Frequently Asked Questions

We are The Butlers – Dylan, Erica, and Baby Tye.

Hayfield Farm was established in 1997 by Dylan’s father, Chuck. The farm began so Dylan and his sister, Jacklyn, could raise livestock for 4-H Club. The Butler family raised show cattle, beef steers for friends and family, and cow and calf pairs. Dylan continued to raise cattle and we met in 2017.

In 2018, we decided we could really do something with this farming thing. Not long after that, the website was created and our meats were sold from the freezers in our unfinished basement until February 2020, when our on-site Farm Shop was built.

We got married in October 2020 and welcomed our son, Tye, in February 2022.
We now raise beef and feeder cattle, hogs, laying hens, and meat chickens.

Southern Fauquier – in rural, quiet Goldvein, Virginia.
Type “Hayfield Farm” into your GPS or use our address 12881 Sillamon Road Goldvein, VA 22720.

We started Hayfield Farm to provide our community with premium local meats and be a location where folks could come and get quality, local products, learn about agriculture, know their farmer, and reconnect with their food.

We have always pushed for knowing your food and knowing your farmer – straight from the source.

Our Farm Shop is located at the Farm, at 12881 Sillamon Road Goldvein VA 22720. The Farm Shop is inside the large building behind the yellow house.

We are not open for walk-ins at this time. 
You can order online for pick up at the Farm Shop Wednesday-Friday 9am-6pm, Saturday 10-4, Sunday 10-4.

Warrenton Holiday Market Saturdays, December 3rd, 10th, 17th 8am-12pm 

Warrenton Winter Market Saturdays 8am-12pm, January 21-March 25, 2023

Manassas Holiday Market Saturday, December 10th, 10am-2pm 

Manassas Winter Market Saturdays 8am-12pm December 17th-March 25, 2023

Shop our most popular cuts or preorder online from our full inventory to pick up at the market. Just write your preferred location in the notebox at checkout!

Our CSA shares are delivered to Erin’s Elderberries in Vint Hill on *bi-weekly* Sundays 10am-3pm.
Preorder online to pick up an order there. Just write “Vint Hill” in the notebox at checkout. Please note that we only deliver to Vint Hill during our CSA seasons.
Current Schedule: November 13, 27 + December 11 + January 8, 22 + February 5, 19 + March 5, 19 + April 2 

Follow us on social media for the quickest updates, restock alerts, behind-the-scenes of farm life, and more! 

Facebook @hayfieldfarmbeef

Instagram @hayfieldfarm_va

Yes! We currently only offer our meat-based Winter CSA. 

We have decided that 2022 would be our last year for our Harvest CSA. We have made the decision to focus 100% of our energy in this business to our livestock, which means better service for our animals and you! 

Our Winter CSA is our meat-only CSA that runs November-March. These shares are a combination of our basic and specialty beef, pork, lamb, and chicken cuts.
The sign up window for our Winter CSA is from September to October, or when we reach capacity.

Multiple pick up locations, different membership sizes to choose from, split payment options, extended pick up hours, and other perks available! 

Yes! We have individual cuts of beef, pork, lamb, and chicken available for purchase year-round.

All of our cuts are vacuum sealed with commercial-grade packaging. Bone-in cuts have an additional layer to prevent piercing. All cuts are labeled with our name, the name of the cut, the weight of the cut, and the required USDA verbiage.

Our ground meat (ground beef, loose sausage, etc) are packaged in approximately 1lb packs, our steaks our packaged individually, our sausage grillers are in packs of four, our pork chops are in packages of two, our short ribs and osso bucco are several cuts per package totaling 3-4lbs, and our spare ribs, roasts, briskets, and pork shoulders are packaged individually. Each cut has a description of how it is packaged and the approximate weight of each package.

Yes! All of our meat is processed at USDA-inspected facilities.

In recent years, local processors have been overwhelmed with livestock farmers, as well as homesteaders wanting to bring in their own livestock for processing. While we do book our butcher dates for the year in advance, we are much busier than we expected to be – thank you! Because of this, we have partnerships and are on the butcher schedule with two processors. One is local, just 10 minutes from the farm, and processes most of our retail cuts sold in the Farm Shop and at Farmer’s Markets, as well as all of our halves and wholes. Their label is black and white. The other is a small family owned and operated butcher shop in Pennsylvania and processes retail cuts sold in the Farm Shop and at Farmer’s Markets. Their label is red and white.

Butchers cut meat slightly differently – it is truly an art and both processors hand cut and trim the meat. So, you may see differences in your meat cuts or the way they are packaged. If you intend to sample cuts to try for your own half or whole, you will want to look at cuts from the local butcher – with the black and white label.

We restock our meat cuts as the butcher finishes processing our livestock. Processing takes several weeks.

Typically, we restock beef, pork, or both biweekly. 

When we restock, it will not be all of the cuts we have available on the site. We rotate selections when filling out our cut sheet. Additionally, there are limited quantities of certain cuts in each animal.

OUR WEBSITE IS KEPT UP TO DATE. 

If you are waiting for a particular cut – please continue to check the site and follow us on social media to keep up with our restock alerts.

Unfortunately, there is no e-commerce system that works in harmony with products that have varying weights, like meat cuts.

On the website, the price listed as the price per pound. You select the # of cuts you want. Our cuts vary in weight, some cuts weigh more than a pound, some weigh less than a pound. 

When you enter the coupon code PREORDER at check out, it $0.00 your order. This allows you to submit your order to us, without payment. We receive the order, pull the cuts you selected, and fill an invoice according to the number and weight of the cuts you selected and the price per pound. 

