Grass Fed Beef Hampers Delivery & FAQ
Our animals are not vaccinated with mrna vaccines – let’s get this one out of the way first.
Read more on that further down below all of the delivery info.
Yes, Our Beef & Lamb is 100% Grass Fed & Finished!
Read more on that further down below all of the delivery info.
What areas do we deliver to?
The area we service is much of eastern NSW & the ACT, as well as south-eastern Qld & metro Victoria.
This includes Sydney, Newcastle, Canberra, Brisbane & the Gold Coast & Melbourne.
Our grass fed beef is also delivered to customers in regional centres like Tamworth, Narrabri, Moree, Wollongong & the Illawarra, Central Coast, Blue Mountains and many other little places too, including our beautiful little home town of Quirindi in NSW!
See below to check delivery fees for your area
If you’re unsure, or it isn’t listed just give Derek a call, email or SMS and he will happily confirm delivery for you.
What areas don’t we deliver to?
Unfortunately, we have some areas that we currently just can’t deliver to. These include…
In NSW – South West Slopes, Southern Tablelands & Monaro, Upper Hunter Valley, Western Division, Riverina.
QLD – North of the Sunshine Coast, west of Toowoomba, north west of Brisbane.
South Australia, Western Australia, NT and Tassie …sorry
What are the fees for my Hamper delivery?
Please note – our fees for delivery have been increasing as couriers increase their fees. The delivery fees set out below are subject to change as our costs increase.
If you order multiple hampers, we only charge you for one delivery. If you have a friend’s hamper delivered to your address at the same time as your delivery, we only charge you for one delivery and split the cost between you both (or however many of you there are in the delivery group).
The delivery fee for our Grass Fed Beef & Lamb Hampers vary depending on where you live. Please see the fees set out below in alphabetical order of place names…
- Blue Mountains $25 (Emu Plains to Hazelbrook)
- Blue Mountains $35 (Lawson to Mount Victoria)
- Brisbane & Gold Coast $72 (to Tweed Heads)
- Canberra & Queanbeyan $74
- Lower Central Coast $30 (Umina/Avoca/Gosford to Tuggerah/Bateau Bay/The Entrance)
- Lower Hunter Valley $35 (pick up from Chop Butchery, East Maitland)
- Newcastle, Lake Macquarie & Upper Central Coast $35 (north of Tuggerah/Bateau Bay/The Entrance to Newcastle. Not north of Hunter River)
- New England & North West NSW $40 (Armidale/Inverell/Glen/Gunnedah), Moree customers + $10 each box
- NSW Northern Rivers $80 (Lismore/Murwillumbah/Ballina)
- NSW Mid North Coast – better contact us, it’s really expensive!
- NSW South Coast $62 (Dunmore to South Nowra) for 2 boxes + $8 for each extra box
- Melbourne metro $75
- Sunshine Coast $80 (Bribie Is./Caboolture to Cooroy incl. Maleny)
- Southern Highlands (Goulburn to Mittagong) – better contact us, it’s really expensive!
- Sydney metro $25 (incl. Penrith, Windsor, Campbelltown, the Shire and the Peninsular)
- Tamworth $35
- Wollongong & Illawarra $35 (Helensburgh to Shell Cove) for 2 boxes + $8 for each extra box
For any other areas not listed (apart from those listed under “What areas don’t we deliver to”), please contact us for the delivery fees as these can change often.
Please note, if these fees seem a bit expensive, they don’t all actually cover the full costs of your delivery service!
If you really want just Bones and Offal only, then delivery will incur the full charge the courier charges us, which will be higher than those listed – please contact us.
For our metro deliveries to your home, if you have not replied to the reminder SMS and if there is nobody present to receive your hamper and there are not clear instructions left out for the courier, then it is your responsibility. The couriers usually will not return it to their premises and return to you another day, however if they do have to return, they will charge us for it, and that is no fun for anyone, because we will need to charge you the full cost for that (which is higher than your delivery charge) and that cost varies depending upon where you live. Hmmm…best to read everything and have a plan and have no surprises later!
