Making groceries – Farmers market gets more diverse, offering meats and seafood

On a warm, clear Thursday morning, the line at Raymond Cutrer’s booth at the Red Stick Farmers Market is five customers deep. Cutrer listens intently as one woman shares how she prepared last week’s pork chops and asks what cuts of pork and beef he has brought today. There is a lot to choose from: homemade salami, ground beef, soup bones, premium steaks and smoked sausage made with a 100-year-old family recipe. She decides on sausage, salami and more pork chops, telling Cutrer she’ll report her culinary results next week.

Cutrer is one of several Red Stick Farmers Market vendors who round out a shopping experience that was once largely limited to produce. Over the market’s nearly 17-year history, organizers have continued to add diverse “protein” vendors who supply everything from fresh Gulf shrimp and soft shell crabs to beef, pork, eggs, farmstead cheese and pastured poultry.

“The interest in buying these items is definitely there among consumers,” says Copper Alvarez, executive director of the market’s organizing body, Big River Economic and Agricultural Development Alliance (BREADA). “And the farmers are finding it gives them another avenue to sell their products.”

Cutrer drives in for both the Thursday and Saturday markets from Kentwood, where his family runs Cutrer’s Meat Market and Slaughterhouse. Cutrer’s father started the business in 1958 to provide custom slaughter for hunters and ranchers, and it is known for its hand-cut meats and homemade sausage, bacon and salami. Cutrer says having a presence at the farmers market for the past two years has helped expand the family business significantly.

“This has been an incredible experience for us,” says Cutrer, who recently joined the business after several years in oil and gas sales. He wanted to be able to spend more time at home. “I knew that one of the best ways for us to expand was to get into the farmers market, and it’s been a real win-win.”

Cutrer accepts email orders prior to the market so that consumers can be assured their selections are in place. ?Alvarez says that today’s shoppers expect to be able to come to the market and find a diversity of ingredients to get them through the next week.

“Variety is really important,” she says.

Iverstine Farms has been a wildly popular market vendor, providing beef, pork and poultry and also supplying local restaurants, including Beausoleil and Juban’s, with its humanely raised products.

Louisiana shrimpers Lance and Melissa Nacio of Anna Marie Shrimp bring Gulf shrimp, and sometimes squid and flounder, to the Red Stick Farmers Market year-round. They use a special onboard freezing process that keeps them from having to add chemical preservatives. Their process has also allowed the Nacios to get their shrimp into Whole Foods Market. Lance Nacio says that with the tumult of the past seven years, which included a succession of hurricanes and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, it’s been important to have the consistency of the farmers market and its enthusiastic customers.

“It gives you that connection between consumers and producers,” Nacio says. “It allows people to find the best products they can buy and to meet the people who provide them.”