Downtown butcher shop fundraiser under way

Emily Petersen

Only $33,725 to go as of this afternoon.

That's the dollar count on Emily Petersen's $35,000 fundraising effort to create a butcher shop in downtown Troy -- yet another example of the entrepreneurial spirit younger businesspeople have been injecting into the Troy scene.

Peterson, currently the head butcher at Healthy Living Market in Wilton, Saratoga County, says in a video on the online fundraising site called gofundme :

"I want to put a butcher shop in Troy NY called 'The Sentinel Butchery' using local farms and slaughter houses. My goal is to source from ethical, sustainable, humane farms that pasture raise animals without the use of growth promotants and preventative antibiotics. ... Classes, meat shares, catering and restaurant consultation are all on deck to round out our list of services."

If it comes to fruition, the butcher shop will be located on River Street in a building that long ago housed The Sentinel newspaper. That 19th Century semiweekly newspaper was famous for first publishing the now-iconic poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas," also called "The Night Before Christmas."

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