FAQs

From Golden Bay through to Nelson we will mostly deliver the boxes in person, although we may occasionally use an overnight courier to deliver to Nelson.

We deliver to non-rural addresses elsewhere in New Zealand by courier (NZPost) .

Our boxes don’t require a signature on delivery so the courier will leave them on your door step. If you would like them left in a specific place (eg where you know they’ll be out of the sun), note that on your order and it will go on the courier label. Our boxes are packed with enough ice to keep the meat chilled for at least 24 hours so even if you’re out all day they’ll be fine.

We don’t have stocks of meat on the farm for sale sorry – we butcher enough for the Takaka Market and to sell online.  

The two options for purchasing meat are either to come along to the Takaka market on Saturday morning, or to order from our website. Make sure that you subscribe to our newsletter as we send out a notice each week when the new stock has been uploaded to the website.

If you have chosen to pay by internet banking, you should get an email with our bank details on it. But if you can’t find that, here it is again:

03-1354-0607066-00

Yes, we’d love to see you in person on the farm. Please contact us by email to arrange a time. You can also drive, walk or bike through our farm by following Bird Rd at Clifton which cuts right through the middle of the farm as it winds up to Birds Clearing.

We believe that there are aspects of running a certified organic livestock farm that are difficult to achieve while still putting the welfare of our animals first, particularly around the prevention of parasites. We do however believe in the fundamental principles behind organic farming, and are working towards incorporating these where we can see that it’s the right thing to do. We strongly believe in having healthy contented animals farmed in a low intensity way and improving the capacity of the soil to sequester carbon and build organic matter.

Sometimes when you open a vacuum pack of meat with bones you might notice an odd smell. This is just lactic acid and is quite normal. It will disappear soon after opening and has no effect on the meat.

Yes, depending on our stock levels. Please contact us directly to discuss this.

As much as possible we source from our own farm, however occasionally we have to supplement the supply from nearby local trusted farms, where we know the farmer well and are confident that they also put the welfare of their animals first.

The term ‘Lamb’ is widely used when referring to sheep meat, although strictly speaking, ‘Lamb’ only applies to the meat from juvenile animals before they have their first adult teeth at around 14 months of age. The young adults are then called ‘Hoggets’ until they are fully grown at around 2 years, after which the meat should really be classed as ‘Mutton’.

‘Lamb’ is only available for 2-3 months, and because we are killing throughout the year (rather than the usual farming practice of sending all the lambs away when they are ready), the meat we sell later in the season is strictly speaking ‘hogget’. Our webshop lists the cuts as “Lamb / hogget”, and depending on the time of the year will be either. In our weekly newsletter we send out news when there is lamb or hogget available.

If we have meat from older adult sheep (with more than two permanent incisors in wear, generally 2+ years old) it will be described on the webshop as mutton rather than lamb.

Sorry for that… It seems that this happens occasionally under certain unknown situations (we’re following up and trying to figure out why). The following suggestions might help.

1st, if it is giving you a message like “username or password incorrect” then you might have forgotten your password – you can click on the link to reset your password, which will send an email to you with instructions.

2nd, if you login, but it just loads the login form again (without giving you an error message) then it might be that there is some corruption on the data that is saved in your web browser that keeps track of whether you’re logged in (the so-called “cookies”). This seems to happen mostly on Chrome, so here are some instructions for clearing this data.

The solution seems to be to delete the “cookies” on your browser for the elliscreekfarm website. –

Deleting cookies for Chrome on Desktop:

Sometimes the data that a website saves on your browser can become corrupted, causing problems on the website (such as not being able to logon). Browsers allow you to delete these cookies for a single website.

1. Click on the small circle next to the website name, then select “Cookies and site data” from the menu that pops up
   
   
2. Then click on “Manage on-device site data”
   
   
3. On the next view, click the bins to delete the site data from elliscreekfarm.co.nz and www.elliscreekfarm.co.nz
   

Delete Cookies for Chrome on Android

1. Click on the small circles next to the website name:
   
   
2. then click on “Cookies and site data” from the menu that pops up:
   
   
3. On the next view, click the bins to delete cookies and site data from elliscreekfarm.co.nz and www.elliscreekfarm.co.nz:
   
   

We are now packing orders for delivery in cartons with natural wool insulation and ice packs. In the courier boxes with ice packs the meat stays nicely chilled for at least 24 hours, long enough for it to get from our fridge to yours.

For Golden Bay and Nelson customers, the ice packs and wool insulation can be recycled back to us so we can use them again (if they’re clean) – we can collect them when we deliver your order in person. If your order comes by courier, you can save them up until we next do an in-person delivery. Currently we refund or credit $2 for a set of returned packaging in good condition.

We hate plastic but it happens to be the only thing that’s really good at preventing blood from leaking through cardboard boxes and other people’s courier packages. We definitely use as little as possible though, so that means no foam trays, just shrink wrap vacuum packs. These can be washed out with warm soapy water and recycled in the soft plastics recycling collection points once they start operating again later in 2019.

Smaller cuts like steaks are normally packed in pairs depending on the size, and mince etc is packed in portions of about 500g. Larger cuts like roasts and corned beef are usually about 1-1.5kg.