Editor's Note: This is part of a multimedia package that examines the growing consciousness among consumers for sustainable food — and how both producers and processors are responding.
Having spent more than a quarter of his life getting locally sourced meat into the hands of consumers – and in the process launching the whole-animal butchery movement – the butcher isn’t satisfied.
His shop in New York’s Hudson River Valley has no storefront, but it houses a weekly capacity to process 15,000 pounds of product – including pork chops, sausages and deli meats – sold to customers as far away as Katonah, 75 miles north.
(Click below for our mini documentary on the local food movement, or scroll down for an interactive map highlighting the influence that Josh Applestone has had on the industry.)
The butcher is, of course, the ponytailed-and-mustachioed Long Island transplant Josh Applestone, who didn’t crossover from veganism into meat eating as much as he tore into it, much as he would in 2004 with his flagship storefront in nearby Kingston, where he and wife Jessica spent several years doing the nose-to-tail thing so successfully with Fleisher's Grass-fed & Organic Meats that they would open three more locations by 2012.
Like the madman who’s retreated to the edge of the forest, Applestone resides at the outer reaches of metropolitan New York, calling tiny hamlet Stone Ridge home with his wife and their son. Applestone remains close enough to the concrete jungle to remain relevant while keeping his distance to maintain his integrity in the ever-changing love-hate relationship with consumers and their meat.
The Applestones sold Fleisher’s in 2013, just as Josh was noodling with a new idea.
Sure enough, as the market research data was coalescing around a new trend – convenience without compromising quality – Applestone did what he’s always done best: He seized the opportunity.
If his new venture, Applestone Meat Co., takes off the way he expects, it’ll eclipse the long but narrow influence that Fleisher’s Grass-fed and Organic Meats had on the sustainable food movement.
But what happened in the first place to make the 43-year-old sell his Kingston-based mini empire – arguably at the height of the brand’s popularity – in 2013, only to emerge two years later in nearby Accord churning out case-ready meats from a 4,000-square-foot federally inspected processing facility – and selling his products almost exclusively online through an innovative cooler/locker system and fresh meat vending machines modeled after the automats of old?
(Track the #meatvending hashtag on Twitter for updates. Simply search for the hashtag on Twitter, then bookmark that search page, or refresh this page, as it tracks the hashtag in real time.)
Skyrocketing from vegan to full-on meat ambassador in the course of a decade (aided in part by media hype and hipster hysteria), Applestone was strung out on stress and adrenaline, working way more than necessary for a guy who, without a hint of irony, really did want the family and pets and small house up in the hills.
So when heart attacks hit two friends – both in their 40’s – he pushed stop. His father and grandfather also suffered heart attacks, and those who know Applestone saw the bitter fruits produced by a decade of rarely slowing down – something unfamiliar and rarely sustainable for a guy for whom life balance is essential. Josh Applestone was no longer fully present to those who love him.
Meanwhile, his new venture has freed up his daddy time.
It’s unseasonably warm for May in Montreal, and the restaurant is packed. Citing a scheduling conflict with his wife headed out of town, Applestone skipped out on a last-minute trip up here to hang out with his old friends Fred Morin and David McMillan, a couple of the most unassuming high-profile chefs in Canada. Morin grabs a seat at the Joe Beef bar to squeeze in dinner before heading back into the main dining room, a coveted spot that's reserved months out.
A father of three, Morin understands the daddy duty code: Be there, regardless. As long as Morin’s known him – a full decade, he estimates, ever since he trekked up to Montreal with his original Fleisher’s crew, a cooler full of meat and advice like “cut the distributor and drive to the farm to see for yourself” – Applestone’s been a dual evangelist: of local, “well-raised” meat and the value of family.
“I’m really blessed. I have a fantastic family,” Applestone says back in New York, the typical staccato of his rapid-fire thoughts slowing for emphasis. “We now have summers, and I don’t have to work weekends. There’s no more late-night retail stuff waiting for a customer.”
For Applestone, the transition makes complete sense.
And so it is with madmen, never completely comfortable with the world around them, likely because their heads are always a couple musings ahead of everyone else.
“I didn’t invent whole animal butchery, and I didn’t invent the automat," he says. "I’m just trying to put the pieces together so people can have a better quality of life."
Editor's Note: For the entire multimedia package on this issue, visit meatm.ag/ownyards; To check out the interactive map illustrating his influence on the nation's meat industry, visit meatm.ag/jshapp; and watch more award-winning short documentaries on our YouTube channel at meatm.ag/YouTubeMTG.