If this is a bit tricky and you’re unsure, just give Derek a call, email or SMS and he will happily confirm the delivery fee and process for you.
How does Ordering and Delivery work?
We are a family owned farm, not a factory farm & definitely not a supermarket! Our artisan grass fed beef and lamb hampers are packed for you usually once a month, sometimes twice, so please don’t have the expectation that you will receive it tomorrow. On occasion, there can be a delay and the bodies hang for an extra week. Sometimes we simply don’t have animals that are ready for you yet, this is slow food and it does rely on the seasons being kind to us! there is an alternate system in which you can buy beef and lamb every day, but we think for many of you, that system might actually be why you have found us.
You can order at any time… it could be delivered the next week if available, or it may be a few weeks or even more of eager anticipation until your hamper arrives, it just depends when your order is placed in the cycle and how ready the animals are. When you order, we will be in touch to let you know the expected delivery date. This will give you a bit of time to clean the freezer out!
Our hampers are delivered to you by a network of refrigerated couriers and trucks, so your hamper needs to be received by someone and not left out on the doorstep all day (for metro only), because we don’t want it spoiling or feeding the neighbour’s dog! We do not use polystyrofoam boxes, wasteful cooler bags or gel packs that get thrown away. We know some of these are re-usable, but the fact is most people don’t re-use them or don’t compost them, so we don’t want that extra waste burden on our communities.
We send you several reminder emails leading up to delivery and usually a reminder SMS after we get home from packing the hampers, however it’s up to you to either be present or be prepared to have left some other instruction for the driver at your door. The couriers have lots of deliveries to make (not just for us), they won’t be calling ahead and they don’t provide a time for the delivery – it can be between 7:00am and 7:00pm – so if this is simply too inconvenient for you, it’s best to know now.
Our customers choose us because of how the cows and sheep are raised and grazed, because it’s all 100% grass fed and because it is chemical free – the animals are not treated with veterinary drugs or pesticides or grazed on any pasture that has had herbicides, or fed anything that wasn’t grown right here as nature intended. Usually, everything runs smoothly, however you need to be prepared for this type of delivery if we are to deliver beef directly from our farm to your door.
Will my Hamper be delivered chilled or frozen?
Most of our NSW and ACT metro areas will receive their hamper chilled, including Newcastle, Central Coast and down to the Illawarra and also Tamworth.
Occasionally, delivery schedules vary from indicated dates when you place an order and we need to have your hamper placed into the freezer until it is delivered. We want to keep your beef and lamb at its freshest and we know that you will be placing it into your own freezers anyway.
Deliveries to VIC and QLD are currently frozen. Sometimes the contents of the box have not frozen through by the time of delivery simply because it takes a long time to freeze to the middle of a stack of boxes. There is no need to be concerned about this and it is perfectly ok to put everything into your freezer when you receive it from the courier.
For some regional delivery areas, we arrange for it to be delivered frozen, just because there can be some extra time in transit to you (see list of areas below). Your grass fed beef will be just as enjoyable after it has been frozen, as it is before freezing. Freezing it is just a snapshot in time of it’s freshness. Hampers with additional offal included may require freezing (see Bones & Offal for more details).
Other areas that we may deliver your hampers frozen
- North West NSW
- NSW Mid-North & North Coasts (north of Newcastle)
Will my Hamper be delivered to my home?
If you live in the large metro cities, we can have your hamper delivered to your home or work, but we need to know that someone flexible with time will be there to receive it. The couriers usually will not return it to their premises and return to you another day, however if they do have to return, they will charge us for it, and that is no fun for anyone, because we will need to charge you the full cost for that (which is higher than your delivery charge) and that cost varies depending upon where you live.
