The Burger Edition

Now that you have read up on chickens, let’s have a refresher on Pig!

What kind of pigs do we have on the farm?
We have 5 different breeds: Duroc, Hampshire, Berkshire, Tamsworth and Gloucester Old Spot. We mix the breeds to create a strong, healthy animal that will do best in our unique area.

How long is a pig pregnant?
A mama pig (sow) will be pregnant for 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days, give or take. When the babies are born they come out really clean. The mamas don’t have to lick them at all so they are not used to being touched. If you pet a baby pig it will jump straight up in the air and squeal from the odd sensation of your touch.

Why are the pigs at Tara Firma Farms so friendly?
Well, we coax them with a little organic Straus ice cream when they are little! They stick their heads into the bucket and we pet them until they are used to our touch. Doesn’t take too long!

Photo of our pigs by Nathaniel Coon, aren’t they cute?

How long do pigs live here on the farm?
We raise our pigs to approx. 8 months old & 250 lbs.

What do the pigs do on the farm?
They fertilize and dig up rocks! We have certain pastures with lots of rocks and the pigs dig those up when they are rooting for bugs, grubs and turnips!

Why are pigs always playing in the mud?
Pigs don’t sweat! So when it is hot out they need to cool off. By making mud holes to lay in, they can cover themselves with mud, kind of like sun screen. Good news it works, bad news is they get itchy when the mud dries and then they want to be scratched. You can be a scratching post for them!

What it the funniest thing about Pigs?
Around 5pm, as the days cool off the pigs wake up from a lazy, snoozing day and start to play. And when I say play I mean Play Big! They run, jump and twirl. The 8 week old piglets will sneak out and run around the farm like a gang from New York! However, the second they are startled by anything they run as fast as they can back to their mama!

All in all the pigs are the most fun here on the farm! And we have lots of babies just born, so come out to see then and maybe you and a piglet can go for a walk!

Your Farmer,
Tara Smith

Now that you have read up on chickens, let’s have a refresher on Pig!

What kind of pigs do we have on the farm?
We have 5 different breeds: Duroc, Hamshire, Berkshire, Tamsworth and Gloucester Old Spot.
We mix the breed to create a strong healthy animal
How long is a pig pregnant?
A mama pig (sow) will be pregnant for 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days, give or take.
When the babies are born they come out really clean. The mama’s don’t have to lick them at all so they are not used to being touched.
If you pet a baby pig it will jump straight up in the air and squeal from the odd sensation of your hand.
Why are the pigs at Tara Firma Farms so friendly?
Well we coaxed them with a little Organic Straus ice cream when they are little!
They stick their heads into the bucket and we pet them until they are used to our touch.
Doesn’t take long!
How long do pigs live here on the farm?
We raise our pigs to approximately 8 months old and 250 lbs
What do the pigs do on the farm?
They fertilize and dig up rocks! We have certain pastures with lots of rocks and the pigs
dig those up when they are rooting for bugs and turnips!
Why are pigs always playing in the mud?
Pigs don’t sweat! So when it is hot out they need to cool off. By making mud holes to lay in they can cover themselves with mud, kind of like sun screen.
Good news it works, bad news is they get itchy when the mud dries and want to be scratched. You can be a scratching post for them!
What it the funniest thing about Pigs?
Around 5pm, as the days cool off the pigs wake up from a lazy, snoozing day and start to play. And when I say play I mean Play Big!
They run, jump and twirl. The 8 week old piglets will sneak out and run around the farm like a gang from New York! However, the second they are startled by anything they
Run as fast as they can back to their mama!

All in all the pigs are the most fun here on the farm! And we have lots of babies just born, so come out to see then and maybe you and a piglet can go for a walk!

MEAT GLUE OMG

The latest, most outrageous, hysterical thing about food I have heard yet…..

MEAT GLUE…..you got that right. MEAT Glue.

You have to Google it. My explanation won’t do it justice but it goes something like this…

Pig and Cow blood has coagulants that are processed into a pounder.
The pounder is mixed into meat (chicken, beef and pork) trimmings.
The mixture is then formed into the shape of, let’s say a filet mignon or chicken breast.
Wrapped in plastic wrap to hold its form and refrigerated for 6 hours and voila!
You have something that looks like a filet or chicken breast that isn’t!

But what the heck. It looks like it and costs like it and with some good seasoning and sauce taste fine.
What’s the problem…..OMG
And it is everywhere in the U.S. Restaurants in particular and you wouldn’t be able to tell. The U.S. approved it's use in 1998. If you have had nuggets of chicken or round ham slices and crackers or turkey rolls or been to a restaurant in the last 10 years you have probably eaten this stuff.
BTW, people diagnosed with Huntingtons and Parkinson's have high levels of this stuff in them (transgultaminase).
You have to see the You-Tube…..just put in Meat Glue.

