What came first: the chicken or the egg? In this case? Neither. It was a yoga class.
What started as a hobby with four egg-laying chickens, led Tina Gokstorp to sell her healthy chickens and eggs to her yoga students. They were so popular that now, years later, Gokstorp’s Good Food Farms processes two batches of 500 chickens each summer, and sells her products at Stratford’s Sunday Market in Market Square.
These are not usual chickens. The average supermarket chickens typically weigh 2½-4½ pounds. These chickens generally weigh between 7-11 pounds. Conventional chickens are bred to grow fast and are typically processed between 5-9 weeks. Gokstorp rations her chickens’ feed, so they don’t grow as fast, and she lets them exercise and graze in the grass, allowing them to reach maturity before processing them between 15-24 weeks.
The result is larger, more nutritious and cluckin’ delicious chicken like the massive smoked drumsticks, and juicy satays in a range of flavours from Korean barbecue and shawarma, to coconut milk, curry, ginger and garlic. The chicken pot pie is a scrumptious craving-satisfier, while the chicken noodle soup and the bone broth are soothing ladles of wholesome goodness.
“Chickens are what I know,” says Gokstorp “It’s our upfront investment, and they have a relatively short-term turn-around.”
The chickens are free range, with fresh air and fresh grass. They forage and scratch; run around and lie in the sun.
“It’s more labour intensive, but we want to feel good about how the chickens live their life, and the product that we’re providing to our consumers,” she said.
Gokstorp feels that farming is an art and a craft. Her goal is to raise the most nutritious chickens for the health of the consumer, while taking care of the soil and generating a net positive impact for the health of the environment. To that end, Gokstorp has also developed a 1.5-acre wetland, and has planted fruit trees in the pasture to provide shade for the chickens.
Gokstorp’s ideals of social enterprise includes promoting gender-equity in the agriculture sector with a sustainable, female-friendly business model for women to more effectively participate in the farming industry.
The farm-to-table component is also appealing to Gokstorp because she can sell home-made products directly to consumers without depending on a factory line. Her focus is not strictly on profit, but on health and sustainability. For example, she uses glass jars for broth, rather than plastic, in consideration of the health impact of microplastics, and the fact that glass is reusable.
“What I realized early on was that consumers don’t want to pay the premium on raw chicken; they would rather pay for quality and convenience,” she said. “So we use everything, we make the products that people want, and we do all the work for them."
Her marinated kabobs are becoming the most popular purchase at Stratford’s Sunday Market, but the breakfast sausage patties are also definitely a real hit.
“We marinate it in buttermilk to help break it down, and then triple-grind it, so it’s a nice texture with excellent flavour,” she said. “We season it with thyme, sage, salt, pepper, garlic and a little bit of maple syrup.”
It's not easy to start a farm, and right now there is a crisis of farmers in which many are close to retirement age, and younger generations set to inherit the reigns may not always want to take over. The cost and the labour are not always appealing either. However, for Gokstorp, it is fulfilling work and it is important work.
“I believe that how and where our food comes from contributes to human health and to the health of our planet,” she said.
