Wolki Farm buys butchery to continue food security goal on Border

Wolki Farm owner Jacob Wolki has bought a butchery in Albury in the hopes to not only cut his own meat but also collaborate with other like-minded farmers to improve Border food security.

"We want to have a bit more control over our production line so it seemed easier for me to buy a butchery than to control butchers," he told The Border Mail.

"We are planning to set up the butchery, get some new equipment in there and some butchers in there and to hopefully really streamline some systems.

"We are hoping some local farmers can sell their lamb or pork or beef direct to their consumers off their farm and we can just make the butcher part of it really easy for them."

While they have no immediate plans to open the butcher doors to the public just yet Mr Wolki said he has already had multiple local farmers contact him.

"I have had about seven or eight farmers approach me," he said.

"It has spread around the community pretty quick and there are a lot of farmers, pretty big farmers, coming on board.

IN OTHER NEWS:

"Albury-Wodonga should be the crown jewel in Australia in regards to food security.

"And people being able to access good local produce direct off the farms.

"We want to facilitate that happening.

"Part of that food security story is maybe people having a chest freezer at home and having half a cow in it at the start of the year or something.

"While it is advantageous for us to sell our animals cut by cut it is not the end goal we have in mind.

"We are trying to promote people kind of building up a bit of a larder at home and having more security.

"It not only improves your food security at home but if you do it in line with your environment it actually makes the farmers lives richer and more fulfilling as well.

"Hopefully the butchery is the tool to educate people.

"The butchery is already proving a great conduit to building great relationships with other local like-minded farmers and we need to get together to educate the community.

"Someone said to me the other day 'why would you be cutting up meat for your competitors'?

"But I don't see it like that - I view other local farmers as colleagues and friends.

"If there is a farmer next door who wants to sell his beef direct to a customer like we do - power to them, I want to help them do it.

"The competition is Coles and Woolworths."

Wolki Farm produce is available for retail sales from the couple's Cafe Musette near the Albury railway station as well as Almar Organics.

And while Mr Wolki said the cafe has been adapting to the ongoing pandemic, there are pros and cons with supplying their own food.

"The pros is we have more control over the product and sell a bit more of the story," he said.

"We can talk to people about our environmental conscience and the welfare story and all this sort of stuff but the cons are it is a lot more work.

"And a lot more capital to get everything going but it is obviously what we want to do so we are doing it."

Wolki Farm beef, lamb and pork are currently killed at the Wangaratta abattoir before being shipped back to a North Albury butcher to break down.

"All the animals have to go through an abattoir so we use the one in Wangaratta and then they get shipped up, but the chain of custody is that they have to be given to a butchery to be broken down into the retail pieces," Mr Wolki said.

"At the moment we have been using Wade at Meat Talk in North Albury and he is great but he has his own business to run and we just want to have a bit more control of our meat.

"We don't have immediate plans to open the retail doors of the butchery, we are more so interested in developing a process so we can help other farmers like us to streamline their operations to sell direct to their consumers.

"Our produce is available at Cafe Musette and Almar Organic and in the short term we will be staying that way.

"To open up the front of the butcher is a lot of extra logistics, it would be a whole extra wage in the interim, but it will probably happen eventually but definitely not a priority.