Harvest Home Meats, LLC

General information

Phone:610-599-9074
Rich DiFebo Cell: 610-972-8910
Dohl DiFebo Cell: 610-390-4611
info@harvesthomemeats.com

Harvest Home Meats raises 100% Grass-Fed Beef. Harvest Home Meats mission is to work with nature to provide consistent high-quality, grass-fed beef to our customers. We don’t use chemical fertilizers, insecticides, or herbicides on our pastures. Our cattle never receive growth hormones or antibiotics. We are proud to say that we were the 2008 PASA Grass-Fed Beef Cook-off Champions for best tasting grass-fed beef!!

Our herd is located on Sunny Hillside Farms and Harvest Home Farms located in the northeast corner of Northampton County PA, Upper Mount Bethel Township. We are just minutes from the Lehigh Valley, Poconos and NJ and approximately 1 hour from Philadelphia and New York City.

Currently we offer mixed quarters, halves, wholes or select cuts. It can be picked up or delivery can be arranged. The cost is based on the hanging weight. Hanging carcass weight is approximately 575lbs. Please contact us for prices/info and how to order. You can also check out our website for details and see a list of stores that carry our beef. www.harvesthomemeats.com

Harvest Home Meats, LLC. is a family-operated, grass-based farm located outside of Bangor, Pennsylvania on the pastoral northeastern edge of the Lehigh Valley. Our cattle are dependent on grass farms that have been in the DiFebo and Ott families for the last hundred years. The farms are found in Upper Mount Bethel Township, Lower Mount Bethel Township, and Washington Township, Pennsylvania and are located within visible range of the gateway to the Poconos—the Delaware Water Gap, the Delaware River Valley, and western New Jersey. The farms are also in close driving proximity to New York City, Philadelphia, and their neighboring suburbs.

Initially, Harvest Home Meats’ farms were not entirely a grass-based agricultural pursuit. This status was achieved over the twenty-year period between 1994 and present, through the efforts of Richard DiFebo. DiFebo, a town-boy and lawn care specialist from Martins Creek, Pennsylvania, had married into the historic Ott farming family that resided off Upper Mount Bethel Township’s Riverton Road at Sunny Hillside Farms in 1978. There DiFebo had witnessed the retirement of his father-in-law Budd E. Ott, the sale of Mr. Ott’s milking herd, the conversion of Sunny Hillside Farms into a row-crop only farm, as well as the collapse of similar neighboring farm operations. The small farms purchased and owned by the Ott family, resembled the family-owned dairy farms and row-crop operations of the mid-twentieth century. The family farm that had been laid out by Budd Ott and his father Elton was located on land that neighbored the farms of other Ott relatives. The Otts, as a large farm family, had farmed in the northern reaches of Northampton County since the early 1800s and in neighboring Bucks and Philadelphia Counties since the early 1700s. Families that had married into the Otts had been farming in Northampton County even longer.

Starting with ten dairy cows, remnants of the old Holstein milking herd, Richard DiFebo took on a small experimental agricultural pursuit. As a hobby, he planned to raise these cows in the large, grass exercise paddock beneath Mr. Ott’s milking barn. These cows would receive a diet of entirely grass in the growing season and hay in the dormant months. This model consists of small grass plots, where cattle can gain access to water, and are moved to ensure that pastures are grazed evenly. The plots divided by interior fencing consisting of one-strand of electric fence. The cows were given time to graze off plots before moving on to the next, thus allowing pastures time for resting and recouping to improve more lush stands of beneficial grass and to weed out undesirable grasses.

Initially, the DiFebos and Otts consumed their own beef, which they had processed at a local butcher. However, Richard DiFebo saw potential to develop his hobby into a farm-based business that could provide quality grassfed beef directly to the consumer. Eventually, the land used for grazing was increased when DiFebo convinced Ott that he had a passion for grass-based farming. The hilliness of Sunny Hillside Farms also provided a safety hazard to individuals involved in taking off row crops, a danger that could be avoided and minimized through converting land back to pasture.

DiFebo began cross-breeding the few cattle in his possession, which were valued for high milk production and output, with animals bought off of nearby farmers that representing breeds with a proven track record of being raised as beef. These animals would be described at Herefords and Angus and crosses. Starting in 2003, DiFebo looked into and purchased cattle of the Red Devon breed, which had a proven and historic track-record of performing well on the grasses of the American northeast and Mid-Atlantic. He began selling quarters, halves, and whole sides of beef directly to the consumer in 2002 and after a USDA license was obtained in 2008 DiFebo had permission to sell beef by the cut to neighboring health food stores.

Today, Richard DiFebo, his wife Lynn, and sons Dane and Dohl are involved in the everyday operation of Harvest Home Meats, LLC. You can also occasionally see Richard DiFebo and his family peddling his beef to local stores by refrigerated truck. Coincidentally, DiFebo’s own great-grandfather Herbert Fosbinder also peddled meat, processed in his family-owned butcher shop in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania, by horse and carriage in the early 1900s.