Producer
The Piggery
City: Trumansburg, NY,
About Us
Our 70 acre farm is located in Trumansburg, NY in the beautiful Finger Lakes region. Here at The Piggery, we’re a different kind of farm. We’re doing everything we can to create pork that is good for the people, good for the land and good for the pigs, with a focus on minimizing our carbon footprint. We raise heirloom breeds of pigs on pasture & woodland, supplemented with locally-raised GMO-free small grains (barley, wheat, triticale, peas). Our partner farms do the same with care.
Practices
We specialize in raising traditional, heritage pigs. We cross our handsome Mulefoot & Glouchestshire Old Spot boars with Yorkshire, Duroc, Hampshire and Tamworth ladies to make some darn good-lookin’ piglets.
We feed our pigs a balanced diet (for a pig) consisting of greens, sunshine and small grains. All of the components work in synergy.
The grains at the base of our pig’s diet is largely composed of barley and triticale (a stable cross of wheat and rye). We prefer small grains for many reasons:
1) There are no commercially available genetically modified strains of barley or triticale so we can be certain that the grains are GMO-free.
2) The small grains have low amounts of the Omega-6 polyunsaturated vegetable oils, which many health professionals feel are in excess in the american diet. When pigs eat less Omega 6’s the pork is lower in them, too!
3) Small grains have good levels of protein that are able to be supplemented with pasture and whey, minimizing our reliance on soybeans, which are frequently genetically modified.
4) Small grains are a low input grain, requiring less fertilizer and weed control than corn and other summer grains. They also fit well into the type of long crop rotations that we are trying to establish where legumes and manure from grazing take the place of commercial fertilizer and management takes the place of commercial weed killers.
5) Small grains breed true generation after generation. This means that farmers who grow them can save their own seed and are not beholden to large seed companies.
The pigs always have access to green feeds – in the summer months they are rotated onto fresh pasture several times weekly and in the winter they get hay and haylage. The protein in the green feeds supplements the protein in the small grains to a large degree. They are also high in vitamins and minerals and healthful Omega-3 fats. Omega-3 fats are essential polyunsaturated fats that are missing from most american diets, and most corn and soy based hog diets as well. Pigs are what they eat and the green feeds end up having a healthful effect all the way up the food chain. By reducing the amount of Omega-6 fats in the diet (by feeding small grains instead of corn and soy) and maximizing the amount of Omega-3 fats we produce pork with a much more balanced ratio of essential polyunsaturated fats than commodity pork.
We feed our pigs a balanced diet (for a pig) consisting of greens, sunshine and small grains. All of the components work in synergy.
The grains at the base of our pig’s diet is largely composed of barley and triticale (a stable cross of wheat and rye). We prefer small grains for many reasons:
1) There are no commercially available genetically modified strains of barley or triticale so we can be certain that the grains are GMO-free.
2) The small grains have low amounts of the Omega-6 polyunsaturated vegetable oils, which many health professionals feel are in excess in the american diet. When pigs eat less Omega 6’s the pork is lower in them, too!
3) Small grains have good levels of protein that are able to be supplemented with pasture and whey, minimizing our reliance on soybeans, which are frequently genetically modified.
4) Small grains are a low input grain, requiring less fertilizer and weed control than corn and other summer grains. They also fit well into the type of long crop rotations that we are trying to establish where legumes and manure from grazing take the place of commercial fertilizer and management takes the place of commercial weed killers.
5) Small grains breed true generation after generation. This means that farmers who grow them can save their own seed and are not beholden to large seed companies.
The pigs always have access to green feeds – in the summer months they are rotated onto fresh pasture several times weekly and in the winter they get hay and haylage. The protein in the green feeds supplements the protein in the small grains to a large degree. They are also high in vitamins and minerals and healthful Omega-3 fats. Omega-3 fats are essential polyunsaturated fats that are missing from most american diets, and most corn and soy based hog diets as well. Pigs are what they eat and the green feeds end up having a healthful effect all the way up the food chain. By reducing the amount of Omega-6 fats in the diet (by feeding small grains instead of corn and soy) and maximizing the amount of Omega-3 fats we produce pork with a much more balanced ratio of essential polyunsaturated fats than commodity pork.