This bacon should come with a warning: eat it and become an instant bacon snob. In a good way, of course. We've heard it so many times. Once people try our bacon, they can't eat any other bacon.
Here's why: we start with heritage-breed hogs that are renowned for their great flavor and well-marbled dark meat. Using the simplest recipe, we rub salt and sugar on the pork bellies before smoking them over natural applewood chips.
When you make bacon this way, there's no need for preservatives, nitrates or artificial flavorings. You get a finished product that is sublime. It's bacon as it should be: slightly sweet, smoky and salty and totally natural. The perfect balance.
Just the facts
- Heritage-breed hogs raised humanely on small farms
- No antibiotics, no growth hormones
- No animal by-products
- Air-chilled pork (retains less water weight)
- No preservatives, nitrates or nitrites added
- Naturally smoked over applewood chips
- Gluten free
- Product of USA
- For best taste, use within 3-5 days of receipt and/or by the expiration date on the package
Our mission is to find farmers that share our vision of a more humane and sustainable way of rearing livestock. We respect our place in the food chain, and see farmers as true stewards of the land and environment. This is why we build real relationships with our farmers, and work only with those who respect nature and focus on the best animal welfare practices.
Our heritage hogs are happy hogs, raised by a cooperative of small farms in Missouri at the foot of the Ozark Mountains. This group of about a dozen family farms is dedicated to raising old breeds including Berkshire, Tamworth, Duroc, Landrace and Hampshire, with completely traceable breeding lines.
The hogs are fed on pasture, with access to water and supplemental grain consisting of corn, soybeans and rolled oats. No pesticides, animal by-products or fishmeal are allowed. The majority of the farms are sustainable “circle farms” that grow and grind their own feed for the pigs.
Families of pigs are left together, to forage and frolic outdoors in pasture land. The indoor spaces offer at least 15 square feet of space per animal, and sows are never put in gestation crates.
The cooperative is strict about banning the use of antibiotics and hormones* on each farm and limiting the number of hogs the farms raise. They seek to add another farmer to the cooperative before they add more pigs to any one farm, making the process more humane for all concerned.
They are paid a premium for their humanely-raised pork, making the small family farm a profitable business, and proving that there might be a future in the old breeds after all.
*USDA regulations prohibit the use of hormones in pork.
