The Lake Meadow Natural
Story & Heritage
Dale grew up on the family dairy farm in Wisconsin and his Father bought him his first flock of chickens for a
4-H project on May 20th 1960.This farm became the home of his strong passion for raising chickens. In 1980 Dale migrated like many birds for the weather, to South Florida.
Dale moved to Central Florida in 2000 and the quest began for some property with more space and close proximity to Orlando in order to raise cage free chickens. The property on Lake Meadow was found. The day the property closed, chickens were delivered in honor of his father, 44 years to the date of his first flock from the same hatchery. Dale grew these hens to start laying cage and hormone free eggs. He gave the eggs away to friends, as well as started selling some on Local Harvest, a web site dedicated to help bring small farms and consumers together.
One day Chef Kathleen Blake Chef at Primo in the JW Marriott, now Chef/Owner of The Rusty Spoon, also on Local Harvest as a Supporter of local farms and organic foods, connected with Dale and wanted to have local cage free eggs on the menu. The business grew and was then named Lake Meadow Naturals for the lake situated on the property. Dale started inviting friends to come out and bring their kids to the farm so they might experience where their food is produced, like he experienced growing up on the farm in Wisconsin. He realized how disconnected our communities have become to how and where their food is produced. With his passion for clean and humanely produced food, Dale expanded Lake Meadow Naturals visibility by joining Slow Foods Orlando. With the additional exposure more Restaurants and Chefs throughout Florida started adding Chicken and Duck eggs to their menus to meet the growing demand for our cage free products.
As demand and requests grow from consumers we have continued to add poultry and other related heritage and clean items to our product list along with continuing to educate the greater community of the farm to table experience. Today we have over 100 acres of farms and work with other farms that work hard to bring humanely raised natural meats to you. Our commercial kitchen produces hand crafted Jams and Jellies, pickle products, fermented products made in old fashioned crocks all in small batches.