Our Gate To Your Plate

If you’re looking for all natural, healthy meat then we’ve found a great farm for you. Our Gate To Your Plate is a sprawling farm located on the Grimsby Mountain. Owned and operated by Andy Sproston and his daughters Jade and Emily, Our Gate To Your Plate offers customers 100% grass-fed beef and lamb, and pork living in the woods.

Andy is an English immigrant who has farming in his blood. His aim is to bring the quality and taste of traditional values to the plate of local consumers. He’s doing just that.

Andy says he’s received great support from the community, and there is a real demand for this kind of product. When you visit the farm you can cleary see why people are so impressed. Our Gate To Your Plate cuts no corners and produces top quality meat that is as good as it gets.

Andy has several neighbouring fields surrounding his farm and around Beamer Falls. He uses these fields to grow hay to feed the animals on the farm through the cold winter months. When your animals only eat grass, you need to store a lot of it to make it through winter.

Galloway’s are a beautiful cow with longer hair, and that’s exactly what you’ll find at Our Gate To Your Plate. They’re an old, rare breed. Our Gate To Your Plate’s beef isn’t gamey, because they refuse to rush quality.

“A lot of people in my opinion aren’t sticking too the rules,” says Andy. “When you’re doing strictly grass-fed beef, you’ve got to be looking at two-and-a-half years. It’s two winters, and they don’t like doing two winters. Who wants to do two winters with an animal when, if you give it a little bit of grain it’ll be gone in one winter. But here, because we’re doing strictly grass-fed beef, it’s two winters. There’s no other way around it.”

“The taste is clean,” Andy went on to explain. “It smells like it did 50 years ago, how beef used to be. You don’t need to marinate it. You don’t need to do anything to it. Just cook it. It’s fantastic. The taste is amazing.”

There is a big difference in grass-fed meat. Besides having a better nutritional profile, you have to keep in mind what isn’t in it. Look at the liver. The liver is one of the body’s major filters. Why would you want to eat a toxic chemical filter, when you could eat something that only has to filter all-natural food?

The farm’s sheep are Romney. They freely roam around eating grass in complete bliss. Romney don’t work for commercial farms because they grow slowly. These are sturdy sheep. They’re solid, and are given the time to mature properly. All the animals Our Gate To Your Plate raises are rare breeds. There are only 900 Romney sheep left in all of Canada. The farm just got a new ram from Saskatchewan because that’s how far you have to go to get a pure bred Romney. Andy knows it is worth it.

When you wander over to the pigs’ field you’ll be greeted by some of the most curious, and happy pigs around. There are large sows and boars, tiny little piglets, and everything in between.

There are the Large Black, which as you’d expect are large and black. These are the rarest of the pigs, making the critically rare breed list. The farm’s Large Black boar is from Alberta, and Andy has sold Large Black piglets to Prince George BC and Manitoba.  Then you have the Hampshire, which is mostly black, but has a white/pink band that stretches across its back to its front legs. You’ll also find Tamworth (endangered), one of the oldest breeds of pigs you can find. These old English pigs are beauties with their ginger/red hair.

All the pigs are of a good stock, and are covered with hair, which is helpful considering they’re outside all year (except for February when they mosey over to the barn for shelter). They’re hardy animals that can handle the weather. They have bedding out in the field, and that’s good enough for them.

Naturally raised outdoor pigs don’t get any shots. In fact, all of Andy’s animals and poultry are drug and medicated feed free, and are fed no GMOs. In the commercial pig business one of the first shots piglets get is an iron shot. That’s because pigs need iron, and they don’t get enough in a barn. However, Our Gate To Your Plate’s naturally raised outdoor pigs get more than enough as it’s found in the soil. They’re eating off the land, and wallowing in mud. This is another reason Sproston won’t let any chemicals in his fields. The animals live off the fields, and like us, Andy doesn’t want to eat meat filled with chemicals.

The farm store is where you can actually go to buy all of your meat products. The meat is sorted by cuts, and is sealed in air-locked packages to keep it fresh. Because this meat is free of the chemicals and preservatives used in the commercial meat world, open meat has a short expiration date. This is a small price to pay for quality meat that is actually good for you.

The farm store also sells local honey made from the beehives on one of Andy’s fields. Local honey is great for seasonal allergies, as it helps your body adapt to local pollens.

Our Gate To Your Plate is an incredible farm with an amazing vision. If you’re in the Grimsby area make sure to stop by the farm and try some of this amazing meat.