Every so often you come across a farmer who makes you rethink what food is supposed to be. Jacob Wolki is one of them. From a regenerative farm at Woomargama in the Albury region of southern New South Wales, he and his family raise beef, lamb, pork, poultry and more the slow, careful way, and they have built a genuinely original business around it: an Australia-wide meat delivery service and an unstaffed, self-serve butchery that runs around the clock. It is the kind of operation that quietly proves you can farm with real integrity and still make it work commercially.
Wolki Farm is not a listing you will find on our directory, because it sells direct to households across the country rather than through a shopfront. But it fits the spirit of everything this site is about: real food, raised in real environments, from people you can actually trust. This profile pulls together their story, what they raise, how they sell it, and the values that make them stand out.
The story: a farm born from a simple question
Wolki Farm began in 2019, and the origin is refreshingly honest. Jacob Wolki could not source the kind of food he wanted for his own family, and he started asking uncomfortable questions: why had his household accumulated so many food intolerances, and how far had their food actually travelled before it reached the table. Rather than accept the answers, he did something about it, starting small with a greenhouse and, as he puts it, a few big questions.
From there it grew into a mixed regenerative farm spread across land at Woomargama in New South Wales and a second block over the border at Kancoona in Victoria. Today the farm runs a genuinely diverse system: a herd of cattle across old-world and hardy breeds such as Hereford, Shorthorn, Jersey and Nguni, along with layer hens, meat birds, pigs, sheep, beehives and a market garden. It is a family operation in the fullest sense, run by Jacob alongside his wife and children, and built to be handed on in good shape.
What "regenerative" actually means here
Plenty of brands reach for the word regenerative. Wolki Farm backs it with a clear philosophy they call their five pillars: animal welfare, environmental stewardship, healing food, building community, and running a viable business so the whole thing lasts. In practice that means animals raised on pasture, grass-fed and grass-finished, moved and managed to build soil rather than deplete it, and what they describe as contextual welfare, treating each species appropriately so it can express its natural behaviour rather than being forced into a one-size-fits-all system.
Jacob sums up the food philosophy in a line that is hard to argue with: real food, from animals, in real environments, eating real grass. That is it. No cages, no chemical shortcuts, and a deliberate rejection of the industrial logic that treats livestock as units to be pushed through as fast as possible.
On certification, an honest note. Most of Wolki Farm's range is not carrying a formal organic certificate, and that is a deliberate choice. Jacob has said customers did not start buying his meat because of a certificate, but because they trust him, and he would rather invest in transparency, open gates and direct relationships than in certification overheads. The practices are effectively organic and regenerative, and they source one grass-fed steak line from a separately certified-organic partner. It is worth understanding the difference, which we cover in our guide to what certified organic really means.
Farming on their own terms
Part of what makes Wolki Farm interesting is that they are openly, unapologetically clear about how they do and do not raise their animals. On their own website the farm states that its cattle are raised with no antibiotics, no mRNA vaccines, no grain finishing and no Bovaer, the methane-reducing feed additive that has become a talking point in Australian agriculture. Jacob has been a vocal advocate for this way of farming, and the family has been upfront that not using Bovaer or vaccinating their cattle is a considered choice about how they want to produce food.
Reasonable people can debate the science on any single input, and this article is not the place to litigate it. The point worth making is simpler: Wolki Farm tells you exactly what they do, invites you to come and see it, and lets you decide. In a food system where most people have no idea how their meat was raised, that kind of radical transparency is genuinely rare, and it is a big part of why they have earned such a loyal following.
The 24/7 self-serve butchery: honesty as a business model
If one thing put Wolki Farm on the national radar, it is the butchery. At Lavington, about 10 kilometres from the farm, Jacob built what is billed as one of Australia's first self-serve, 24-hour, completely unstaffed butcheries. It is open every hour of every day. Members get an access code to enter, scan their own products through an app, and pay electronically, with the farm even accepting less conventional payment methods. There is nobody behind the counter, by design.
