How it works
Our price for half hog shares is $5.75 per pound of hanging weight with our growing families discount of ten percent for expectant parents or parents of minor children. Full price without discount is $6.33 per pound. “Hanging weight” is the weight of edible pork carcass as it hangs from a state- or USDA-inspected butcher scale. Included in hanging weight is skin, fat, bones, and offal, all of which are edible. Excluded are things like the brain, blood, stomach, and intestines, all of which are technically edible but which most processors aren’t able to save due to state and federal regulations.
We have reduced our margin on pork shares to try to avoid price increases, but if global events continue to drive up prices we may need to follow suit. The best thing you can do is to put your order in EARLY. We book processing dates more than a year in advance, so placing your order a year ahead is not too early. We are happy to take orders year round, but if you give us at least 6 months notice you are more likely to get your pork when you want it. When we know our orders it is a lot easier to plan ahead and keep the cost down. We never sacrifice quality.
You’ll pick up your pork from a local butcher and you pay the butcher to custom cut and cure the meat (picking up your meat yourself saves you a significant amount because of government regulations.) Here is a link to a real world example of custom butchering cost.
To reserve a share fill out the form at the bottom of this page, or send us an email.
We target 100 pound “halves” (by hanging weight, from a state-inspected scale at the processor) which yields around 60+ pounds of meat (but that depends on how you ask the butcher to cut it.) However, hanging weights may be larger or smaller. We have pigs finishing in most seasons of the year. We will raise the pig and deliver it to a local butcher for you. You pay the butcher to custom cut your half hog to your exact specifications. (This also saves you on cost.) The prices for custom cutting and wrapping pork tend to be a bit under two dollars per pound including making bacon, ham, and sausage, but butcher prices have gone up. We will provide a detailed explanation of custom butchering possibilities and will gladly schedule a phone call with you or exchange emails prior to processing day so that we can answer any questions you have. For a simple walkthrough of a basic custom butcher order, click here for a blog post.
Deposits and Prepayment: Because of the catastrophic shortage of independent meat processing capacity in Oregon, we now have to ask for a larger up-front deposit for the pig shares. This is because if you cancel for any reason (such as moving out of the area for a new job), Federal law and the shortage of independent processing make it almost impossible for us to resell your custom share. We are now offering two deposit/prepayment options.
Option 1: you can pay a $300 deposit up front, with the balance due when your share is weighed.
Option 2: you can pay a $100 deposit up front and $50 a month for six months thereafter or some similar payment schedule that fits your personal finances. Once your share is weighed and you pay the butcher, you are welcome to pay any balance due to us on a similar payment schedule over two or three months.
The most cost-effective way to eat our pork
Ordering a half hog share from us provides you a significant discount compared with buying the same cuts of pork at our retail prices or even through the CSA. Simply processing pork for resale costs us almost twice as much (or more) than it costs you to talk to the butcher directly and have them custom cut your half pig share exactly as you want it. There are other savings as well and we can pass those on to you in the form of a substantial discount. If you don’t have the freezer space to spare for a half hog, or you want a mix of pork, chicken, and lamb without using up too much space in the freezer, you might be interested in our monthly meat subscription CSA.
If you plan to pair up with a friend and share a half pig among yourselves, check out our blog entry on sample pork cut plans for a detailed PDF on how to get a half pig cut so you can more easily share it.
How much meat is in half a pig?
After cutting the half to your specifications and curing hams and bacon, a 100 pound half will yield approximately 60 pounds of standard cuts of pork, about enough to fill 3 or 4 grocery bags. Most of the difference between “hanging weight” and standard cuts of meat is also edible. You can keep the trimmed fat (to make lard), bones (to make stock), organ meats (delicious and nutritious), and other edible parts which are not standard cuts but are used in many recipes. You really can eat “nose to tail”, although you will probably need more than one pig tail for any standard pig tail recipe. If you do want the head, tail, heart, or liver, let us know when you order as there is only one of each per pig and we’ll try to make sure you get it. Unfortunately, the ODA-inspected processors we use are not able to save the lungs, the stomach and intestines, or blood.
An example of what comes from half a pig
What kinds of cuts are in a half a pig? See our blog post for some ideas. The standard cuts from front to back (all weights are approximate and provided for example only) are:
Boston Shoulder/Butt: 8 pounds. Roasts, steaks, shoulder bacon, or grind for sausage.
Picnic Shoulder: 10 pounds. Roasts, steaks, stew meat, or grind for sausage.
Loin: 14 pounds. Pork chops, back ribs, tenderloin, country ribs, loin roast.
Side: 10 pounds. Bacon, spare ribs, pork belly roasts.
Ham: 13 pounds. Cured ham, ham steaks, fresh ham, or grind for sausage.
You will almost always receive some ground pork or sausage as a result of the butchering process. (In the example above you would get about 5 pounds of sausage.) As cuts are trimmed to size, the trimmed meat goes into sausage. You can always ask the butcher to make more sausage by grinding more. The picnic shoulder or the ham are good options for grinding into more sausage.
We can help you customize your order before you send it to the butcher. You can order non-standard cuts which are difficult to find in stores. Consider double-thickness pork chops, pork belly roasts, bone-in loin roasts, shoulder bacon, jowl bacon, country ribs, crown rib roasts…
Estimated total cost (for a 100 pound half pig)
At $5.75 per pound of hanging weight and assuming another $200 in butcher costs, the estimated total cost of a 100 pound hanging weight half pig would be approximately $775. Here is a link to a real world example of custom butchering cost for half a pig. If you eat “nose to tail” and render lard from the fat, make bone broth from the bones and trotters, and try out delicious recipes for the offal, the cost works out to something around $10.00 per pound. If you get a lot of cured pork and link sausage made the cost will likely be more; if you don’t get any bacon or ham or sausage the cost will be lower.
So far as we know it is only possible to get pork of this quality directly from a farm like ours that raises pigs naturally outdoors. Pigs are some of the most intensively-confined meat animals in the U.S., more so than beef or chicken. Some pig farmers cut costs by giving their pigs a lot of food waste like bread and donuts past the sell-by date and full of refined flours and chemicals. We don’t think feeding a pig old, processed, packaged food is healthy for the pig or for you. We give our pigs a locally-milled non-GMO feed, natural (organic) food scraps like extra pumpkins or potatoes, extra eggs, whey from farm cheese, and anything they forage in the woods or pasture.
A note on cured meats
There is no such thing as “nitrate-free bacon”. Bacon and ham sold as “nitrate free” is cured using a celery extract which is…full of nitrates. If nitrosamines are created during cooking, it is because of the combination of proteins and nitrate, so it does not matter if the source of nitrate is celery or sodium nitrate curing salt: it’s all the same chemical. Paying extra to get celery-cured bacon is stupid, it is a waste of money, it is potentially less safe (because the amount of nitrate in a celery extract cure is far less regulated than with normal curing salt), and it rewards predatory behavior by unscrupulous corporate food companies that prey on ignorant consumers. While they may not have known the chemistry, people have been nitrate-curing meats for hundreds and hundreds of years. If you are really concerned about nitrates in bacon (we’re not, in moderation, but we respect your right to eat what you want) then ask for uncured pork belly and make your own salt pork at home! Note that some (not all) kinds of sausage also contain sodium nitrate, so if you are concerned you will want to ask the butcher about it.