Photo Karen Graham.
Millbrook Market Vendor Tom Staples explains his traditionally-raised pork product selection to consumers at the September market.
Tom Staples has gone back to his farming roots, raising heritage pigs on the family farm in Cavan.
He takes an old-fashioned approach to his work: his pigs spend most of their days outdoors, touring the 96 acre property in the rolling hills, grazing on walnuts, apples, pears, grubs, roots, grasses, weeds, acorns and cherries. In good weather, they are accompanied by hens that follow them around, foraging for tasty scraps the hogs leave behind.
Supported by his parents and partner Kerri Henderson, Tom is providing Pinewynd livestock a good life, but there are other benefits to his process than just having happy animals. As their business motto, “Better Pork from naturally-raised pigs” explains, their husbandry techniques produce a superior product.
While pigs are known for their enviable ability to extract nutrients from a wide range of substances, these animals are not left to fend for themselves and live off their scrounging efforts. Tom is a firm believer in preventing food waste, and feeds the hogs wheat produced on the farm and local, upcycled resources ranging from spent brewers grains from a local beer brewery, to hemp, culled vegetables and apple residue from cider production in Newcastle.
Pigs on this farm are predominately a Berkshire-Tamworth cross acquired from the neighbouring Aird family farm. These animals are very hardy and suited to the Ontario seasons and raised without antibiotics, producing tasty, well- marbled meat which is particularly rich in vitamin E and D. The result is a more natural, healthy and tastier product.
Pinewynd pork is sold to three local restaurants, at the Millbrook Farmers’ market and the Peterborough market at Morrow Park, where the first items they sell out of are smoked bacon, peameal and tenderloin. They offer an increasing variety of sausages as well as they experiment with new flavour combinations.
This local producer joins the trend to “go backwards” in terms of food production and dietary choices, as consumers seek healthy, sustainable and higher quality food that respects the land, the livestock and the consumer. To learn more about the farm, visit www.pinewyndfarm.com and be sure to watch the amazing videos of the animals running through the fields and forests answering their call to supper! KG
