Introducing the new waltons.com with Jon Tremblay

This blog will generally cover meat processing topics and some upcoming events. However this week I wanted to take the time to explain why we are changing websites for the second time in less than a full year. When we switched in March of 2021 we were hoping that we would have a platform we could stay on and grow with for 3-5 years. I was away at the Governor's Hunt with Brett Walton and our Shipping Manager Taylor having a great ole time winning guns and shooting (some would say badly) at Pheasants. While I was away our Web Coordinator called me twice saying the website was down, now this was right in the heart of our busy season, where Walton's generally does many times the business that we do during most months. I got a text from Austin saying the decision had been made to make a move to a new platform. I don't think my brain fully comprehended what he was saying, and part of me just thought he meant moving the server somewhere more reliable.

Now, I know us sausage makers aren't math geniuses (unless we are talking about dividing seasoning into smaller batches) but clearly, we did not stay for 3-5 years on our current platform. We were plagued by caching issues, where changes we made would sometimes taking minutes, but sometimes take hours and even days to show up on the site. It made managing the website a near impossible task. When we made this switch to this platform I was hoping and expecting that it would actually free up some of my time so that I could continue making more how-to videos to help Walton's customers make the best sausage possible. Instead, 2021 was mostly a lost year for me and to some extent for Meatgistics, our video editor Patrick and I sat down and looked through the videos we released in 2021 and there were only a few that we thought were really up to our standards. Those of you who have been with us longer than a year will know I monitored posts on Meatgistics very closely, loving the back and forth and being able to really help people.

We even put an Urgent category in so we could help people as they were having processing issues. Instead of being able to dive deeper into that, I was pulled almost completely out of it, putting out fires on what felt like a daily basis. Well, we believe that the current platform we are on is stable enough where I really will have more time to do quality videos showing people all the amazing sausage, jerky and other meat snacks they can make at home! Rough job, huh?!

We have put our heart and soul into this site. It will NOT be perfect right off the bat, we know that. We condensed a years worth of work into a few short months, but I firmly believe it is already better than our previous site.

We like to have a good time in our videos, livestreams and podcasts but we do take our jobs at Walton's very seriously. A large part of that job is giving our customers a great purchasing experience, we can have the best equipment, seasoning and additives, all of the information you could need, but if you have a bad purchasing experience, what are the chances you will be back? Well, we emphatically want you back, and I think the work we have put into this site shows that! So, I hope you enjoy this site and all of our hard work has paid off!