Another reason to “Know your Farmer”….I swear we don’t even have a bottle of Elmer’s glue on the property let alone Meat Glue….

Evidently you all understood the laying hen thing not to be confused however with the meat chicken thing.

The Meat Chicken and the Laying Hen used to be the same bird. Birds lays eggs and can also be great for eating. The only reason they are separate is the demand for more of them to eat or the demand for eggs. The bird industry practiced natural selection and identified birds that layed more than others and bred them. Those that were bigger in breast or leg meat were also selected and bred. They tended to be different birds. So we ended up with layers and meat birds. Here is the crazy thing…..laying hens, as you recall from last weeks lesson, start laying around 6 months old. Meat birds are full size at 8 to 10 weeks old! Not kidding. The grocery story bird is processes at 5 and 6 weeks old to deliver a 3 lb bird. That has been going on since the 60’s and the reason for the is due to…..drum roll…..COST! Birds at 5 weeks old get really hungry like a 14 year old boy. They require more food and being in cages and/barns will kill each other for more food. The food cost more so they began processing the younger bird. Less meat but costs less. The 8 to 10 week old bird, raised on pasture will grow to full size, have 1/3 more meat on it (higher meat to bone ratio than the 5 week old bird) so it is more efficient. The Omega 3’s, CLA’s and other important nutrients will be in high quantities in a pasture raised older bird vs little to none in a caged or barned bird. Another critical point is the food they eat. Corn and soy free food is important for not only the birds but for us as well. The overuse of corn is so prevalent in processed food and meat we are all practically made of corn and corn is a just a step from sugar. Soy has so many reason to not eat it I don’t have the space so read the books. Nourishing Traditions has a good chapter in the front that nets it down if you need too. So back to the meat chicken….we have ours shipped in from Iowa. 500 birds, 2 times per month. Sounds ridiculous. I know. We can’t get a hatchery to ship without a vaccine in the egg and antibiotics in their water. The assumption is that because we are ordering a larger quantity we must be using cages/barns and we are not ordering enough for them to change their process. Understood. We also are not ready to begin a hatchery. Not enough space to pasture all the chickens that we would need to lay all those eggs. Maybe next year. Unless one of you is interested in starting a hatchery….No? I digress. Just before the birds arrive we fluff up the wood shavings in the brooder, spray with water to get the composting started (the ammonia from the chicken pooh and pee bonds with the carbon in the wood shavings). This creates a warm floor for the birds to sit on and it also creates an environment for little insects to grow. Those insects are the birds first real protein. The birds are shipped here overnight and we pick them up at the post office. Weird but they are nice people at the post office, in the back, at 6am. We bring them home and put them in the little chick brooder. They need 95 degree heat to start, water and chick feed (corn and soy free of course). After 2 weeks we move them to pasture in to chicken tractors (10x12x2). We move them every day so they are on a fresh jungle of grasses, cow pies and have lots of bugs to eat! They dig through the cow pies to get to the fly larvae that have hatched. The act of digging through the pies spreads out the pies and fertilizes the ground better.

After 8 to 10 weeks we process here on the farm. They weight 7lbs or more and dress out at 4lbs. The goal is always more than 4lbs. Some birds are just smaller by default but most are 4.5lbs. Birds don’t need to be cooked to death like our parents taught us. You can tell when it is done by checking the inner thigh where it connects to the body. If there is raw meat there or blood it is not done. Don’t over cook. Samonella comes from stressed out birds. The salmonella is a natural in the intestine of a chicken and a necessary balance but if the bird becomes acidic from too much stress the salmonella will grow out of proportion and infect the bird. Birds processed in the USDA plant are washed in bleach and water or hydrogen peroxide, some form of astringent to kill infection. We don’t do this, our birds are happy birds right up to the end.

Back in the day, the layers and the roasters were the same bird. Over the years commercial farming followed a practice known as “selective breeding” creating 2 types of birds: those that laid more eggs and those that grew bigger breasts and legs. The layer tends to be skinnier and the meat chicken more like a bouncer (you know, the big guy at the bar that kicked you out in college because you were out of control). Laying hens will begin laying around 6 months old and will lay for 3 to 5 years if they are raised on pasture, 2 years if in cages or forced to lay by using lights (keeps them thinking it is summer vs winter with less light when they will slow down production to rest their bodies in preparation for the laying season. Not natural or good for the bird).

