GLOUCESTERSHIRE OLD SPOTS
A heritage breed from England, the "cottage pig" earned its keep by thriving off of the byproducts of the farm and home; whey and other dairy products, garden and root cellar culls, orchard windfall and pasture.
Our Old Spot pigs make their living off of the same, with the addition of barley clums (a protein-rich byproduct from malting grains for brewing) from a local maltster, alfalfa hay and in the winter time when the garden is at rest, a locally milled, non-GMO ration with no corn or soy. Their entire lives are spent outdoors, foraging through the sagebrush steppe, expressing their pigginess. To aid and move us forward towards our overall goal of creating a thriving farm organism through fertile soils, the pigs are rotated through different paddocks throughout the year to help aid in brush clearing, cover cropping, and pasture reseeding. They always have access to fresh water, shade, protection from the elements and a wallow (when it gets hot).
Old Spots take longer to grow than the typical hog, meaning more feed, more of our time and higher costs to care for and raise them. This is why our price is higher than standard pork prices.
However, all of this leads to incredibly delicious, clean, high quality pork and why our customers keep coming back.
Custom Hogs: $4.99/lb whole or half cut based on hanging weight at butcher. Does not include butcher fees. Pork is custom-cut to your specifications by Baker County Custom Meats.
A non-refundable deposit is required to reserve a side of pork. $200 for a whole hog. $100 for a half hog. Please call or email the farm to make a payment. We accept cash, check, card and Venmo.
Our next butcher is Summer 2021
LAYING HENS
Although we currently have a variety of chicken breeds, our favorite are the Dark Cornish. Besides being wonderful layers of brown eggs, they are also fantastic mothers, superb foragers, super hardy and easy on the eyes.
Our chickens spend their entire lives outdoors, getting much of their diet from the ground they roam. Some of them express a complete lack of respect for the electric netting that is meant to keep them safe from predators and are truly free-range. The rest are happy moving every few days to a new patch of earth. During the winter, they are moved next to the barn for added protection from the elements and derive their diet from organic grain, kale, hay and veggie culls.
Eggs
$5.00/dozen
Please call or email for availability and delivery options.
THE LAND
Our farm is located in the hills above Sutton Creek southeast of Baker City, Oregon. This is sagebrush and bunchgrass country; the low foothills leading to the southern end of the Elkhorn Mountains. The climate here is dry, with most of our precipitation in the winter and spring and the growing season is short, with warm days and cool nights.
Keeping these factors in mind, we rotate our animals to different paddocks and areas of the farm based on the season, how wet/dry the paddocks are, the status of the forage growing in the paddocks, and what we want done with a paddock (i.e. brush clearing for more pasture, turning under a part of the garden that was cover cropped, etc). We are constantly observing and learning what management activities that we implement best serve to nourish and generate the entire farm organism.