Frequently Asked Questions

Unfortunately, our Farm Fresh Eggs do not travel well for shipping. They are available for purchase every weekend at both of our Farmers Market locations and can be sent on Tues/Thur to the Flint Farmers Market by special request. Contact our office at (989) 302-3366 to order eggs for market pickup. 

Our coolers and gel ice packs are designed to keep your meats cold, like a refrigerator, for the entire time your order is in transit. We pack extra ice packs to ensure your meats are still safe even if they are delayed. The meat should be cool to the touch when it arrives. It is okay if the gel packs are not frozen, as long as they are still cold. If you’re still not sure, rely on your nose. Meat that is spoiled will smell sour and be very sticky to the touch. If the box is damaged or opened in any way please contact us immediately.

Unfortunately we are not accepting any coolers anymore but we still would love to help you. Here is a link to find your nearest recycling center click here: https://www.foamfacts.com/recycling/

Please contact us by phone at (989) 302-3366 or by email at CustomerService@JohnHenrys.net as soon as possible. We always want our customers to be 100% satisfied with everything they received from us.

Our meats come from our small family farm. We also work with a few select friends and neighbors who help raise some of our animals on their farms. This ensures we have enough combined land for our animals to have plenty of room to roam in the pasture. All our animals are raised with the highest standards. Our animals are raised outside on pasture, never in a concentrated animal feed operation or feedlot.

Yes! We do everything in our power to make sure that our animals are treated humanely throughout their lives. All of our animals spend their lives on our lush pastures. They have access to a barn if there is inclement weather but mostly prefer to spend their days out in the sunshine or rain. Our chickens and turkeys are let outside to roam as soon as they have feathers and spend their lives digging in the dirt and scratching for bugs. Our pigs love the mud and prefer to spend their days' rutting in the dirt. It is important to us that our animals live their best life on our farm.

Absolutely not! NEVER!

Yes! We use sustainable farming practices in the care of our livestock. One way we do this is by building and maintaining healthy soil – This is important as we plant and harvest feed for our animals as well as keeping our pastures lush. We integrate our livestock and crops and in doing this we are blessed with an abundance of manure fertilizer to keep our fields and pastures healthy.

All of our beef is 100% pasture-raised and are never fed hormones or antibiotics. During the cold winter months, they are fed a mixture of dry alfalfa hay, baleage (fermented hay) and silage (green corn stalk chopped and fermented). This special diet ensures they have enough protein and roughage to keep them healthy and warm in those cold months.

We choose the best packaging based on your order. We use a mixture of vacuum-sealed plastic packaging along with the highest quality white freezer paper. On our larger bundles, we prefer to wrap everything in white freezer paper because it protects against freezer burn better than the vacuum sealed packaging.

Each animal is unique, their shapes and sizes vary. Our animals are able to roam the pastures and graze as they please. They are not given hormones, steroids or fatty feeds, to bulk them up quickly. This results in cuts of meat that will vary in size from animal to animal. Age, diet, and exercise all have an impact on the color and shape of the cuts. Even within one animal, the different cuts may have color variances due to which muscles are exercised more. Here at John Henry’s we vacuum seal our fresh meats for shipping and we do not add carbon monoxide (or any other gasses) to our packaging. Vacuum sealing actually removes the oxygen from the package to maintain freshness and will result in darker and sometimes inconsistent coloring. To learn more about this, visit our blog post about Meat Coloring by clicking here.

On average you should consume or freeze your (vacuum sealed) meats within 2-3 days of its arrival.

While some of our products (like ground meats, sausages, and bratwursts) are shipped frozen, most are not. Fresh meat travels better. According to our USDA inspector, it is perfectly safe to refreeze the meats in your order as long as they arrive to you still cold to the touch. Our coolers and gel ice packs are designed to keep your meats cold, like a refrigerator, for the entire time your order is in transit. We pack extra to ensure your meats are still safe even if they are delayed.

Aged beef just tastes better. Beef has a natural tenderizing enzyme in its muscle fibers. That enzyme works for up to 8 days. Meanwhile, as the meat continues to age, it evaporates water from the muscle, which keeps the flavor concentrated. We age all of our beef for a minimum of 10 days so it has a chance to tenderize and develop its flavor.

Though we use similar practices, we are not certified organic. Instead, we have developed personal farming guidelines and ensure that anyone who has a hand in raising our animals follows these guidelines as well.

- We never use any growth hormones or antibiotics.

- Our animals are raised outside on pasture their entire lives.

- They are fed non-GMO grains that is free from any animal bi-products or hazardous chemicals.

- We like to call it "beyond organic"

To get the best meat, the animal must live a physically and mentally healthy life from beginning to end. This is why we do our best to control every single stage of life, from raising our own animals to having them put down at a local USDA inspected facility. We harvest the animals with the most humane practices available.

We never use dyes, fillers, or artificial flavorings in any of our products. However, some of our smoked meats are cured with a small amount of sodium nitrate. Nitrates inhibit harmful bacterial growth and are required in some of our smoked meats by our USDA inspector.

We care more about our animals than we do about grading. Our main priority is providing our animals with a nurturing environment so that they live their best life on our farm which in turn provides you the best meat on your table. We do have a USDA inspected meat room but the grading process is handled by a separate department of the USDA and while it is an option to have our meats graded we have chosen not to at this time. We process our own meats which means we see, cut and inspect every piece to make sure it meets our high-quality standards. Our customers appreciate the care of the animals more than a grading label.

An order of any size is welcome. Certain fees may apply.

Our website works a little differently than most and there are a couple of reasons for that. Our website does not process payments like most e-commerce sites. Instead, it is used to capture the information needed to process your order and we in turn manually enter it into our secure order processing program. While your order is waiting to be processed it will be marked as PENDING on our website. Once we have your information in our internal program, we will send you an order confirmation email and mark the order as COMPLETE.

Once your order has been received into our internal system, you will be sent an email confirmation. This confirmation will include a PDF attachment of your order along with the expected delivery date. On the day your order ships you will receive your invoice along with UPS tracking information so that you can follow your meat package to your door. If you ever have special shipping requests, please contact us prior to ordering to ensure we are able to accommodate your needs.

Call us at 989-302-3366, email us at customerservice@johnhenrys.net or log into your account on our website.

Our preferred payment method is credit/debit card for all customers. We accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. Customers with an established recent 12 month good payment history will have the option of paying by check. All checks must be received no later than 14 days following the delivery of your order. Customers with returned checks will forfeit their right to pay by check on future orders.