The rooster does have a purpose. He warns the hens should prey such as hawks, coyotes, raccoons etc. come along. He helps heard them into the hen house in the evening and he does the tango. Okay, not necessarily the Tango we know but a good rooster will socially engage the hens. And there are bad roosters. Those bad boys that really don’t serve up anything useful but they fertilize anything with a feather and they are pushy about it. We call those bad boys Stew.

On the technical side the question of “Are the eggs fertilized?” Most likely they are. Rooster sperm lasts in the hen about 10 days or so and matures overtime fertilizing the egg just before the shell forms. Because the eggs are laid in nesting boxes and the chickens don’t sit on them they don’t become chicks (they need 99 degrees for 21 days to hatch a chick). Fertilized eggs are not different than non fertilized eggs technically. Ideally a chicken has pasture to be a chicken in and mating is a normal process for chickens to engage in. So a fertilized egg indicates that a chicken has a life worth living but I digress.

We have mostly Rhode Island Reds and White Leg Horn chickens and they lay the brown and white eggs respectively. We also have some of the Araucana’s that lay the pink, yellow and green eggs. We got those for the kids knowing they would be excited to look in the carton to see if one of the special eggs was in there. Personally those birds, the Araucana’s, are not nice. They pick on younger birds so we have to keep the younger crowd separate until they are old enough i.e. big enough to join the larger flock.

All poultry are omnivores. They are meant to eat meat i.e. insects, bugs, worms, mice and small rodents or fish should they get the chance.

Things I find interesting or disgusting or it just makes me mad to be mislead (marketing gone awry):
• The free range chicken – I always thought of this chicken as being out on the range, cowboy hat, spurs, 6 guns, taking on the insect world. The truth is that free range only means “access to the outside”. No requirement of what that outside means or length of time. And it doesn’t apply to laying hens only to meat chickens. Lovely.
• Organic eggs from a factory farm means the chicken is fed organic soy or corn. It does not mean the chicken was out on pasture.
• The Vegan egg means the chicken has no access to any kind of meat. That means no insects, grubs, worms etc so it is defiantly in a cage and by the way it also means someone makes sure in that stinking barn, full of caged or crammed in chickens with dead animals and feces all over the floor that the chickens choose to NOT eat the flies because they know that their eggs are supposed to be meat free.
• The latest legislation to increase chicken living space from ½ x ½ square foot to 1 x 1 square foot is a huge step….what?
• There is an ugly truth to roosters and hens in hatcheries. The roosters are sold the day they hatch to make cat and dog food. 2 million a day. There is a solution to this that I want to tackle before the end of the year. It’s to hatch our own hens/roosters. Grow the rooster for meat birds. If grown on pasture they taste just as the meat birds but with less meat.

At the end of the day you get what you pay for and you pay so much more for food at the grocery store. Don’t forget to view the 15 minute movie at: (Tiff can you put in the Sierra club movie link here) if you haven’t already.

Vote with your dollars….your farmer.

Someone asked me our pasture management philosophy could feed the world. The answer is yes and no. The Yes part is the philosophy that (bring back your boxes and bags) pasture management and bio intensive gardening could feed the communities they surround. There are some caveats. We all eat too much meat. A 12 oz steak even if it is organic and pasture raised is too much meat for one person. 4 to 6 ounces is plenty. We need to eat more greens and legumes. Cut out the white stuff like the white breads, pastas and sugars. The NO part is that we cannot feed the world. We can only feed our community. Other communities should feed themselves as well. We can teach others if needed. The arrogance disguised as compassion to feed the world is what has gotten us into this mess. More and cheaper is not better. Communities need to live within the means of their environment in a sustainable fashion. We think the global economy is a good thing and in many ways it is but in so many ways it is not. In particular the food system. Let’s face it, the farther away the food has to travel the less nutritious it is, the more oil is used to transport and the current mass production of animal meat turns our food that isn’t real and is full of hormones, antibiotics and comes from sick animals. That is our food system and we have had it for 60+ or years and seem to be just waking up to the fact that it is horrible in every facet.

Feeding the world….I want to discuss that part a bit. While it is a grand idea, those that hold that idea are wanting to feed the world with processed food. So really we are not feeding the world, we are poisoning the world. I have to stop myself from getting frustrated with this question because 2 years ago I would have asked it myself. So shame on me. But, and there is always a butt….(mine is smaller by the way because I eat clean healthy pig fat with my pork chop and pig fat breaks down human fat and turns it to energy or waste)…but I digress….moving toward a healthy economy, world wide means we have to consider the long term, not just this year. We have to think in decades and centuries not next week. So I ask you…..outside of reading my drivel and buying our food, which I love you for…..what are you doing to save the world?