Journeys are interesting and amusing things to reminiscence about. You start with one seemingly small decision, and before you know it, it has snowballed into something greater than you imagined.
One such story is how we became pig farmers. The long version will take you through several years of discussions, planning, pivoting and reevaluating. The short version is that we wanted good, quality food that we trusted. We were tired of trying to interpret the newest marketing fad on labels. Does "natural" mean the same to us as the to the person printing it on the label? In our experience, the answer was no. We tried finding the food from local farmers and was successful for a time. Then, a government bureaucracy decided that it was "safer" for us to eat boxed "food products" available at the large stores than to obtain our desired local food at farmer's markets.
Life is hard enough. Spending our precious time sifting through the bovine excrement of food labels is not how we want to employ our energies. We decided that we would rather KNOW what was in our food and how our food was raised (at least as much as possible).
The skills of raising animals, growing a garden, storing food and other tasks that were common to our ancestors are lost to a lot of our generation. We can learn a lot from the abundance of educational material available, but until you put your booty into gear and try it yourself, you never really know what it takes to make the final product.
We decided that one of the items we wanted to produce for ourselves was pork. We researched traditional methods, new methods, and even ancestral methods. We made a plan. We gambled and spent our money months in advance for the chance that the end result would be worth it. We invested in infrastructure which meant that we couldn't give up after only one season or we would lose a lot of this hard-earned money.
The year 2023 was our first year of raising pigs. We learned a lot. We sold a few live pigs to neighbors and ate a lot of delicious pork during 2024. In the end, it was a successful experiment.
We took the knowledge gained from hands-on experience and expanded our operation in 2024 to thirteen pigs. We continued to learn and grow in our knowledge of raising pigs and focused on improving our efficiency without sacrificing quality.
In 2024, we took another gamble. We set aside several of the pigs to be processed at a USDA-inspected facility. Why does this matter? In our area (maybe in others, I haven't taken the time to research this as it doesn't apply to us), you can process farm raised animals in two different ways. You can process it under the custom label or under the USDA label. If an animal is processed under the custom label, the resultant pieces of meat cannot legally be sold to consumers. Custom processed meat is still safe to eat and many of the USDA inspected facilities also offer the option of custom processing at a lower cost.
In summary, two identical animals can be raised on the same farm, in the same manner, processed at the same facility by the same person, but only the meat from the one that contains the pretty USDA label can be legally sold to our customers. We opted to obtain these pretty labels.
USDA inspected processing costs more money for everyone involved due to the required legal paperwork. We continue to offer the option of custom processing for customers that have the desire and freezer space to store a half or whole hog. This process is legally completed by selling the live pig to our customer and only charging for our services of raising the animal. However, not everyone has the room nor the need to store large amounts of pork at a time.
We are now offering smaller portions of our pasture raised pork to our customers! We have processed a few of our pigs under the USDA labeling requirements at Oxbow Meats in Lawrenceburg, KY. We have purchased dedicated freezers to store your meat and have been diligently completing an inventory and uploading options online.
To prevent any further delay between you and delicious pork, we are opening up for sales. We will be updating the website with better pictures, descriptions and products as they become available. We offer on-farm pick up or possible meet up/delivery options can be arranged depending on the order and your location. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Check out our current inventory at: Growing Roots Farm's USDA Pastured Pork