See How Does Ordering & Delivery Work? above for more detail about delivery timing.
If that just doesn’t work for your circumstances, we can find a nearby business with a cool room (think fruit & veg shops or even your local pub) that will be happy to receive it on your behalf.
For country areas we find a business that will receive it on your behalf – somewhere with a cool room or freezer that is happy to store it until you can get there to collect it. For example, in Tamworth we have it delivered to the Parmalat storage facility in Taminda.
How are Hamper prices calculated?
Our Hamper prices are based on an expected volume – weights are a guide and we try to get them as close to the indicative weight as possible. Each hamper has a set price, rather than a price per kilogram, and these prices vary between hampers.
Sometimes the allocation of the contents varies a little due to the natural variation and yield between animals, which can mean there is also a little variation in the final weight. Often they are heavier (can be by more than a kg) and sometimes they are just a little lighter.
We provide a price per kilogram as a guide only, so you can compare our beef with others and know what you are paying for. This is not always exact, sometimes it is a little bit more and sometimes it is less per kilogram, depending on the final weight of your hamper.
Click through to the detail of our hampers to see prices.
How do I pay for my Hamper?
After you place your order, we will email an invoice out to you prior to delivery. You can pay via internet banking, direct deposit or pay by credit card online (Visa, Mastercard, American Express). There will be a link on your invoice to make secure card payments through our safe payment gateway, eWAY. We do pass on the surcharge for card payments.
Our bank account details will be on the invoice for deposits if you prefer that, and that attracts no fee from us.
Invoices must be paid for prior to delivery.
Can I customise my hamper?
Sorry, we don’t really customise hampers. We can sometimes provide extra sausages and mince, or we can leave something out if you just don’t want it, however we can’t just replace it with your favourite piece of beef, because every part is allocated to someone’s hamper and they don’t want to miss out!
How is our grass fed beef & lamb packed?
You’ll receive your order portioned and vacuum sealed – no leaks, no mess, no fuss – ready to pop straight in the freezer!
Each pack is clearly labelled – with the cut, the weight and the fresh & frozen best before dates.
Your hamper is delivered to you in a sealed recyclable cardboard box. We are eagerly awaiting further development of biodegradable materials suitable to replace the vacuum sealed bags.
Do we provide any Paleo options?
All of our normal cuts are suitable for paleo diets. For paleo eaters that are completely grain free – you can choose to have paleo beef sausages in your hamper, which contain no flour at all, just some flossy sea salt & paprika spice and of course plenty of grass fed beef. Otherwise, our usual yummy beef sausages contain a rice flour and paprika based meal, which is gluten free.
We need to tell you though, these paleo sausages are quite dense (being all beef and no flour) and they do lose a quantity of the fat within them when cooking, so they shrink quite a bit. The flavour is quite different to our standard sausages, so maybe consider these things before placing a large order. We enjoy them with some home made tomato sauce or relish and crispy oven baked potatoes.
Simply choose paleo in the order form, it’s easy, you’ll see!
While our lamb sausages contain no grain flour, they are not strictly paleo – these do contain potato starch. We can’t make small batch paleo lamb sausages, sorry.
Is our grass fed beef & lamb preservative free?
All of our grass fed beef and lamb is preservative free…and delicious!
Are our Sausages gluten free & preservative free?
Like the rest of our grass fed beef and lamb, our very popular sausages are preservative free and gluten free. The beef sausages are made with a rice flour based meal for binding the sausage and helping to retain some fat. Our lamb sausages are made with a potato starch for binding the sausage, rather than a rice flour meal.
Our grass fed beef sausages are made medium sized, however for orders of Half Bodies, we can provide thick if you prefer… Just make note in the comment box when you place your order that you would like thick sausages.
Our grass fed lamb sausages are made thick – they are delicious!
There are 9 sausages in each individual package. If you would like more, please make note in the comment box when you place your order.
