02/26/2025
When was the last time you saw pigs from the road? You can see pastures of cattle, even the occasional bison or goats.
But you hardly ever see pigs. Why is that?
According to the US Dept of Agriculture, about 97% of pigs are raised indoors, meaning they have no access to sunlight or soil, and have no ability to graze or root.
The idea is to keep them in a sterile and controlled environment to maximize efficiency. The downside of raising pork this way is it inhibits just about every instinctual behavior of a pig.
We've chosen to be a part of the less than 3% of producers that honor the instincts of the pig and allow them to live in nature.
By contrast, most grocery store beef was raised outside for the majority of its life. Not just the stuff labeled "grassfed", I mean all the beef.
There are three main types of farmers in mainstream beef production.
1) "Cow/calf Ranchers" - meaning calves are born from a herd of mama cows, then weaned and sold usually around 6 months old.
2) "Backgrounders" - ranchers who buy weaned calves and graze them until around 12-16 months old, then sell them when they're ready for finishing.
3) "Finishers" - these are the feedlots. You might have heard them called CAFO's too, Confined Animal Feeding Operations. Cattle move off pasture and are kept in confinement pens where they eat a grain-heavy diet to "finish" accumulating fat before harvest around 18 months old. They're often implanted in their ear with a slow-release dose of growth hormones, and are fed subtherapeutic antibiotics which help them handle the confinement environment and increase the efficiency of weight gain from the corn-based diet they receive the last few months of their lives.
So, even mainstream, corn-fed beef still spends the majority of its life outside on pasture, whereas 97% of pork - even the organic and all natural stuff - is still raised exclusively indoors.
Now, our beef is vastly different than what I described above. (For starters, ours live their entire lives on pasture, never eat grain/corn/soy, never receive hormones or antibiotics, and graze for 3 years to naturally accumulate beautiful, golden grass-fed and grass-finished fat.)
But this highlights the contrast between grocery store meat and ours.
Their beef and our beef have some similarities and some important differences.
But their pork and our pork are absolutely nothing alike. And we haven't even gotten into the details of indoor pork - like confinement crates for gestation and farrowing, feeding chemicals like carbadox and ractopamine.
For today, let's just focus on indoor vs outdoor.
With just that one difference, you can taste it in our meat! Just check out our Google reviews to hear what other local families have to say about switching to our meat from mainstream options.
Of course, there are challenges to raising animals outside when you lose that controlled, lab-like environment of indoor pork. But seeing our pigs express instinctual behaviors like wallowing, rooting, grazing fresh grass, basking in the sun, makes this method so worth it. If managed correctly and rotated to new pasture often, they add fertility to the soil and they're healthy. They taste amazing and the nutrition is different too. Plus, I'd personally much rather work and raise my farm kids in nature than in a concrete facility.
We have Pastured Pork Shares available now, (and Beef Shares available in April).
Whole or Half Pigs for those of you who have a big freezer and want to customize cuts.
Quarter Pig Bundles for those who'd just like a sample, or need to fit meat in the regular freezer compartment of a fridge.
You can place a deposit on our website, or message me with questions.
💚 Meghan
