How We Do Things

Those of you who’ve been around for a while, know that we do things a little differently (hands up if you remember the San Diego drop off days!). But those of you who are new to Glacier Grown might be wondering what the heck is going on here! In order to clear up any confusion, here are some Glacier Grown ordering basics.

1. We take orders, and then harvest animals, twice a year - in fall and late spring. We start taking orders in about April and September for our two harvests. Because we base our harvest numbers on the orders that we receive, we have people order and pay a non-refundable deposit up front. We sell halves, quarters (split-halves), eighths and smaller variety bundles of meat depending on your freezer and household size.

2. Our butchers start processing animals. Based on the orders that we receive, we start harvesting animals a few weeks after the ordering begins. Depending on when you order in the whole process, there could be anywhere from a 1 - 10 week wait for your meat (occasionally longer if we have an exceptionally hard winter making dry ice deliveries and shipping difficult). For example, if you order at the beginning of April, you could possibly be waiting until early June to get your meat, BUT ordering then ensures that you get the products that you want. However, if you order in May, June isn’t too far off. And if you order after we’ve already harvested, from what we have remaining, we can get it out to you the following week. Once you order, we will contact you and let you know where we are in the process and when we expect to have your meat back from the butcher, so that you can have your freezer ready.

3.Once we get the meat back from the butcher, we start setting up shipping dates. We will never ship until we confirm a shipping date with you. No one wants frozen meat to sit on the porch for 3 days while they are camping!

4. Lastly, and most importantly, you get your meat and start eating the best grass fed, grass finished, free range, chemical free meat you’ve ever had!

Some additional information:

Just because we only take orders twice a year, doesn’t always mean that you have to wait until the next harvest…..but unless you stock up, it could. Unlike some large companies out there with multizillion dollar marketing budgets and very large freezer capacities for storing inventory, we are a small company and do not plan to stock inventory between harvests; however, we usually do have some inventory remaining between harvests. For instance, if we have orders for 7 1/2 bison, we obviously have to process 8 animals and would have a 1/2 animal (or 2 - 1/4’s or a few bundles) available until it sells out. We try to list everything available on the website ( www.glaciergrown.com ) between harvests, but if you are out of meat and need something, get ahold of us to see what we have in stock. We can often do customized orders with our remaining inventory at the end of a season.

Our shipping and harvest dates change depending on the year, weather, growers, and animals. Our harvests aren’t at the exact same time every year. Some years we have long (REEEAAAALLLLLLYYY LOOOOOONNNGGG!) winters and so our spring harvest is closer to summer so that the animals have plenty of time on lush, green grass prior to harvesting. Winter also affects the fall harvest. Our winter (and sometimes fall) weather determines dry ice deliveries to our area, the ability for the butcher to get to the animals for harvesting, and shipping schedules. Remember, we are dealing with real animals (not just inventoried meat), and we live in MT where we can have some crazy winter conditions and where there are 6.8 people per square mile - that means lots of great pasture land for animals to roam around on, but it also means that dry ice companies are far away and our access is often limited. We don’t live in podunk nowhere (we have a Target and a Costco nearby, hallelujah), but we aren’t high on the list of importance in the scheme of business deliveries either. And, when there’s weather forecasted (whether it is extremely hot or extremely cold), we don’t take a chance on shipping; we wait until things clear up.

We know that this method might not work for some people, and that’s okay. But we know for a large number of you, this works wonderfully. We take pride in knowing that we are providing you with the best quality and best tasting, grass fed, grass finished, free range, clean meats available. If you ever have questions, please contact us - we are happy to answer them. www.glaciergrown.com , kriggsy@gmail.com, 406-407-2803.