We have all natural pastured pork available year round. With our innovative techniques for winter pasturing allow us to breed, farrow and raise pigs naturally outdoors through all the seasons. Our pigs are raised on pasture/hay and dairy as their primary diet using managed rotational grazing on our fields. We buy no commercial hog feeds or grains, we feed no antibiotics or hormones. See our pig page about how we raise and what we feed our pigs. This assures you of the highest quality naturally raised pork free of antibiotics, herbicides, pesticides and hormones. No Weird Stuff – Just good wholesome food we feed our own kids. From our family farm to your family’s table.
Each market day drop off pigs and pickup the meat from the previous trip. We regularly deliver pigs to a butcher for slaughter and butchering (cut & package). Generally we do weekly deliveries but this fall of 2011 we’re doing every other week as we finish building our own on-farm butcher shop which will open in 2012.
The butcher can freeze your meat if you like or you can get it fresh not frozen. You can then meet us along our delivery route or pickup at the farm gate. We deliver from Exit 1 of I-91 up through Bradford, across to Barre-Montpelier and up to Burlington, VT along I-89. See our delivery route.
For small orders of cuts we strongly recommend visiting the many stores that carry our pastured pork. Or dine at the fine restaurants throughout Vermont who offer our meat on their menus.
Samplers are available as the High-on-the-Hog and the economical Farmer’s Basket each of which is about a quarter pig of pork cuts.
Whole Pigs:
The price for a whole pig is $3.50/lb based on final hanging weight at the butcher after slaughter. A typical pig hangs at 180 lbs so the pig cost is typically $630 or so. The slaughter is $45 and the butchering (cutting & vacuum packaging) is $130. A whole pig is about three to four cubic-feet depending on packing in the boxes.
Half Pigs:
The price for a half pig is $4.50/lb based on final hanging weight at the butcher after slaughter. A typical pig hangs at 90 lbs so the pig cost is typically $405 or so. The slaughter is $28 and the butchering (cutting & vacuum packaging) is $78. A half pig is about two cubic-feet depending on packing in the boxes. We strongly recommend finding a friend to share a single whole pig order with – there is a big savings between whole and half pig pricing per pound.
Delivery along our route is just $10 or you can pickup here at the farm gate. If you are ordering smoked you
The butcher also offers sausage making (Hot Italian, Sweet Italian and Breakfast Sage) as well as smoking of the bacon, hams, etc. Sausage links are $2.25/lb in 1/2 lb packages and smoking is $2.25/lb. (Note that the smoking shrinks the meat about 10% or so. e.g., 10 lbs of belly makes 9 lbs of bacon approximately.) Smoking takes one month. You can get the rest of the meat earlier and then the smoked later or get it all at once when you pickup the smoked.
Our famous all natural smoked hot dogs are also available sometimes – request well ahead so you catch some out of the next batch. They are all natural, no nitrates, no nitrites, smoked and with dash of local Vermont maple syrup – no HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup), MSG, etc.
Note on Yield: A 250 lb pig yields a hanging weight of about 180 lbs. That is after slaughter and cleaning, head, skin, feet and tail on. This is how animals are sold – by the hot hanging weight after slaughter. Cutting to standard commercial cuts yields about 67% of hanging weight or about 120 lbs of actual cuts. BUT! What happened to that other 60 lbs of your animal? We do dry age chilling during which there is about a 3% loss due to evaporation of water. This is good – it improves the quality of the meat. The rest is oddments and a lot of good stuff. Eat them. Eat the pig nose-to-tail, top-to-bottom. All of the pig is delicious. Bones make fantastic soup and stew stock. The head can be baked, stewed or made into jelled pork. The trotters and hocks can be smoked for use in delicious, nutritious soups where you get the benefit of the knuckle gelatin. The tail makes excellent soup stock. The back fat makes a fine lard for healthy cooking. The leaf lard makes great pastries. The organs are filled with vitamins and iron. Be a creative cook. Eat like a farmer. Use the oddments – after all, you paid for them!
Freezing is free and assumed by the butcher unless you specify fresh not frozen. We deliver fresh to stores. Restaurants often take fresh or frozen. We freeze for our own home cooking. Generally when people are buying a lot of meat they want it frozen so it can go in their freezer. Home freezers get stressed by trying to freeze too large a load all at once but the butcher has special high power freezers that do the job right and fast to give the best quality. We recommend getting your pork frozen by the butcher.
If you are getting fresh not frozen and having some smoked then you’ll need to pickup twice about one month apart – brining and smoking takes about a month If you are getting the meat frozen and having some smoked then you can do a single pickup when the smoked is available. We’ll hold your frozen meat in our deep freezer while your smoked pork is prepared by the butcher.
For home storage we recommend chest freezers. They do a much better job of freezing and keeping the cold in. Get one without automatic defrost. Automatic defrost is bad. It warms the freezer damaging the food and then refreezes causing freezer burn. If you have a freezer with automatic defrost – turn off that feature – automatic defrost shortens the life of all foods in your freezer. Our pork is vacuum packaged after five days of dry aging for the best quality. Treat it right for your dining delight.
How to Order:
Go to the Order Form or call or email us. On the order form you want the “By the Pig” section at the bottom of the order form. If you have any questions about how to fill out the order form let me know.
It typically takes a month or so to get into the schedule. To reserve your pig, send a $100 deposit† with a note of what you would like. When we deliver we’ll have the total for the rest minus your deposit based on the hanging weight and any sausage, hot dogs or smoking you would like.
Walter, Holly, Will, Ben & Hope Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm, LLC
252 Riddle Pond Road
West Topsham, VT 05086
walterj@sugarmtnfarm.com
439-6462 — Phone number for orders only (802 in VT)
For questions about raising pigs see our Contact page.
†Deposits are non-refundable.