Jacob's reasoning is characteristically practical: putting someone on minimum wage out the front just to sell meat did not make sense to him. So he removed the counter and trusted his customers instead. The remarkable part is that it works. The concept went viral on TikTok, briefly crashing the farm's website, and by the accounts the farm has shared, theft has been essentially nil across years of operation. To become a member you are generally expected to visit the farm on a tour or complete an online process first, so the people using the shop are aligned with what the farm stands for. It is a small masterclass in building a business on trust.
Why it matters: an unstaffed shop that runs on the honour system, with almost no theft, is not just a neat gimmick. It is proof of what happens when a producer and their customers genuinely share values. That relationship is the whole point of buying direct from a farm like this.
What they make: beef, and a lot more besides
The core of Wolki Farm is grass-fed and pasture-raised meat, but the range goes well beyond the usual. Here is a sense of the breadth, and it is the breadth that shows how much they use of each animal and how creatively they think.
Grass-fed meat
Grass-fed and grass-finished beef, grass-fed lamb, pasture-raised pork, a distinctive double-aged dairy beef, and wild-harvest venison, alongside some seafood. This is the heart of the farm: honest cuts from animals raised on pasture.
The Wolki pantry
Value-added staples that use the whole animal, including their own honey, rendered lard and grass-fed beef tallow. It is the sort of range that reflects a genuine waste-nothing, whole-animal ethic rather than just selling prime cuts.
Tallow and lard skincare
A skincare line built on rendered animal fat, including balms, a body scrub and a much-loved lip balm. Turning tallow and lard into skincare is exactly the kind of clever, nothing-wasted thinking Wolki Farm is known for.
Raw pet food and bulk boxes
Raw pet food and treats made from the same quality animals, plus freezer-filler bulk boxes that bring the per-kilo price down for families who want to stock up on properly raised meat.
The lip balm is a good example of the whole philosophy in miniature. A conventional operation renders fat into a low-value byproduct or throws it away. Wolki Farm turns it into a product people rave about. It is nose-to-tail thinking applied with imagination, and it is why their customers tend to become genuine fans rather than one-off shoppers.
Buying from Wolki Farm, wherever you are
You do not have to live near Albury to eat Wolki Farm's meat. The business ships nationwide, with a flat-rate shipping model, insulated and refrigerated packaging, and orders packed and dispatched midweek so they travel well. Shelf-stable items like the pantry range and skincare can go anywhere. There is a postcode checker on their site, flexible payment options including buy-now-pay-later, and no membership required to order online. In short, a farm in southern New South Wales can put genuinely regenerative meat in a freezer in Perth or Cairns.
| At a glance | Details |
|---|---|
| Farmer | Jacob Wolki and family |
| Location | Woomargama, Albury region, southern NSW (butchery at Lavington) |
| Started | 2019 |
| Approach | Regenerative, pasture-raised, grass-fed and grass-finished, chemical-free |
| Certification | Not certified organic by choice; trust and transparency based, one certified-organic partner line |
| How to buy | Australia-wide delivery online, plus the 24/7 self-serve butchery at Lavington |
Why Wolki Farm is worth celebrating
What makes Jacob Wolki and his family stand out is not any single clever idea. It is the whole package: a farm rebuilt from first principles around health and land, animals raised with real care, a nose-to-tail range that wastes almost nothing, an unstaffed shop that runs on trust, and a farmer confident enough to tell you exactly how the food was produced and invite you to check. They have been featured across national media and appeared on a long list of podcasts, and they have become one of the more recognisable voices in Australian regenerative farming, all without compromising on the way they do things.
For anyone who cares about where their meat comes from, Wolki Farm is a reminder that the good version of this is not only possible, it is thriving. If they have inspired you to eat better, you can find producers closer to home in our directory, and read up on how to shop with confidence in our guides below. The best thing you can do for farmers like this is simple: buy directly, and keep them going.
Find your own local producer. Wolki Farm shows what direct-from-farm buying can look like. To find grass-fed and organic producers, butchers and farm-direct suppliers near you, browse the Organic Meat Store directory.