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Enjoy your pork chops….
….and if they’re from the supermarket…or you’re eating at most restaurants….it would be better not to focus on this picture. These are mama pigs….waiting to be bred or waiting to birth…or just waiting. It’s how they spend their entire lives….not just during breeding…..in cages so small they can’t turn around…lying in their own waste…filled with antibiotics and steroids…just so we can have “cheap food”. We’re supposed to believe this protects the young so Mom doesn’t roll over on them. It does happen, in small confinement pens, but not in the open. Pigs are incredibly athletic and they know very well how to care for their young. For contrast, here’s a young…
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Move along…nothing to see here….
So it’s a million pigs….not to worry. Notice that the story says the farm is owned by Smithfield’s in Virginia….not that Smithfield’s is owned by China as in Beijing! Besides, our government says the pork is perfectly safe…just like all that ground beef with USDA labels. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58369640-78/pedv-animal-virus-state.html.csp
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Return of the Pork Pak….
….a last minute cancelation of a whole pig, makes it possible for us to sell 10-pound Pork Paks….again….briefly. The demand for our pigs has moved us to offering just halves and wholes….but for as long as they last, the 10 pound package is back and costs just $75! The Pork Pak includes 5 lbs of a variety of sausage, pork chops, hams steaks, and bacon. Yes, bacon. Like our beef, our pork is raised on pasture….is entirely drug free…and even the corn we feed is non-GMO! All this reminds me of two things: First, the picture. Our website is repeated on Facebook and on occasion someone posts something there that…
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A fussy eater….
….not a phrase you associate with pigs. But this one wants things just so. First, she likes company when she eats. And she does not want her milk on top of her cereal….separately please. Most pigs could care less but this one’s mother taught her proper etiquette. She eats even more if grandson, Church, stays with her and talks to her for the whole meal!
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“Stay with quality….
….quality will always sustain you.” That was the advice this butcher’s daddy gave him. Lovely. Here’s a short film that is an ode to country bacon and ham and a man from Virginia who has made it his life’s work. Heavily-salted bacon and ham are not my favorites but I’m not going to quibble with a man so obviously in love with what he does. http://vimeo.com/29677209 Now Thistle Hill bacon and hams are smoke-cured, the old-fashioned way, but there are no nitrates or other additives in our process. Nor do our pigs receive hormones, antibiotics or other drugs as they grow. Finally, they are raised on non-GMO feed. We simply…
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For your summer party….
….a Tamworth pork salad! Recipe from son, Church!
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Pork…with a little help from our friends….
….as Thistle Hill pork aficionados have learned, it’s a waiting game! Fattening pigs mostly on pasture takes a long time. But now we think we have found “the trick”. Or tricks! Organic, non-GMO feed, is twice as expensive, but Rich Hamilton of Elim Springs farm convinced us, on a recent visit, to triple the daily allowance. It takes about 6 pounds a day just to maintain a pig so every ounce over that is what adds the weight. We had them at maintenance….wasting time. And then Reality Farms’ John and Terry Guevremont made available the left-over raw milk from their grass fed dairy cows and the pigs are practically exploding. As you…
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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…
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Free range pigs….
….well, we hadn’t planned it that way. At least, not yet! But these two piglets must have overheard me say I’d like to try letting some pigs roam our woods, gorging themselves on acorns to their heart’s content. In any event, despite the picture, they’re on their own. But they do come home twice a day to snack on the non-gmo corn. Getting hard for them to sneak under the fence, though. We’re going to have to leave the gate open for them. Maybe, one of those pet entrances they put on garage doors? The danger isn’t really that they’ll run away; it’s that they’ll get into our vegetable garden. …
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In praise of The Pig….
….I admit that I was never much of a fan of pork….until we started raising (and cooking) our Tamworth pigs. We’ve all been schooled to over-cook our pork and so restaurant chops are almost always dry and bacon fried to the taste of old shoe leather. Now we look forward to the next harvesting as eagerly as our customers do. Thistle Hill pork chops, sausages and bacon have made me a big believer. (Just don’t over-cook; not necessary with our pastured pigs!) Recently we came across a Paleo book on pigs…the animal itself and preparing the “proper pork”. It certainly pays pigs their “due”. Be sure to read the reviews…