We will then send you an invoice via email for payment. 

If you received order confirmation, we received your order! We do our best to fill orders as quickly as possible, but between work, farming, and the baby – sometimes it takes us a little while to get into the shop to fill online orders. We will fill it before your pick up time! You can check your order status through your confirmation email. 

If you schedule pick up during the weekend, we will have our staff fill your order that morning. If you schedule pick up during the week, typically we fill orders the evening before or whenever we are in the shop. 

Please only arrive for pick up at the day/time you select. If you arrive before or after your pick up time, the door may be locked. 

Please reach out to us ASAP!

Due to space restriction and the nature of our items, customers are required to pick up their online order at the day and time they selected at check out. 

Orders that are not picked up will be restocked after 2 (two) days and the invoice will be cancelled. 

It depends! If you have a long drive, or if you have plans to stop before you get home to your freezer, or if it’s very hot – we recommend bringing a cooler. Customers don’t typically need ice/ice packs, unless it will be hours before you are home. 

Our Halves & Wholes Page
www.hayfield-farm.com/wholesale

This page has the next available butcher dates, cut sheet forms, resource articles detailing the entire process, pricing, and everything else you need to know!

We have many articles detailing each step in the process, pricing, timeline, how much meat to expect, how to fill out the cut sheet, etc.!

Our Halves & Wholes page has the following posts in the Resources section:

• From Field to Freezer: The Process, Pricing, and Timeline of Buying Whole + Half Beef
• Filling Out a Cut Sheet for a Whole Beef
• Filling Out a Cut Sheet for a Half Beef
• How Much Beef to Expect + Sample Inventory Sheets

• From Paddock to Plate: The Process, Pricing, and Timeline of Buying Whole + Half Hog
• Filling Out a Cut Sheet for a Whole Hog
• Filling Out a Cut Sheet for a Half Hog
• How Much Pork to Expect + Sample Inventory Sheets

• How Much Cooler + Freezer Space Do I Need?

Yes! We process steers and hogs all year round, several times per month. 

You can find the next available butcher date for beef or pork on our Halves and Wholes page. 

Beef takes approximately four weeks to complete from the butcher date.
Pork takes approximately three weeks to complete from the butcher date. 

Pick up is directly from the butcher shop, Finest Butcher, at 11746 Ag Industrial Drive Bealeton VA. 

Sorry! We no longer process smoker hogs. 

Our cattle are on pasture 24/7/365. When our beef steers are 90 days out from processing, they are bucket-fed a few pounds of locally-sourced grains per day. This makes your steaks taste good!

Grain-finishing allows us to process our steers in their absolute prime and produce premium beef. Steers are the ideal age, weight, and composition when it is time to process them. Bucket feeding them also gets them very comfortable with us, so when it is time to bring them into the barn and to the stock trailer, there is no stress. 

Our cattle eat grass all day, every day. Cattle must eat the majority of their diet in grasses, as they are ruminants. There are *no* studies that show grain-finished beef is less nutritious than grass-fed only beef. Beef is an incredible source of essential vitamins and minerals.

It is most important to source your meats locally, straight from the source. This way you know where your meats come from, how the livestock are raised, and who raises them. Bonus! It promotes sustainability in our community.

Follow us on Facebook or Instagram to see the day to day lives of our livestock! 

We raise angus and angus-cross beef steers. Our crosses are Simmental, Charlois, Hereford, and Shorthorn.

Did you know there are over 50 breeds of beef cattle? It’s not all about black angus. At Hayfield Farm, we appreciate biodiversity and it’s contribution to nature’s natural variety. 

If you see other breeds at the farm or on social media, these are our feeder cattle. This is a separate program of our business that we have aside from our beef steers. These cattle are shipped out to the mid-West to be grown on feed lots and feed the rest of the world. We do not process these feeder cattle for our own beef. 

We do not wash or refrigerate our eggs because we appreciate nature’s intentions and look at it as a fun learning point for folks to get in touch with their food. 

The hen lays a protective coating (sometimes visible, sometimes not) on the outside of the shell. This is called the “bloom”. The bloom seals the porous shell and prevents bacteria from entering the egg. Nature’s intention here is to protect the chick inside. Since our eggs are for eating and don’t have chicks in them – keeping the bloom intact, by not washing the eggs, allows us to leave our eggs on the counter. They do not require refrigeration because the bloom protects the egg from bacteria. 

Our recommendation is that customers can leave their eggs on the counter for one month or two months in the fridge. Use your best judgement. Wash with water before using then wash your hands. Once washed, the eggs must be refrigerated. 

Commercial eggs are washed, bleached, and can be three months old by the time they make it to your grocery store shelves. Our eggs are gathered daily and are available to customers immediately after being gathered or within several days. 

We are a small farm that produces under 150 dozen eggs per week and are exempt from Virginia state requirements for washing eggs. 

We do not allow farm tours and we are not a petting zoo. We are a working farm.

When you arrive at the Farm Shop, our laying hens, roosters, and guineas are roaming around. You’ll be able to see them and the cattle, if they are in the pasture closest to the Farm Shop. 

While some of our livestock are friendly, they are not pets and don’t particularly like to be touched or held. We would never keep a rooster that shows any sign of aggression, but it’s always safe to not provoke them. 

Side note: We do scheduled tours for 4-H or FFA groups. If you are the lead for one of these groups and would like to schedule a Farm Day with us, please reach out!

This is agriculture taboo. Asking a farmer how many acres or head of cattle they have is equivalent to asking someone how much money they have in their bank account.