Why 9, you might ask? Well, have you seen sausages hanging, twisted and tied in a string? Those strings are in groups of three, hence 9 sausages in each pack!
What are the ingredients in the non-paleo sausages?
Grass fed beef, rice flour meal (6.5% or 65g/kg), mineral salt (451 – see Fedup), spice extract and spice (paprika), flossy sea salt (non-iodized), beef collagen (sausage casings).
Grass fed lamb, potato starch, salt, dried rosemary, natural intestine casing.
Do we provide grass fed beef or lamb bones for stock and broth?
You can also choose to have extra grass fed beef or lamb bones in your hamper when available – something we know many conscious eaters look for to make bone broth, beef stock or to add to a slow cooked meal for extra goodness. The bones are all a collagen rich mixture of bones, providing plenty of nourishment. The marrow bones are pretty well all used up with the osso bucco cut from the shin of the animal.
Bones are cut and vacuum sealed, just like your cuts of grass fed beef and lamb. We recommend freezing your bones when you receive them… if you’re not using them straight away!
Please note, these are generally only available as an inclusion to our hampers. Occasionally we can provide them if still available after our hamper customers are finalised each month. This will incur a full delivery fee which is more than the listed fees above.
Grass fed beef/lamb bones are $6.00 per kilogram (2kg minimum), in addition to the value of your hamper.
Do we provide grass fed beef or lamb offal?
We do offer offal when available as an addition to your hampers.
The offal we can provide includes:
- oxtail (whole tail – jointed & usually 1kg+/-)
- liver (1kg portions)
- heart (whole)
- kidney (whole)
- beef cheeks (whole – weight varies & availability definitely varies)
- beef tongue (whole)
- beef suet (fat from the kidney for making your own tallow)
It’s first in best dressed for these – as we’re sure you can understand that there’s only a certain quantity per animal – no two tailed cows around here!
Organ meats are $10/kg, tails are $10/kg and beef cheeks are $10/kg in addition to the value of your hamper. Beef suet is $15/kg
Depending where you live, we may need to deliver your hamper frozen if you have chosen to include offal.
Just make note in the comment box when you place your order that you would like offal included, and which type – or speak to Derek (he’s really friendly).
What is offal?
It’s the internal organs of the animal, but we have also included the tail and beef cheeks for simplicity.
Are our cows or our sheep vaccinated?
We don’t use vaccines in our cows or sheep. If it is dry leading up to calving, we may use an injection of vitamins A, D and E to make sure that they have sufficient high quality colustrum for their calves, however there really does have to be no green feed available for the animals. Please be aware this is very different from vaccines and is recommended by the late Pat Coleby in her book Healthy Cattle Naturally.
Are we halal certified?
We are not halal certified, not because we choose not to be, but because that is not provided where our animals are processed. We are only interested in providing education and nourishment to our customers, regardless of their religion or beliefs.
Are we certified Grass Fed?
All of our cows and their calves and our sheep (so all of our animals) are 100% grass fed and finished. Well, actually they are pasture fed, because our grasses have heaps of other plants in there with them, adding to the diversity which is better for the animals and better for us. You can read more about this here.
Our animals do not have any grain in their diet.
Certification of grass fed is ok, but not good enough. It does not guarantee that the animals have been grazing on diverse pastures – animals grazing on single species forage crops count as grass fed. We want something better here with more diversity, so our beef and lamb is not certified grass fed. We are more than happy to show you around our farm to explain exactly what we do and why we do it… but be warned, you may just find yourself challenging many of the foods you have been eating!
We are proud of our product knowing it is as good as it can be for the animals and for us and we’re always happy to discuss this with you.
Are we certified organic?
