I've had a lot of questions recently about why we have a sister farm raising our pigs. Well, there are a lot of reasons, the most important one being it is better for them to be raised within a reasonable distance of a USDA slaughter facility. If we raised the hogs here they would have to be in a trailer for over 5 hours just to get to a packer, add lairage time and that's 18 plus hours between the farm and the end. That's WAY too much stress to put on a pig. Phil is only 30 miles from the plant so its 90 minutes from pasture to processing. Another reason is we wanted Berkies. We believe that these Heritage Hogs produce the best pork available. Berkshire is to pork as Wagu is to beef. The Breeder we talked to agreed to raise them for us and his facility is AMAZING! He raises his pigs in family groups on irrigated pastures, They get grains and veggies in addition to being able to root and act like pigs. They never have to walk in feces or drink dirty water. When I told Phil about "The Stein Principle" he laughed and asked me if I wanted a camera in the pastures to watch the pigs grow. I said "Can we Do that? My customers would love it!" So we're looking in to how to make that happen. Cool Stuff! There are other reasons for doing things the way we do them. Pigs with poor genetics, poor quality feed, and that suffer undue stress produce what is called PSE pork. PSE stands for Pale Soft and Exudative. The common term is Soft Pork. The texture of the meat is spongy, and the fat melts at room temperature. Soft pork is also the packers nightmare, it gums up the saws and is a mess. There are also some health concerns with soft pork and you can e-mail me for links to the studies. So bottom line. We want to give our customers the best product we can raise as locally as possible. A 5 hour trip once a month for me to pick up my animals at the locker beats them having to spend 18 hours waiting to become supper hands down. Meg