On pork….
….we took guests this weekend to a nearby farm store. As fellow pig breeders, I thought they would be interested in another approach to marketing pork.
We’d tasted the sausage before and appreciated the flavor but without endorsing the management technique of using regular genetically-modified grain, plus day-old bread from a bakery (not only GM flour but other unknowns including chemical preservatives and flavoring) and finally “scraps”.
Still this is the typical way most farmers raise their pigs in the local ag community and it’s certainly better than the industrial pork that makes up the sausage you buy at the store or eat in restaurants. Here’s an excerpt from the “River Cottage Meat Book” describing the processing of commercial sausage:
“The very worst of them–which is, of course, most of them–are made from mechanically recovered pork slurry, blasted off the carcasses of factory-farmed pigs with high-pressure hoses, then (scooped) up off the abattoir floor. After being sieved and ground to an even paste, and stabilized with the addition of chemical preservatives, this is mixed with cheap cereal binders (as much as 50% of the final sausage), artificial flavorings and additional preservatives to boot.”
Thistle Hill pigs are raised strictly on a natural diet of grass, forbs, grubs, acorns and non-GMO corn. It’s a slower and far more expensive way of management but we think there’s no point in doing local farming if we’re not doing it as healthfully as is possible.
We do believe we have now found a source for raw milk and would love to feed that to our pigs. They’d love it, too. And so would you.
Our schedule now is to harvest our new pigs at the end of the month. Pork should be available a week or two after that. Contact us if you want to reserve your share: info@thistlehill.net
6 Comments
mike ortwein
What type of pig are you using and what % of their diet is grain?
David
We use Tamworth pigs….buy them as piglets.
Feed non-gmo corn free choice….as they approach finish about 10 pounds a day.
We’ve tried twice to just pasture them but they just won’t fatten to our satisfaction. I have found no one who can.
And now you are the first to know: we have just concluded an arrangement with a grass fed raw milk dairy to take their surplus. We’ll also feed that to the pigs at about a gallon a day.
mike ortwein
How many pounds of corn is there in a bushel? Do you have to pay a premium for non GMO? Is the corn ground? Would you recommend pork production? Do you have your own sow and boar? Do you run your pigs with your cow herd? Thanks
David
Pounds of corn in a bushel? You tell me. I’m satisfied that a 50 pound bag of whatever is close enough to a bushel for my purposes. I guess technically it’s a little more than that.
We pay about 40% more for non GMO corn. It seems more flaked than ground to me.
We do not keep sows or boars but buy piglets at weaning. We’re dealing with 4 to 8 pigs at a time and keeping the big ones is not cost-effective. (It’s also scary)
For the most part, the pigs have their own pastures except when they decide to go for a walk. They always come all the way home at dinner time, though.
I can’t really say I recommend them. They’re a lot of trouble…and feed costs make it almost impossible to do much more than break even. But I love the pork; it’s as different as a tomato picked off the vine in your garden compared to the plastic version at the supermarket. And the nutritional difference is off the chart! I simply won’t eat pork at a restaurant.
Beth Rogers
How do you market yours? You are raising them just like we do. We buy Sunrise Farms nongmo feed and they deliver, too. We are in Markham—Skye Ridge Farm.
David
Hi Skye Ridge….we generally only sell to our regular beef customers. Excess sausage might go up to Merry Moo in Flint Hill but generally it is snapped up as we harvest. We put out an email notifying “the list” when beef or pork is available.
BTW: we were recently at a field day at Philip Carter Winery and met the folks from Dark Hollow. Are they neighbors? We’ll all have to get together.