We produce our grass fed beef and lamb free of chemicals (i.e. organically), however our farm is not certified organic. We have not treated our cows or their calves with any vaccines, pesticides like drench for worms or lice for many years, nor have we sprayed our pastures with herbicides for that same duration. The calves that end up as your grass fed beef have never received any of the above “treatments” (would we really say it’s a treat?). Our older breeding cows were purchased many years ago and were not certified organic when they came here to our farm. Our sheep came here from from the desert in South Australia and were certified organic, so they have never had any of those things in their lives, but because our farm is not certified organic, they are no longer certified organic.
We keep our animals healthy by the way we manage them and their pastures and by nurturing diversity on our farm. This allows things like dung beetles to thrive here, which help take care of some of those health problems. We have available to the animals most of the time a selection of free choice minerals such as dolomite (for magnesium and really great for lactating cows to prevent scours in young calves), lime (for calcium), sulphur (great for protein assimilation and protection against external parasites), copper sulphate (great for dealing with internal parasites such as worms), salt and sometimes kelp meal (this one is particularly good for just about everything because it has just about a perfect balance of trace minerals plus iodine).
All Conscious Farmer grass fed beef and lamb is free of hormones, antibiotics and genetically modified organisms (GMO’s).
We understand that organic certification will be important for some people, and while it is supposed to be a guarantee of cleanliness of the product, it is not one of quality nor how it has actually been produced each and every day.
“Hmm… I see a there’s a pattern developing here with The Conscious Farmer and certification by external organisations!”
Essentially we produce our food organically, however we won’t be seeking organic certification, so we can’t sell it to you as organic. If that simply is must have for you, we understand and send you our very best wishes on your journey forward.
We do believe in transparency in what we do and we’re happy to share, so if you would like to chat about any of this, or even come and see what we do, then please do get in touch.
A few tips about storing your grass fed beef and lamb…
Freezing is best to optimise the shelf life and freshness of your beef and lamb (except those bits that you will be eating first). It’s definitely best to freeze the mince and sausages that have been exposed to more air and of course are preservative free, very soon after receiving your delivery.
If you order one of our larger hampers (20kg or more), then it will be best to pack what you would like to have frozen in your freezer, then take it out again a day later and repack it. This is especially important for the large 40kg+ hampers in chest type freezers. Why? Well because as it all settles, it packs in together under its own weight and if it freezes through in that state, it can be very hard to extract each individual package from your freezer. By repacking it when it is partially frozen, it doesn’t fit so closely together and is easily removed when frozen. Be aware that this does also increase the volume of space required.
Sounds complicated, but its not really!
What to expect when you receive a hamper…
Sometimes the leaner cuts (like topside) can discolour in the bag and lose a little more liquid into the bag than other cuts. These leaner cuts come from the hind quarter of the animal, where there is a great deal of muscle use and therefore blood flow (and hence oxygen requirement). It gets a bit scientific, however basically there is a myoglobin molecule that is responsible for carrying the oxygen around in the blood and there is more of this myoglobin in the high use, leaner muscle cuts, as they require more oxygen. Oxygen is also the thing that (when attached to the myoglobin) gives the beef it’s red colour. When we vacuum pack our beef and remove the oxygen, the leaner cuts that have more of this myoglobin can discolour slightly and sometimes quite a bit.
If this happens, simply open the bag and set the beef on a plate in the fridge and the colour will return once it is exposed to oxygen for a while. While ever it has lost some blood, it will lose some colour. These cuts are perfectly fine to eat.
We’d rather it this way than using tricks like pumping oxygen, carbon-dioxide, or even carbon-monoxide (yes, we’re serious!!) and other inert gases into the bag with the beef to artificially keep it looking pink for extended periods in the packaging (up to months!)
You may also notice a slight odour as soon as you open the bag, this is normal for vacuum sealed beef and will disappear very soon after.
We only use refrigerated transport licensed by the NSW Food Authority, so while occasionally the boxes are bounced around a little, rest assured that your beef has been kept under the right conditions while in their care.
Have we missed anything?
If there is anything that you would still like to know that we have not covered here, or you would just like a little more detail, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.