Why Kune Kune's?

When it comes to pastured pork, we have all heard of the most common breeds. Yorkshire, Berkshire, pretty much anything with "shire" in it is what you want. These breeds all produce delicious cuts & grow extremely quickly with butcher dates at about 6 months of age. These are great things when you consider turning a profit for your pork, however, there are plenty of other factors going into your food when you work on a small scale of under five acres.

We are very small. In Virginia you have to have a minimum of five acres to get your farm status that makes you tax exempt from feed & farm supplies. We aren't there yet, but we are working on it! Because of our size, it was important for us to find a breed that would work for our land. We have four acres & much of it is brush and weeds with a flowing creek. This is where I came to discover Kune Kune pigs. They are native to Hawaii & thrive on foraging. They are comparable to goats and will eat ANYTHING. This was perfect for our family as we have land that needed some maintaining anyways & for us, we would much rather butcher & eat a hog than a goat any day.

My husband and I are 100% invested in having our children involved in every part of the process when it comes to our food. From farrowing piglets & tossing them some yummy treats to packaging chops & curing bacon, we want them to be included & learn these life long lessons. Kune Kune's are a smaller breed of pig & a slow grower taking 18 months to two years for them to reach full butchering weight(between 200-250lbs). They are also extremely docile & have the most amazing temperament that I can only compare to our dogs. It is not uncommon for us to have a pig out walking around our yard or to have one come up to our porch demanding to be let inside for a snack and some belly scratches. This has made them ideal for involving our children. I am always cautious around animals with our kids, but I feel very comfortable having the boys help me take food scraps to them & every single day we have to visit the pigs so they can pet them & love on them.

This next reason is absolutely the most important to my husband. THE MEAT! Kune Kune meat is different from fast growing hogs. It is very red in color & looks more like a beef steak than a traditional pork chop. They also are a fattier pig which means the bacon is to die for. It is not a common breed of pig that you will find at restaurants or at the grocery store because they just don't make sense for mass production when you consider the time & money that goes into them.

We send one of our first ever pigs away next week to butcher & my stomach is in knots. I have enjoyed every second of caring for her & I am unbelievably grateful that she is going to feed my family for the year, however, I would be lying if I said I wasn't sad about not having her around any longer. This is the part that is missed in mass produced food. The personal part is taken out & there is a disconnect between the life that is lost & how it helps another life carry on. I think that if I raised my boys to feel nothing when our animals reach their butcher date, that I haven't done the job that I am really intending to do here.

I know these pigs aren't for everyone, but for our family they have become our favorite thing that we raise on this little farmstead. There is nothing that makes my heart swell quite like watching my children throwing scraps from last nights dinner into the hog bowl & scratching them on their ears while they munch away.