Based out of Centennial, Wyoming, Taste of the Wind offers ethical and local pastured pork, pastured poultry, free-range eggs, and grass-fed lamb delivered from their farm to your door.  

BJ Bender the Owner, Founder, and Operator of Taste of the Wind says, “Our main mission is to provide nutrient dense local food to our local community, but a lot of what we do is diverting food waste from being delivered straight to the dump.”

Taste of the Wind diverts around 1,000 pounds of hydroponically grown Laramie produce weekly to feed to their livestock. They also pick up stale bread from a local bread supplier as well as scraps from the Laramie Soup Kitchen that are not suitable for human consumption.

Taste of the Wind has been able to provide free delivery of products to households throughout the pandemic. “Being able to see my customers has been really valuable to me, and I think that is mutual,” Bender says.

Originally from California, Bender has lived in Wyoming for nine years and raised animals from a very young age. “Most of my past jobs have been farm or ranch related” she says. “I currently work at 307 Meats part-time.”

Bender says that the best way to support her business is to purchase her products. Taste of the Wind often donates some of their products to the Soup Kitchen, as well as provides products to community members in need. “If somebody is in need of food, we donate all the time. If someone has a person in mind, we can deliver totally anonymously and they just have to give me an address.”

Taste of the Wind prides themselves in the ethical practices used when raising their livestock. Their free-range eggs and pastured pork mean that the chickens and hogs are on pasture all year long. “We give them a wild variety of nutrients to eat,” says Bender. “They don’t consume meat though.”

When it comes to raising livestock, Bender believes animals should be allowed to live in as close to their natural states as possible. “Keeping animals on pasture is a lot closer to what the natural environment requirements are for those animals. They’ve got a wide variety of things to eat, they’ve got space to move around and exercise, and they are out in the sunshine…We move them constantly so they aren’t just sitting in the same spot and making a gross environment for themselves. That way they aren’t ruining the actual ecological environment either.”

For Taste of the Wind, the process of turning livestock into a food product is very important. “The butcher that we go to has been USDA inspected which means they have certain ethical requirements as far as once the animal arrives at the facility, how that animal is treated until they are converted into a meat product,” Bender explains. “We want to make sure their whole life is ethical from birth to death.”

Taste of the Wind processes their poultry themselves, and much research has gone into the most ethical practices to use. Bender is more than happy to speak with customers about these processes in more detail or to arrange visits to the property. “We want to be one hundred percent transparent about what we do, that is part of the ethical element.”

To learn more about Taste of the Wind or to purchase products, please visit their website at https://www.tasteofthewind.com/, Instagram at @tasteofthewind307, or contact BJ Bender at tasteofthewind307@gmail.com