What is Polyface Pigaerator Pork?

written by

Hannah Hale

posted on

November 12, 2024

Few proteins are as versatile as pork.  From sausage to tenderloin, it’s the ultimate versatile option, whether you need something for highbrow dining or quick nutrition for kids on their way to school.

Before we dive into it, here's a fun fact: Polyface began raising pigs many years ago not primarily to eat them, but to turn compost, or aerate it.  

Hence coining the term "pigaerator".  

In addition, the Salatin family used them to turn earth to create "silvo-pastures" in the woods of Polyface Farm. (silvo-pasture is widely spaced trees with grass underneath). 

Using the pigs’ God-given attributes to replace human labor and machinery meant the pigs were not just bacon and pork chops, but co-laborers in our land healing ministry.

The unintended consequence was out-of-this-world amazing pork. 

We still work with our pigs in the same way we started, but have far more pasture area dedicated to them.

Here at Polyface, we buy piglets from nearby farmers who align with our standards - small farms, no hormones or vaccines, pastured sows. 

We bring them into our nurturing and safe open-sided barn to give them time to acclimate to new surroundings. While there, we give them our custom grain feed and plenty of deep bedding (compost) to dig, turn, snuggle, and hunt for goodies.

We also use this time to train them to the electric fencing that will help us guide them throughout the rest of their time with us. This fencing allows us to both serve and protect the pigs and the land by creating paddocks through which we can move the pigs to create the pattern of disturbance and rest that the earth needs to thrive.

We keep our pigs in groups of 35-50 and move them every 5-12 days in roughly half acre paddocks.

In the fall, we augment these pastures with a few weeks in more densely wooded areas to harvest tons of acorns.

If you visit Polyface and see our happy pigs, you'll notice a lot of variation in how they're colored. That's because we’re not breed specific, but rather phenotype specific.  

We want 1950's style genetics that facilitate mobility; body types are shaped more like a torpedo rather than the square Schwarzenegger-shaped box (the look of the hogs you’ll see at a 4-H or FFA market animal show).  

Rather than processing our pigs at the industry-standard 250 pounds, we take them on up to 300 pounds because the larger hogs metabolize forage better.

Our pork has a decidedly rose-colored hue which indicates the iron, carotenes, and phytochemicals coming from green pasture plants.  

Because they get a lot of exercise, the meat is more moist.  

Because they are never stressed, it cooks about 20 percent faster than industrially-raised confinement pork.  

Because pigs are omnivores, we offer them a grain ration to help supplement the forage (grass, bugs, nuts, grubs, etc.) that they're getting. That grain ration is nonGMO and sourced from a local mill where they test each batch of grain for chemical residues. (No Glyphosate here!)

Our custom blend of grains comprises whole roasted soybeans, corn, and oats, providing essential nutrients while excluding animal by-products, fillers, hormones, or antibiotics.

We tailor the feed ratios and amounts to match the specific protein requirements of different animals, including pigs, turkeys, laying hens, broiler chickens, chicks, poults, and ducks. This personalized approach ensures optimal health and growth for each species under our care.

It's essential to note our use of whole roasted soybeans, distinct from traditional soy products. This is not soy. We don’t use soy.  We use whole-roasted soybeans.  The difference is equivalent to high fructose corn syrup versus corn on the cob.

If you think pigs are dirty and smell bad, we encourage you to come to the farm and experience our pigs, whether they’re turning compost in the barn or out in silvopastures.  You’ll never think about pigs the same way again. 

I hope you'll try some Polyface pigaerator pork and let me know your favorite way to use it. 


Live well,

Hannah

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Food Shortages

I'm in Oregon today speaking at the Azure Harvest Festival and a question from the audience during a Q&A stimulated a lot of discussion:  "What do you think about the possibility and preparation surrounding food shortages?" David Stelzer, founder of Azure Standard, answered that the issue is not food volume, it's food nutrition.   That was an interesting answer that has a lot of merit.  As a nation, we are overfed and undernourished.  This is the crux of the MAHA movement and the epidemic diseases we see in our country. At Polyface, we know the pastured meat and poultry we produce is far superior in essential phytochemicals and other nutrients due to the carotenes, exercise, and stress-free habitat we offer.  You can taste the difference, feel the difference in texture, and measure it empirically. Perhaps my most poignant affirmation was our cat test.   We purchased meat from the supermarket and offered our own for the four cats.  They wouldn't touch the conventional meat (ground beef). Even though two plates and four cats would be much easier to accommodate if they spread out, all four crowded around the plate with our meat, eating it all and licking it up, before later sniffing and gingerly eating the supermarket counterpart. Since cats don't understand TV ads or USDA propaganda, they know what's good and what's not.   We encourage anyone dismissive of food differences to ask their pets:  you can trust them far more than doctors and experts. Yes, I get the nutrient deficiency angle on the shortage question.  But I'd like to explore it a bit further.   Right now, the world throws away more human-edible food, as a percentage of production, than at any time in human history.  The planet is awash in food.   Some 40 percent gets thrown away because it has a slight blemish, exceeds the sell-by date, or is tainted in some way.  We have a fundamentally segregated food supply rather than an integrated one, and that creates a lot of unusable waste. The vulnerabilities of our food system, I think, are much more subtle.  When I was in Uruguay two years ago, speaking at a conference, one of the other presenters was from Germany and showed a soil map of the globe.  Not a single commercial agricultural region had a stable or positive soil trajectory.  Every single area on the planet is losing soil; some faster than others, but globally our soil depletion continues without any sign of abatement. This is not a good trajectory.   As much as the technocrats promise food without soil, that's not the way to bet.  Soil is the skin of the earth.  When it goes, famine results.   The main difference now compared to centuries ago is that we have the capacity to move food around.   Nobody starves due to a lack of food on the planet; they starve due to socio-political unrest and dysfunction. But what happens when massive areas can't grow anything anymore?  Even being able to move food around doesn't help when there isn't enough.   The soil trajectory does not look good.  But at Polyface, we're building soil.  Areas covered with shale (layered rocks) half a century ago now have a foot of soil on them.  That's not the 3-5 feet that 150 years of inappropriate tillage eroded, but it's a build-back start. In addition to soil loss, as a planet we're seeing hydrologic decreases.   The Oglala aquifer, which undergirds the irrigated agriculture in five states, has dropped more than 100 feet in the last half-century.  At its current rate, it will be unpumpable in about 50 more years.  Imagine if all those circular irrigation pivots in Nebraska and Kansas shut down.  What then? At Polyface, we keep building ponds to inventory surface runoff.  By definition, surface runoff occurs when rains come too fast at once or too much at one time for the soil to absorb it.  Holding that and using it strategically in a drought is a way to reduce flooding during rain events and grow grass when it gets dry.  This is one of the most landscape resilient techniques we can implement. 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But at Polyface, we keep these vulnerabilities at bay with compost fertilization, pasture rotations, and lots of species diversity, including pollinators and wildlife. Here's the point:  the basic long-term vulnerabilities in the planet's food systems could all be reversed with practices Polyface uses every day.  Looked at another way, the entire food shortage question could be answered if eaters and farmers implemented these ecological and immunological protocols, working together to rather than completely separated.  We don't need to fall into an abyss of starvation. If we all simply began eating food from farms that build soil, increase water, and stimulate immunity, we could deliver a hospitable, abundant planet to our children.   Reversing these trajectories wouldn't take much time or money.  It takes intentionally-minded folks who connect the chain of sustenance from their plate to the planet. Polyface patrons do that.  Thank you.  Let's heal the land together. Joel