Processing our own animals on site will reduce their stress as well as our costs with transportation. We will use existing documents on general plant design considerations as well as model haccp plans and ssops to develop construction documents that will fit an approximately 2500 square foot facility into one of our farms existing buildings. These plans can be shared with others looking to develop affordable small on-site facilities. Our total projected budget will be approximately $250,000.