The Village

Meet Our Village

To be successful in this industry, this economy, this community - and one might argue, as a human - it is important to have strong, long-lasting and meaningful relationships that go beyond simplistic transactions and take it or leave it experiences. While we consider every relationship we have with our farmers, our customers and our suppliers to be critical, there are a some that stand out as pillars - some short-term and some long-term collaborative and we've highlighted them below (in no particular order). If you'd like to be part of the RSMC village, we'd love to work with you.

Happy Valley Meat Co.'s (HVMC) mission is to forge a direct connection between chefs and the farmers who grow their meat. Working with responsibly operated small family farms in Central Pennsylvania, HMVC buys whole animals and has RSMC break them into cuts, allowing convenient responsible sourcing for chefs. This mission is helping to keep farms thriving by providing a market for their meat - farms are actually growing as a result of this business partnership. Another cool thing? HMVC donates meat to the Centre Hall-Potter Township Food Pantry every month to help feed your neighbors.

RSMC has become an integral part of providing meat for the fresh food chain in NYC called Our Harvest. Our Harvest seeks to address food traceability issues, inefficient food supply chain issues, food quality and mislabeling issues and the hunger problem that is often over looked in our country. Our Harvest is an online food marketplace stocked with fresh food and quality suppliers. Customers place orders and community pickups are established. The best part? For every order at $25 and above, Our Harvest donates a meal to a local food pantry in NYC. That's our meat helping to feed people. The meat of your neighbors. The meat of your community.

Kitchen Table Consultants (KTC), a collective group of entrepreneurs passionate about local food systems and small businesses, consults with food and farming businesses to solve problems, save businesses and add value. Their goal is simple - "to help passionate farmers and food artisans build lasting, profitable, locally-focused businesses." Offering services such as: advising and coaching, hands on help and project management, small business book keeping and interim/virtual management teams they've walked a mile in a business person's shoes and understand the challenges of running a business first-hand. KTC consults with and handles book keeping services for RSMC.

Doug Wasson and his family have been dairy farmers in Penn's Valley since 1959. Today Doug runs his dairy, Willow Run Farm, full time, but he has been passionate about raising pigs since he was 14 and raised show pigs for fairs and 4H. For the past 10 years Doug has raised pigs as a hobby for whole hog sausage, which he has sold to family and friends. Today, you can still see Doug's eye for show-quality pigs on his farm. The Hampshire/Yorkshire crosses he raises have the distinct, muscular frame of a prize pig. As they root through their field and play with one another, you can see the pig's strong muscles working underneath the skin. Doug mixes his own blend of feed right on the farm to create a higher protein feed. This also helps the hogs to develop more muscle and less backfat. Another thing that makes Doug's pigs unique is that they're born and raised right on his farm. Some farmers buy partially raised "feeder pigs" from other farms or at auction, but Doug Wasson stays involved from start to finish. From the time they're piglets to when they reach market weight, Doug has his eye on the pigs every step of the way. At the end of the day all this care and attention makes for great quality pork. After sharing some of his whole hog sausage with friends, they exclaimed to Doug , "That's too good to be just called 'sausage;' this is 'Wassauge!'" And thus Doug Wasson's brand "Wassage" was born. Doug was also one of the first neighbors to reach out to us when we moved to the area. We can help get you in touch with Doug, let us know if you're interested in Wassauge.

Rising Spring Meat Company was assisted by the Pennsylvania Small Business Development Center. Special thanks to Linda Feltman and Michael Ryan who guided us through all of our beginning days and who continue to advise and assist us in our operation! Read our Success Story!

Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative is a non-profit organic farmer’s cooperative of over 100 family farmers headquartered in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania focused on creating healthy high quality foods from their highly maintained and enriched soils on our small-scale family farms. Although created to serve the LFFC, they also have a transportation arm offering food transport along their routes. They have become a critical partner to RSMC and our partners to transport meat to and from customers.

Fleischers Craft Butchery builds relationships between farmers, butchers and families, insisting on strict standards of quality, to provide butchery and culinary expertise to their customers through education and thoughtful service. RSMC is part of Fleischers supply chain and brings meat from farms of our regions to kitchens in New York and Connecticut.

Elk Creek Cafe - home to the best vibes, the folk of the valley and a deep support for local agriculture - sources meat from RSMC. When they say they go local, they aren't kidding. Chef Cutty (as we call him - he calls himself "Professional hard worker") has a gift for making food very pleasing and Elk Creek has a gift for creating a space where everybody wants to go and everybody knows your name. They are the Cheers of Penns Valley. When you support them, you support us and many other farmers of our region.

John Hartranft, of Watchdog Heating and Cooling, manages all of our heating needs at RSMC. He is incredibly responsive and has been a vital resource to us. Our heat room was installed by him and it's been his kingdom since the day it was installed. The amount of jams he's gotten us out of has us highly indebted to him. We can't recommend him highly enough. Trades are critical and we are glad John picked this as his.

Way Fruit Farm is a local orchard and grocer, supporting local farms and businesses by stocking their products at their shop and on their online grocery store. RSMC provides services for some of the farmers that help to supply Way's with meat for customers to enjoy. Shop local! Shop small!

Leroy Gable, of Mobile Refrigeration from Winfield, PA, manages all of RSMC's cooling needs. He has a mind for mechanical systems in the way very few do these days and has helped RSMC time and time again to fix issues on the fly, on the quick and instead of replacing without thought or analysis. He's a figure-er and we need more people like him. Trades are critical and we're not sure where we'd be without Leroy having pick this as his.

Carlisle Container Company worked closely with us to design new boxes. Adam is our main point of contact and this shot captures what feels like a milestone in the development of “our box”, the delivery of the first set of boxes with artwork. Adam and the crew have worked through several issues, the goal being to build the best box we can to carry your meat and some level of branding to effect the overall recognition by people near and far that the farms of our region are where they want to get the meat they put in their ice box. Part of this, for us, is to develop a box so attractive that the other shops of our region adopt it and together we blanket brand the region, really lock down the idea that meat eaten in the northeast is raised in the northeast. One can dream.

BRGR just came onto the scene in State College, PA and after several conversations we decided to take a risk on each other. Sadly, this partnership began only weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic and quickly had to pause due to the dine-in restrictions. Once our community is back up and running, eating together and toasting some beers - we look forward to re-forging this new connection with BRGR for the long-run.

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814 422 8810 | info@risingspringmeats.com | 119 Cooper Street, Spring Mills, PA 16875