Fencing pigs is hard and 53,341 hot dogs

Remember last month when we said we were good at fencing pigs?

Here at BOTL Farm, we sometimes like to think we have things figured out and then our animals do something truly terrifying/mystifying and we are pleasantly reminded that we are not in charge – these beasts are. In case you forgot, we will quote last month’s newsletter where we boasted: “We’ve learned a lot over the years about fencing in curious piglets and we’re pretty successful at this point.” 

In a completely unrelated story from this month (mmhmm), we’re happy to report that we picked up a few gilts (farmer jargon for female pigs that are intended to be breeders but have not yet bred) as 8-week old piglets to eventually replace/expand some of our sows (breeding-pig-moms). We went to the breeder, counted nipples (don’t worry, it’s legit farmer stuff), and picked out the ones we wanted. We packed them into our ‘farm truck’ (more commonly referred to as a minivan) and drove back to the farm. Since the piglets weren’t familiar with our style of fencing or paddocks, we had carefully prepared their first area for them, put up several lines of redundant fencing, and generally made the place look nice.

As we placed the first piglet in her new home, she looked deep into her young brain and made a series of decisions that truly terrified us: she ran through not one, not two, but three fences, including one that was solid panels. Pup, our ever-helpful and ever-present farm dog, saw that the piglet was doing naughty things and decided to follow the piglet to see where it went (also known as making the situation worse by giving chase). Since we didn’t want the piglet to go any further than she felt she needed to, we called Pup off and took a break.

Many hours later, we hoped everyone was calmed down and ready to make good decisions. We asked Pup to show us where the piglet had gone. Pup looked at us like we’re dumb and then used her nose to show us the exact trail the piglet had taken over the day (tracking is not really our thing). Pup told us the piglet was hiding in tall grass and we were able to sneak up and grab her, return her to her sisters, and hope she learned a lesson or three about staying inside fences. 

The paddock formerly known as Trash Land

Many years ago when we bought the land that is now our farm, none of the property had been farmed recently, unless you count piling up trash and hazardous waste as some sort of post-modern farming. It’s sort of like an archaeological dig, where you can see different strata and obviously different ages of trash. There were big hunks of rusted metal structures, bottles, cans, medicine bottles, balloons, articles of clothing, car batteries, all sorts of tires, an uncountable number of racing lawn tractors (yes, they are lawn tractors that are modified to go real fast and race [maybe this explains the compaction in our upper field?]), five push mowers, two bed frames, an oven, the first motorized clothes washer ever made, and much much more. It was bonkers. Early on when we were establishing paddocks and naming them, the worst area got the name ‘Trash Land.’ And did we mention how depressing it is to spend time over the years picking up other people’s trash from our farm?

This past month, we decided we wanted to see an end to all this trash and rented the biggest dumpster we could. We, along with our delightful family visitors, spent days digging out, collecting, packing up, and moving trash. It was glorious. Metal was sorted separately and removed by a very nice local scrapper, but still, the dumpster was completely full and overweight. We had a great time. 

To put this quantity of trash into context, we calculated that the non-metal-scrapped portion of the trash we got rid of was equivalent to 53,341 hot dogs by weight or 339,462 eggs by volume. Delicious. 

Woof woof food

Just over a year ago we sold out of ‘The Good Stuff.’ For our non-super-fans who don’t know, this is a delightful blend of chopped pork organs: liver, kidney, heart, and tongue. This is an item we mostly meant to keep in stock, but over the past year we’ve had trouble getting enough offal (farmer/chef jargon for ‘insides’ like organs and tongue) in one place to make a batch for sale. 

Fortunately, the stars have aligned and we were able to spend some time this week producing this product. It’s funky, chunky, and chock full of minerals. When we’re not opining [editor notes this word is not ‘opening’ misspelled but o-pine-ing] about how good we’re at fencing in animals or how we like to eat our pork with no seasoning besides salt, we’re probably talking about the nutrient density of offal. 

‘The Good Stuff’ is a great supplement for pets, especially those on a raw diet. But honestly, if you’re looking to sneak offal/organ meat into your or your family’s diet but don’t know where to start, we’ve heard rave reviews of mixing this into your next meatloaf. As it cooks, The Good Stuff adds minerals and richness to the loaf but kind of disappears so your family might not even know it’s there!

A love letter to pork tenderloin

What do you call a person who takes care of a flock of chickens? Har har har, a chicken tender! Here at BOTL Farm (sure, yeah, we already used this opening), we have rules. Some of our rules dictate the theme of each section of our monthly newsletter. This semi-final section of the newsletter must relate to animal feed sale updates and/or chicken tenders.

This month has been weird and we’re off the rails. Instead of following our own rules, we’re going to share a recipe. It’s bonkers. Keeping in mind that we’re giant food snobs and we strenuously recommend trying our pork with just some salt in order to let the true flavor of the meat shine through, this is an old family recipe from Nick’s past. Rules don’t even matter anymore. 

• Ingredients: 

  • 2 pork tenderloins

  • Dry Rub:

    • 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar

    • 1 teaspoon paprika

    • 1 teaspoon chili powder

    • 1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin

    • 1 teaspoon salt

    • ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

    • Pepper to taste (do you really want to taste the rub? Just add some pepper)

  • Mop Sauce (optional):

    • ¼ cup apple cider vinegar

    • 2 tablespoons molasses

    • 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

    • 1 clove garlic, minced

    • ¼ cup tomato paste

    • ¼ teaspoon chili powder

    • ¼ onion minced

    • 1 mouthful water

• Steps

  • Combine all ingredients in dry rub

  • Rub half all over tenderloins

  • Wait 15 minutes to 1 hour

  • Rub remaining half of dry rub on tenderloin

  • Grill, or pan sear in cast iron pan over high heat until dry rub is starting to blacken and probe thermometer reads 5F less than desired cook temp (we recommend rare but USDA recommends all pork cuts cooked well at 145F)

  • Rest pork 10 minutes, slice into 1” thick rounds

  • Mix all ingredients together in mop sauce. Serve cold with pork

The dry rub in this recipe is wildly flexible. We’ve toasted our tongues with too-spicy versions and one (okay, several) times we substituted a holiday spicy nut glaze recipe (thanks, Mom!). It works almost the same. In general, add salt, brown sugar, and something a little spicy and you’ll be good to go. Cheers!

Find us this month

On farm store: Tuesdays noon - 2pm, Saturdays 1 - 3pm. Pre-order 

On farm self pickup: Everyday 8:30am - 8pm. Pre-order only

Assawaga farm market: Every Saturday from 9am to noon starting May 25 until the weekend before Thanksgiving. We’re there (mostly) every other week. Dates we’ll be there in August: August 10, August 24. Pre-order 

Sturbridge Farmers Market: Every Sunday from 9am to 1pm starting June 02 until October 13. NEW THIS YEAR we will be at Sturbridge every Sunday! Dates we’ll be there in August: August 04, August 11, August 18, August 25. Pre-order

It's too many numbers! Save me!