Hello all you loyal bacon lovers! It’s me, the Pederson’s Natural Farms Cooking Cowboy back on the BLOG!

I recently had an opportunity to visit a family owned hog farm up in the Midwest. They raise some of the hogs that supply the bellies that help make us “Famous for Bacon”. Let me tell you, this was quite a trip, and I want to say thank you to Century Family Farms, Aberdeen Farms, and Truebridge Foods for their hospitality and love of humane, sustainable, and efficient hog farming! Thanks everyone for doing what you do on a daily basis and letting me be a small part of that!

Now... I really want to try to paint a picture of how this tour shaped up as I think there is a lot of value in your understanding what I saw and experienced! Let’s just get it on the table that I don’t have a lot… ok, any experience touring hog farms. I work and have worked for a company for many years now that relies heavily on these operations. However, I am not the guy that usually makes the farm visits. Needless to say, I really found this to be a tremendously valuable and educational experience for me!

Ok, so we are preparing for the trip up north, and my friends share a few bits of wisdom with me to help me prepare. They tell me it is going to be cold, that the farm is “shower-in, shower-out”, and that they need my shoe size so they can be sure to have rubber boots for me to wear. That’s cool. I mean... I am picturing myself waltzing up to the farm dressed in my usual denim shirt and pants; my hat and boots rounding out the ensemble. I'll take off my boots and replace them with rubber boots then walk through a clean room where I put on a visitor frock and badge. I figured the room might have a boot wash and hand sanitizer sink with maybe even an anti-microbial mister to kind of mist me as I go by. No big deal. I needed no mental prepare time for this portion of the trip... seemed pretty simple.

Wrong!!!! Come to find out, when they say “shower-in and shower-out”, they mean plumb down to the birthday suit! Then, they mean wearing some clothes you pull out of a bag that who knows where they came from or who might have worn them last. (Just to clarify, I am pretty sure my clothes were brand new, but I didn’t buy them so I can’t say for sure. And, really, it was only the underwear that mattered much anyway.) Which really ain’t all that bad... except, before I knew it, I was in a shower room with a couple other guys who already knew the drill. I had missed the mental prep time necessary to revert myself back to locker room community showers and naked men in close proximity! Well, luckily I am a fast un-dresser, and we had 2 showers (with curtains), so I decided I was gonna make this a quick transition! Bam! Next thing you know, I am showered, dressed, and sitting at a break room table talking about 1000 day calendars (whole 'nother story I gotta tell you some time) and hog gestation periods.

Now, like I said, I really wanna paint a picture so you are right in the room with me. Which, matter of fact, you probably could have been as my coveralls were like XXXL. I think there was plenty of room for another person. I gotta say, I am not one of those guys who has a huge style presence in the world. I mean, I bet I felt just like Lil Wayne would feel if I slapped him in a pair of heavy starched 13MWZ’s. To put it bluntly, I had some serious crotch sag going on in these things, and am not sure why anyone would voluntarily go for that fit or look. But then again, like I said, I am not known as a style connoisseur!

The fashion faux pas and jumping through hoops just to see some hogs makes sense, though. These farmers take the health of their animals very seriously. I mean, raising hogs without the use of antibiotics means the farms have to protect the hogs from getting any bugs... and we humans are no exception! We can carry things in on our boots and hands that might make those hogs sick. Healthy hogs = happy hogs!

Ok, I have made it through the first leg of the tour, so stay tuned as we haven’t even seen a hog yet. :)

Thanks for stopping by, and comeback soon as I will be describing for you another leg of the tour! I think I’m gonna call it “Happy Hogs Still Shit”!

Later,

The Cooking Cowboy