Last fall, Tim Dowling booked enough slots at an abattoir for about two of his cattle to be slaughtered and processed each month until December 2021. If he were to book this week, however, the earliest slot he could get from that facility would be about a year away.
The grass-fed-beef farmer on Howe Island, east of Kingston on the St. Lawrence River, isn’t a stranger to such waits. It took about seven months before he recently learned that he was at the front of a wait-list at one of those two small-scale slaughterhouses — ahead of about 150 others. “We're direct-selling meat to folks in our community,” he says. “And if we don’t have bookings, we’re in big trouble.”