Sometimes, it takes a village to expand a meat processing enterprise.

That was evident recently in the northwestern Colorado town of Craig as Deborah Fitch of Fitch Ranch Artisan Meats guided the mayor, city council members, economic development officials, lenders, and builders through the processing plant she and her husband, Cam, have steadily grown since purchasing it in 2022.

How do lawn mower repair, meat processing and pet product manufacturing all fit together?

Just ask Vernon Beechy of Beechy’s Custom Meats in Shipshewana, Indiana.

On June 17th, Flower Hill Institute's Regional Director of Technical Assistance Chris Roper made a site visit to Barnsdall Meat Processing in Barnsdall, Oklahoma which made him stop and reflect on how fortunate we are after seeing the damage left from two deadly tornadoes that hit the small community within a five week period. 

Eric Gutknecht grew up elbows deep in sausage making. His parents immigrated to Colorado from Switzerland in the 1970s, bringing with them two generations of sausage-making experience.

Eric was three years old when his parents joined a Denver sausage business founded by another Swiss immigrant and purchased the company in the 1980s. Eric notes, “Packing sausage was cheaper than daycare,” so he spent his days learning the trade at his parents’ elbows.

In July 2025, Marvin and Tanisha Frink opened Briarwood Custom Meats Butcher Shop at 5476 Blue Springs Road in Red Springs, NC. Designed to be more than a retail location, the shop blends education, culinary craftsmanship and community pride into every square foot.

In March, Flowerhill Institute made a site visit to the Joshua Training Center located in Pike County, Indiana.  This visit was special: it was almost the two-year anniversary of the initial outreach and connection between Flowerhill Institute and the Joshua Training Center. 

Shortages of trained workers continue to be one of the significant challenges facing smaller processors operating in relatively remote areas.

Fortunately, many higher education institutions of all sizes are working to address those needs, in part with resources that were made available through USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture.

On an early Sunday morning in mid-June, members of several area Tribes, along with leaders of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), World Wildlife Fund and other organizations gathered around the Intertribal Buffalo Council’s (ITBC) mobile processing trailer at a TNC ranch south of Rapid City, SD to participate in the cultural harvest of a buffalo bull that had been felled by a sharpshooter in the pasture minutes earlier.

If you can’t eat it, wear it.

Or, put it on your skin.

Or, feed it to your companion animals.

That was the message from the most recent Offal Party, hosted by Colorado State University’s Agriculture Innovation Center on January 25th during the National Western Stock Show in Denver.

With a bit of extra time on my hands last week, I popped by an H-Mart store in my Denver-area suburb to take a look around.

For those unfamiliar, H-Mart is a Korean-based grocery chain that operates large-footprint stores across the United States. They focus on ethnic diets, with perishable sections and grocery aisles stocked with items you won’t find at Kroger or Walmart. Taro root and rambutan (whatever that is) are interspersed with lettuce and cucumbers in the produce section. The seafood section includes a live lobster tank and a counter where customers can scoop fresh squid and octopus.

We’ve been operating at the Meat and Poultry Processing Technical Assistance Program since March 2022. Describing our work as Meat and Poultry…and Catfish Technical Assistance may be more accurate.

About 20 years ago, when imported catfish-like products undercut domestic catfish producers, the sector successfully petitioned Congress to declare catfish as an Amenable Species. That brought catfish under USDA jurisdiction, and today it is still the only aquatic species processed under FSIS inspection.

The only thing certain for smaller meat and poultry processors is uncertainty.

As noted by Drs. Marty Matlock of the University of Arkansas and Darrell Peel of Oklahoma State University in a Flower Hill Institute online roundtable, processors are being buffeted by increasing equipment and construction costs, workforce uncertainty, extremely tight cattle supplies, and other factors.