PORK
Naturally Raised without Antibiotics.
HERITAGE HOGS
We are excited to share more about our newest adventure over here at Brown Family Farm in Oak Park.
We added pigs to our farm back in 2021. They are crosses between Red Waddle, Hampshire & Berkshire; all are well known heritage breeds. These pigs have earned their reputation and are raised for their fat to muscle ratio. For best flavor and tenderness, pork should have marbling. The cross breeding between the oldest Heritage Hog lines provides us with piglets that possess all of the desirable traits from their lineage!
Our neighbor farrows for us. She's right around the corner and you can actually see her barn from our front door. Talk about local! These pigs are born and raised on the farm, with the most comfortable life possible.
We are selling our pigs has halves and wholes again this season. We're charging a base price per pound ($3.75) and you work directly with our butcher to customize your processing. The thickness of your chops, the amount of hams or roasts, seasoned sausage, you get to choose what you want! Butchering costs are explained more below and paid directly to the butcher. More info on this below.
**You do not need to be a Farm Share Members to purchase Pork!
Enjoying their fresh paddock!
I'm ready for my close up!
Healthy growth rates with healthy food!
H A P P Y & H E A L T H Y
Animal husbandry should be your first question when considering locally raised meats. How are they cared for? What do they eat? Where do they live and how much space do they have?
Hogs are the ultimate foraging creature; they enjoy being able to exercise their instincts to root up the ground looking for bugs, worms, roots, and any organic material they can find. Yes, they eat SO much produce on our farm here too! More on this below.
As piglets we start them on a special feed. It's a higher protein feed that encourages structural & bone growth early on. After that high protein grain, we switched them to the free-choice grains.
We feed our hogs fresh produce & free choice grains so that they can eat when they want; they always have food available. This makes for healthy eating habits, resulting in healthy growing rates, which in turn helps us to provide you with the best quality Premium Heritage Breed Pork.
We are giving them the trimmings from plants, or over-ripe muskmelons for example. Which is 100% their favorite food of all time! A good example of the produce they're getting is when we bring them tons of cauliflower greens. When we go out and harvest cauliflower for our CSA, we keep the leaves intact around the head of cauliflower, which completely cover the 'face' of the cauliflower to keep it safe in travel. We haul the cauliflower in from the field on the wagon and bring it to the pack shed where we will wash it and cut away the outer leaves, exposing a beautiful head of cauliflower! (That's what goes in your Crop Share!)
When we trim all the leaves off, we put them in gaylords and have SO MUCH produce/ greens/ fruits etc. to bring the hogs. A gaylord in a unit of measurement, it's the bins that are used for watermelons and pumpkins at grocery stores. With the cauliflower, a single day's Crop Share harvest will yield at least a gaylord of fresh greens for them! Literally hundreds of pounds, in a single day.
Something we NEVER do is give them people leftovers. None of the bakery day-old bread, no animal byproducts, no scraps from the table, EVER. We don't feed our Hogs any processed foods or byproducts like grains from the distillery; we give them raw freshly ground grains & raw freshly harvested produce. Seems common sense but a lot of farms do that to keep costs down so I wanted to mention it.
YOU HAVE OPTIONS
We have 3 options for our Customers to get ahold of our Heritage Hog Pork Products!
1. Buying Halves and Wholes
This is where our customers commit to a larger portion of pork and get the best price-per-pound. We are currently taking orders for Halves and Wholes, visit the Pricing Page for more info.
2. Pork Packages
This is where our customers buy pre-packaged assortments of cuts that come in an insulated Brown Family Farm grocery bag. Smaller commitment and price point. We currently don't have any Pork Packages available but when we do, we'll announce it via the email list below.
3. By the Cut
This is where our customers come to our Farm Stand and purchase a package at a time. So if you want to pick up brat patties and a dozen ears of corn for dinner, you've hit the jackpot. Our Farm Stand is in Zimmerman at Hardware Hank on the weekends Fri (9-6), Sat (9-6), Sunday (9-5) and we're open seasonally from mid July through the 1st weekend of October. We will have a big variety of cuts and we periodically run specials as well, get on the email list below for updates or follow us on Facebook.