Imust say becoming a "hog farmer" never crossed my mind - especially when I was sitting in business classes at A&M back in 2010, dressed in nike shorts and an oversized t-shirt stamped with three greek letters, wondering how this statistics class would ever help in my future career. At the time I figured my career path involved dress slacks, high heels and a downtown big-city corporate office. While it did for a few years, calling on corporate clients can't hold a candle to my new office setting. Figuratively speaking, hogs are definitely the CEO's of the livestock world. Full of personality, mischief, SMARTS, and equal parts drama, they are some of the most intelligent animals on this planet when allowed to express their behaviors and instincts to the fullest extent, which is why it's so important to us to raise these guys and gals in an environment where they can root in the soil searching for bugs and roots with their bulldozer noses and have plenty of trees for back scratches. Paired with stomping their natural fertilizer into the soil then allowing the pasture ample rest plays a huge role in maintaining and regenerating the ecosystem of our farm. 

Genetics are the final factor to the equation as we are striving to get away from the "other white meat" mantra when it comes to pork, introducing old world heritage (and pasture based) breeds into our herd known to produce a much more flavorful pork that keeps our customers coming back for more. We are striving to turn this "unconventional" way of raising pork to be more common here in America, but we have a ways to go - starting with the nice and very concerned woman that drove into our farm to let us know "All of your pigs are out! I saw them running in the pasture everywhere!" 😂