An increased demand for locally produced food is keeping a Timmins farm busy supplying customers with its grass-fed beef.
Noella and Danny Farrell of Mattagami Heights Farm began selling their beef at the farmers’ market and the downtown urban park market a few years ago. Recently, the beef was added to the menu of the Fishbowl, a local restaurant that has been in operation for 37 years.
“We started promoting our beef at the markets in the last few years and it has been going really well,” said Noella.
“I have been farming for a long time and my biggest niche right now is the urban and farmers’ market. Local buyers are really interested and I would like to see other farmers doing that because there is a demand.”
Noella retired from her job at Canada Post two years ago, and Danny continues to work outside the home. But her retirement years have not been filled with idle leisure. She can be found in the barn, or in the fields in the summer checking on her herd and fencing.
The farm where she raises her grass-fed limousin herd, which numbers around 40, is the same one she grew up on. After her father died, she and her husband decided to buy the farm and she began raising sheep and chickens. The limousines were added in the 1980s, originally for rebreeding.
“Grass-fed beef is the most natural way to raise beef. It takes two years instead of a year and a half,” she said. “I have a lot of pride in my beef.
“Most animals start off that way, but finish at a feed lot where they eat corn and oats with the intent to gain weight. With mine, it is slower but more natural and less stressful.”
The Farrells have always raised their beef this way, utilizing forage in the summer and hay in the wintertime, along with the silage they do as well. They rotate the herd throughout their seven pastures. “I haven’t really increased the herd, even though there is a need to do so. I have a base of 160 acres and that is all I can sustain on this farm,” Noella said.
The couple doesn’t use hormones or antibiotics and limousin beef is naturally leaner, yielding more from the carcass.
The breed is also known for its ease of calving. According to the Mayo Clinic, grass- ed beef may have some heart-health benefits that other types of beef don't have.
These include less total fat, more heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, more conjugated linoleic acid, a type of fat that's thought to reduce heart disease and cancer risks, and more antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamin E.
As word has spread about their beef, their customer base is widening. The majority of their customers are in Timmins, but they are receiving calls from communities such as Hearst, Gogama and even Toronto.
“My market is changed. I supply year round now and I used to do it just in the fall,” she said. As a child, she remembers when there were a lot more farms in the Timmins area and residents depended on the local farmers to eat. Customers she meets at the two markets are often surprised to learn there are still farms in the city.
“When they actually saw me at the markets, that’s when it turned around for me. They were amazed I was in Timmins,” Noella said.
She gives out her business cards, offers recipes and explains how the beef is raised and what the herd is fed. Often, customers ask to come to the farm, a request she doesn’t mind.
“When they have a chance to meet the farmer, it has an impact,” she said.
Noella gives a lot of credit to Taste of Timmins, an organization founded by Rosalia Rivera that promotes sustainable locally grown food.
Rivera was instrumental in getting Mattagami Heights Farm beef on the menu at the Fishbowl.
“She has really opened up the market for us and others and has done more in two years than anyone could have done in 20 years,” she said.
Noella has no regrets being busy with retirement, and wonders how she operated the farm when working full time and at one point, caring for elderly inlaws. She hopes it becomes a third-generation operation, but currently her children have their own careers.
“You have to have a love for the land,” said Noella. “We are the keepers of the land. It is a good healthy life and for me, it is satisfying.”
For her 25th wedding anniversary, she didn’t ask for jewelry. Instead, she wanted a swather, which cuts hay and forms it into rows.
“No diamonds for me,” she said. “I got what I wanted and I am the only operator of it. No one can run it quite like I do.”
