Pigs – Callywood Farms

Pork Sampler Packs!

We are stocked with pork right now! We realize how busy this season can be and know that sometimes it’s just easier and more convenient to buy from the grocery. So, in an effort to make things easy and accessible for all, we’re offering a pork sampler pack with discounts and various options for pickup and delivery! Here’s how it will work:

Choose a large or small sampler pack.
Figure out how you want to get it: Pickup (on farm, at FNKY Music Studios/Seneca or Sisters Restaurant in Salem) or delivery (added fee).
Email us (callywoodfarms@gmail.com) ASAP to reserve yours and let us know your pickup location/day/time or if you need it delivered. These packs are limited.
Pickups will start on Tuesday, November 22nd. You will pay at time of pickup and sent an invoice ahead of time. Total price is determined by weights of cuts and selections.

The possibilities are endless as to how to use them up! Here are some awesome ideas of how to use pork for this holiday season!

Appetizer ideas: Sausage balls! Sausage & cream cheese dip, Bourbon glazed pork belly chunks
On the table: Sausage Dressing (try it with our Sourdough!)
Leftover Sausage & Turkey soup (add some local collards, yumm!)

Can’t wait to see what you’ll create with yours!

As always – thanks for choosing to support our little family farm this holiday season. It means the world to us!

November 17, 2022January 9, 2023

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What is a Half Hog Share?

Half hog shares are a wonderful way to reduce your grocery bill, stock your freezer full of local, humanely-raised meat, and take a stab at eating tail-to-snout! Before joining this adventure, a few things you should consider:

Freezer Space

The first thing you need to consider before signing up: do you have a freezer? If not, you need to buy one. A half of a pig takes a lot of room. It will not fit in a standard freezer on the side/top of your fridge. You need to have a separate freezer that has plenty of room.

Reduce Your Grocery Bill

Really? Yes! Have you witnessed the rising cost of bacon or had a hard time finding a pork roast without the use of antibiotics? A half hog share from us guarantees your freezer is filled with humanely-raised pork. Pigs that have a large space to roam and graze. They have been raised with access to pasture and root crops for their digging pleasure. They have been fed things like whey from local farms, spent grains from the beer brewing process, and given a lot of attention and love. You can’t really find that at the grocery store. In addition to that, you will pay a flat per pound amount based on the hanging weight of your specific hog. While it will be a larger up front cost, in the long run, purchasing in bulk, you will be saving money.

What do I get?

Getting a half hog share is as adventurous as you want it to be. If you are a standard pork lover and want thick pork chops, bacon, sausage, and a boston butt, you got it! You can order your meat to your exact specification, whether it’s 3/4″ or 1″ chops, wrapped in packs of 2 or 4. You will have total control over how your share will be cut and wrapped. You can even get all sausage if your heart desires!

But getting a half hog share allows you to be a little more adventurous too! If you want to try things like making your own sausage, curing your own pork belly, rendering lard, or even trying head cheese or pate, here is your chance! You can literally eat a pig tail-to-snout and get every scrap of your share. And we are here to help. We have experimented with every part of our pigs. They are delicious and so much fun for the adventurous cook. We hope to share recipes and maybe even some classes at the farm for some of these more advanced cooking ideas.

Ready for half a hog?

Make sure you’re signed up for our newsletter where we first announce when we have shared available! When we have a share available, you can secure yours with $100 deposit and then you pay the remainder at pickup. Final price determined by hanging weight of your animal and any additional processing fees (flavor seasonings, curing, etc.).

See, what a half share looks like.

October 3, 2020November 18, 2022

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Callywood Pigs! (Part I)

Hey everyone, Farmer B here. We are quickly approaching processing day for our first ever round of pigs here at the farm, so it seemed like a good a time as any to start back at the beginning or our little porcine experiment and fill you in on everything related to our foray into pork.

photo-3 — One of our Ossabaw Island Hogs, 3 months old

This first part of this hog history will focus on the rationale behind raising pigs here at Callywoods and the initial construction. Part II will touch on the type of pigs we raise, Ossabaw Island Hogs, our daily routines, and what we have learned through the process. Part III will get to the meat of the matter: processing, consumption, and looking into the future as we take our next steps into the second generation of Callywood pork production.

A couple years ago, after many discussions about our progression in livestock beyond our lovely egg-laying flock, we decided that raising pigs for meat was the best choice for us. We originally thought it would be dairy goats, as we crave fresh, local milk, but several factors occurred to us that made us change direction towards the other white meat:

We don’t have much proper pasture land. Yes, goats aren’t exactly grazers like cows or sheep, but it didn’t seem ideal to have goats living on dirt (ie, mud)
Goats are a handful, require substantial fencing, and daily (if not twice daily) milking when kept as regular dairy animals. This livestock conversation coincided with the then pending arrival of Farm Baby, and the huge time commitment with dairy goats didn’t exactly seem to jive with our soon to be changing energy & sleep patterns
We had recently discovered a fantastic local source of raw milk in the neighborhood, Harmony Diary and no longer had as urgent a need of milk source. (Sidenote: we are fortunate enough in SC to be able to legally buy raw milk from local sources, a “luxury” that not all states afford their citizens…more on that in a future post)
We love pork! It’s probably our favorite meat: pulled pork, grilled tenderloin, carnitas, homemade sausage, smoked bacon…

We selected the location on the farm for our pigs between two small creeks where a section of land was naturally bounded in creating a small peninsula that we affectionately call the “Pig Pen” for short. Yep, that’s the kind of clever stuff that keeps us going around here. I opted for electric fencing. It has worked wonderfully. More on the details of our adventure of “training” the pigs to the electric fence in the next part of this discussion, but suffice to say that after a very rocky start to pig fencing, we haven’t had a single issue of note. Our pigs are happy and healthy in their electric enclosure. I use a DC powered charger run off a deep cycle marine battery. It lasts 3-4 weeks on a charge depending on how often the pigs decide to bury the lowest of the 4 lines in mud while rooting.

For housing, I utilized a tradition “pig ark” design that is more popular in Europe, especially in the UK. A separate floor and roof section make for easy cleaning and somewhat easier moving when need be.

The roof fits directly over the floor for a seamless pig house!

This particular 6’x8′ design is said to be ideal for 3-4 adult hogs or a mother and her litter of piglets. So far I have no reason to disagree with that. Our 3 adult pigs have plenty of room in the ark with ample wiggle room.

I used heavy duty flashing for the roof material with waterproof screws/washers to keep things high and dry. It’s not as ideal as galvanized or aluminum would have been, but that’s very difficult and expensive to have set to this specific of a curved roofline, so I did what we do best around the farm and improvised!

Waterproof stain on exterior wood surfaces

Here is the final look at the Pig Ark in its home in the Pig Pen, surrounded by the electric fence (notice how wonderfully low profile and aesthetically simple the electric fence is). You can see one small creek in the foreground and can picture the other creek behind coming from the pond dam in the background.

All that’s left is to supply our new pig home with little porkers! Stay tuned for Part II in this discussion when we learn about Ossabaw Island Hogs, bring our new piglets home, see them promptly escape and then return after a very stressful week on the farm, learn about their routine, and even see the pigs teach their naive farmers a thing or two along the way.

October 18, 2013

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