Meet the Farmers

Kara and Darold Enright, owners of Enright Cattle Company in Tweed, Ontario are fourth-generation farmers committed to community. They farm to feed their family, their neighbours and the community-at-large.

They take great care of their land and animals, ensuring they grow and thrive. And they take great pride in the the products they produce – exceptionally good food they can share with others.

They want the next generation to inherit productive soil, to understand the value of farming, to appreciate where their food comes from, and to continue feeding the community.

The Enrights feel a strong commitment to their community and take steps to reduce their impact. They continually look for new ways to manage water consumption and use technology to prevent waste every step of the way.

At Enright, nothing goes to waste, they use as much of their animals as possible. While beef is their main business, they sell bones for soup, make soap from fat, their offal goes into gourmet dog food and treats, and they craft gorgeous leather goods from the hides. Even the animals’ manure goes back into the fields as fertilizer.

A cow, a duck, a turkey, a pig. The sign with the animals for Perrys' Farm on Yarker Road just outside Verona catches your eye. And in a nutshell, it gives you a nice capsule description of what it is that farmers Dave and Kim Perry and their family do. But it’s not the whole story. It’s just too bad that there isn’t any room on that sign for the donkeys they sell to other farmers to protect their herds from coyotes, for example. And there’s really no way to put their philosophy of farming and local food on the sign.

A seventh-generation farmer who got his start at age six helping his grandmother milk 21 cows by hand each morning, Dave bought the farm from his grandparents (“It hurts me to see good land go,” he says), and today, he is the only one of his brothers and sisters still on the land. It’s a life he’s committed to. That goes for the whole family. His wife, Kim, runs local food store "Food Less Travelled" in Verona, and Grant and Mason, eighth-generation farmers keeps busy with 100 ducks.

The Perrys are also committed to improving the quality of their pride and joy, their herd of black Maine-Anjou beef cattle. Dave bought his first of the breed, known for being, he says, “docile and easy to raise,” at eighteen and travelled to Alberta to learn more about them. Today their cattle are widely in demand as breeding stock – they recently sent two to Alberta for the sale marking the 50th anniversary of the breed’s introduction to Canada.

The Perry family has been a customer of Quinn’s Meats to process their animals “pretty much since original owner Brian Quinn opened up 47 years ago,” says Dave. They’re staying with them. “They do a good job,” he says, and adds, “they’re local.”

Accountable. That’s the word Renata Haan uses to describe the philosophy her family takes when it comes to the food that Haanover Farms produces.  Accountable means using old-school production methods that ensure healthy soils – and the future of the farm. Accountable means raising their pigs, grass-fed beef, rabbits and chickens in an environmentally conscious way. Accountable means that they understand and stand behind how their products are processed. 

Haan never planned on being  a farmer. Trained as a nurse in Germany, she met husband-to-be xxxxxx on a trip to Canada as a tourist, and she laughs, “The rest is history.” They began farming fulltime 26 years ago, a relatively small-scale operation with a commitment to producing nutritious and flavourful meat. Since 2005, the have been selling directly to their customers through farmers’ markets in Belleville, Gananoque and in Kingston at the Memorial Centre and directly at their farm. Their meat can also be found at restaurants in Prince Edward County and in the Belleville-Kingston area. 

“We’ve been with Quinn’s about ten years now,” says Haan. “We use them to process all our pork. My customers love what they do, especially with the value-added products like sausages and kielbasa. Quinn’s ownership has changed recently, but says Hahn, “There have been no changes for us since Kara took over.”

A good thing. Local companies like Quinn’s are “very hard to find these days,” Haan says. And that’s critical “for small scale livestock operations. If you there isn’t a butcher at the end and you can’t do it yourself, you’re out of luck. We’re really grateful that they kept going.”

Cory Priest wasn’t happy about the quality of the meat he could buy in the supermarket. So he decided to raise his own.

“Fifteen years ago, we bought a piece of property,” he says. At first he and his wife, Shanna, were raising animals exclusively for their own use but before too long that grew to include, “your mom, your sister, your neighbour.” A welder, pipefitter and millwright by training, in 2017, he left that behind and he and Shanna began farming  fulltime.

Today on Thorpe Farm, their 200 acres spread near Odessa, they raise chickens and turkeys and pasture a flock of dorper sheep for meat production. “We also have 1.2 million bees, so we produce a bunch of honey, and I summer steers that I buy from a neighbour,” says Priest.

“Everything we own is raised on live grass,” he says. “With our poultry we use shelters that we move twice a day, so the birds are eating the things birds are supposed to eat as opposed to being stuck in a barn and force-fed whatever pellet is out there on the market.”

The goal is to give people an ethical and sustainable choice when it comes to the food they eat. Thorpe Farms does that by selling to the public through their website and via their farm store. Customers love the quality – and the commitment that Corry and Shana bring to producing quality food. 

Priest relies on Quinn’s to process his lamb monthly and has beef annually. Having a local butcher they can call on is consistent with their philosophy. “It also boosts everyone’s business,” he says, “if I mention that I am five or ten kilometres from Kara’s, boast about it on our website, it benefits everyone.”