Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/514590
Here's the Beef BY KILEY JACQUES The newly opened Eva's Farm Organic Butcher Shop in Middleton has become an educational hub. Roberto Alonzo grew up in Argentina working in his father's butchery, but he never wanted to be a butcher— he wanted to be a professional soccer player. But his fate seems to have been sealed during those early years. Upon moving to the States, Alonzo served as both butcher and meat manager in various area shops including Butcher Boy, Market Bas- ket, and Hannaford. "That was my career; that was my life," says the clearly hard-working Alonzo. "Then I started getting sick," he explains. So serious were his health issues, he believed he was dying. After two years spent trying to determine the root of his problems, which ultimately turned out to be celiac disease (on top of diabetes), Alonzo began scrutinizing his diet. "I started researching what I eat to understand what really is in [things]." He learned a lot about gluten and how to avoid it. "We started eating organic, but it was too expensive, so we decided to buy a farm." In the end, however, it wasn't a farm they settled on. It was a butcher shop: Eva's Farm Organic Butcher Shop. "We're like a farmers' market," says Alonzo, "a new kind of farmers' market." Alonzo and his wife, Barriann, run the old-fashioned butchery whose mission it is "to connect fam- ilies to the possibility of achieving a healthy diet with local products." 50 | JULY 2015 nshoremag.com photographs by Joe Ferraro LIVE They work in partnership with Mill- brook Fields Farm and Blood Farm, among others, and offer premium products from local farmers who have raised their animals either on a primarily grass-based diet or in an organic manner. These animals are never treated with antibiotics or hormones, or fed animal by- products, which results in healthy meat and milk. Alonzo sources his beef from 125-year-old Adams Alonzo orders and prepares one cow every week.