Grandville — Most farmers markets close as the air cools throughout the state, but your local butcher doesn’t.

I like finding butchers like I find mechanics, by word of mouth. It’s easy to be disillusioned if you go to the flashiest butcher on Yelp, just to find high prices and long lines. Your local hole-in-the-wall butcher has much to offer. 

R.W. Bond and Son Family Butcher in Grandville is a perfect example. As you step in, the bell rings and you’re transported to a simpler time. 

Bags of charcoal line the floor by the cases full of locally sourced proteins. High-quality ground beef, lamb, sausages, rustic bacon, homemade meat pies and pastries, and fan favorite hillbilly jerky are just some of this small shop’s offerings. They practice custom cutting to ensure protein freshness.

On the other side of the shop is a large window into the processing room, where Robert Bond Sr. processes meat all day long. I asked his son if he had any plans of retiring, he laughed and shook his head, “Oh no, he won’t. He loves it. You’d have to.” 

His son explained to me why he loves the family business: “I always wanted a chance to work with my father, and we were losing our connection to authentic butcheries, the artistry and knowledge itself.” 

The Bonds also have fun making recipes from scratch that showcase the family’s roots. A culinary blend of English, French, Scottish, and Irish can be seen in their beautifully crafted coronation pies, bechamel-filled chicken pastries, and seasonal Christmas pudding sausage and mince pies. 

You can even expect to see haggis sometimes, which Grand Rapids chef Angus Campbell reviewed as “the best haggis outside of Scotland.” The flour they use is chemical free, which seems strange to type, but it shows how little we’ve come to expect from our food. 

The Bond family wants to supply their community with the best, so when they were offered a large contract with Culver’s for ground beef, they turned it down. If they took the contract, they wouldn’t be able to properly supply the community they are dedicated to serving. They’d have to use most of their sourced beef to fulfill the contract, leaving very little to offer in the store for everyday shoppers.

“Something healthy shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg,” Bond said.

Down the road in Grand Rapids is another loved classic ma-and-pa spot, with some of the freshest meats around. Recommended to me by many Grand Rapids residents, Louise Earl Butcher is chock-full of meats, wines, snacks, and more. Behind the meat counter is a row of work tables, full of different proteins being processed by the busy team. 

The owners are food industry vets Matt and Cindy Smith. Cindy runs the storefront goods and events, while Matt is at the helm of the meat processing, after apprenticing around the country and spending years working in a large slaughterhouse. They bought the place, which had sat empty for 30 years, nearly a decade ago.

The meat tour at Louise Earl’s started with seven red wattle heritage pigs that had just been delivered that morning, the exposed kidneys cut out as a “quality assurance,” Matt explained. Large tubs of pasture-raised non-GMO heritage turkeys and chickens sit in brine along the wall, flanked by prime cuts of USDA beef. Every protein in their shop is sourced from a farm within 60 miles or less, mainly from regenerative farms. 

The next fridge over was all beef, aging and perfect. I tried to resist making a “Rocky” joke but failed. I asked Matt what the fan favorite was, and he pointed out the beautifully green sausage they’ve been selling since day one. Filled with poblano, Anaheim, and serranos peppers along with tomatillos, and cilantro, it’s all green, though I could hardly take my eyes off the neighboring imported Iberico prosciutto. 

I asked Matt about their seasonal offerings to come, and he explained that the trend of buying a 25-pound turkey for a large gathering is declining. But Matt and his team have responded to this sad trend with a seasonal offering of turkey porchetta, a seasoned boneless turkey roast.

For butchers like Matt, it’s quality over quantity. He cares about his ingredients deeply, providing only the best: “You pay for your health. Either now at the store or later at the doctors office.”

Further up the road, in the northern farmlands, is Bordeaux’s Custom Mobile Slaughtering. As a mobile trailer unit, Bordeaux comes to you to help with custom slaughtering and deer processing. When the co-owner isn’t winning slap-fights, that is, given that Branden Bordeaux is also Power Slap’s No. 3 middleweight contender. He’s known as “The Butcher” in both arenas. Must save money on name tags. He and his younger brother Trenton started the business three years ago. These brothers got their chops from working on farms, but Trenton pointed out when talking with me that they are the youngest guys out there doing this type of work.

Trenton maintains the equipment, while Branden typically handles the slaughtering, though when he is contending in Power Slap events, Trenton steps in. 

“You spend all that time taking care of these animals, and it’s not even the processing, it’s just that tiny moment of looking in their eyes and taking the shot,” Trenton says. As a descendant of a livestock farmer who forced us to name the cow before we received any meat, the feeling is not lost on me. 

After the kill, they handle the safe transport of the animal for processing and deliver it themselves to whichever processor the client prefers. What looks gruesome up front is actually a much kinder process. Trenton, having dealt with meat processing at both a farm and commercial level, knows the toll taking a live animal to a processor takes. “Some animals can lose 10 to 20 pounds just on the drive over, it’s a lot more stress on the animal.” Then there’s the load out of the trailer, which can take up to an hour of coaxing and fighting. 

They also handle religious kills (covering the eyes of the animal and quickly slitting its throat with a knife), which seems daunting, but as Trenton described the process, it was clear that there is not a moment during their work that they don’t think about what is best for these animals. They take clients as far north as Evart and as far south as Hudsonville, charging more than reasonable prices.

The mobile unit also offers deer processing services, handling anywhere from a handful to hundreds of deer a season. Not a lot of people are doing work this way, and it feels like a perfect missing link for busy farmers, new hunters, older folks, and just about anyone in between. 

Devinn Dakohta is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer. Follow her on Instagram @Devinn.Dakohta and X @DevinnDakohta.