Farmers’ Gate Market stands alone in the fields of Wales, Maine, almost 60 miles from the Village of Rockville and just to the west of Litchfield. It’s worth the drive to visit one of Maine’s premier butcher shops, where pasture-raised, humanely-treated, and incredibly tasty local meats are the only kind on offer. And it is even nicer when the butchers do the driving.

Every few months, Ben Slayton and Erin Cinelli pack orders of beef, chicken, pork, and lamb into coolers, load the coolers – and their toddler – into the minivan, and make the trek to the Rockville Meat Up. Waiting in the heart of Rockville Village, just across from the Chapel, is a gathering of residents who are interested in buying local foods, supporting sustainable agriculture, and eating very well.

“I never thought I'd get so conversational about meat, or become so interested in the way food winds its way into the meals we cook,” said Rockland resident and Meat Up regular Rick Thackeray.

Meat Ups are at least as much about conversation and education as they are about food. Slayton taught the group how to part out a chicken last spring, after I mentioned that my efforts to break down a bird had been, well, butchered.

Cinelli, who works fulltime as the executive director of a small nonprofit, and helps with the shop, and mothers a toddler, shares tips for getting healthy dinners on the table. (Flat iron is quick, cheap, and delicious).

“The social aspect of the Meat Ups is what we really value,” said Cinelli. “We like to have a good network of word-of-mouth marketing that’s outside our small community in Wales, and we like to interact in more depth with our customers. We get to know them, learn what they like and don't like, and answer questions.”

Those questions are as practical as “what kind meat is best for beef stew?” (top round, though bottom round and tip steak are also great) and as philosophical as “do butchers really matter?”

The local and organic food movement has trained us to think about our farmers, and farmers’ markets and community sustained agriculture programs have made it easy for us to meet the people who grow our vegetables. But animals are an important part of sustainable agriculture, too. The livestock industry is severely limited by the lack of infrastructure, and the process of getting meat, as opposed to vegetables, onto dinner plates is far more complicated.

There are only five USDA-inspected slaughterhouses statewide, and those give preference to the large producers, who can guarantee steady business. Meat processed at the additional eight state-inspected slaughterhouses can be sold only in Maine, but small-scale producers have trouble securing slots even at these. Without enough butchering facilities or the business infrastructure that allows small farmers to sell their meat, Slayton said, “there are just too many barriers to getting product to market.”

Butchering, it turns out, is the key to building a sustainable network of small-scale livestock producers. Farmers’ Gate Market has a biweekly slot at the slaughterhouse for most of the year, with a weekly slot from September through December. That means the approximately 20 farm partners it works with have access when they need it, and consumers have steady access to humanely-treated, pasture-raised meat. All told, Farmers’ Gate Market gets about 30 lambs, 100 head of beef, 125 pigs, and 3,000 chickens to hungry customers each year.

Meat Ups are the next step for food-savvy consumers who already know their farmers.

"Not a single steak gets cut without the butcher's hands touching it," said Slayton. "You ought to know whose hands those are.”

For those of us who grew up believing that meat sprung into existence neatly wrapped in plastic, this is novel stuff. It means I can ask for “some kind of pork to braise” and count on Slayton and Cinelli to steer me right. It means I can serve up burgers or meat loaf and know that my ground beef is just that — beef, ground by my friends. It means I can get together with a few dozen friends and literally talk turkey.

“Now we have this small community that gets together and has meaningful conversations about livestock, how our butcher — yes, I have a butcher — creates food from that livestock, and why it tastes the way it does,” said Thackeray. “It's this whole social way of interacting with food... and I get the sense that I'll never not be conversational about meat again.”

The next Rockville Meat Up is planned for early December. For more information, visit www.FarmersGateMarket.com or email meatup@farmersgatemarket.com. You can listen to a recent MPBN feature about Farmers’ Gate Market Meat Ups here.

Kathleen Meil and her family moved to Rockville two and half years ago and are making the small village of Rockport their home. Kathleen blogs about art and design, home and family, and reading and writing at www.AvidWord.com.