Every morning at sunrise Alethea, along with her brother Gary, let her Berkshire pigs out in fields of organic peas, radishes and oats, an ideal spot of land. They came here after leaving Pennsylvania to do something important and personal with their lives. They started with 10 Berkshire sows, the leader of which was a grand gal by the name of Big Mama. They fell instantly in love with the breed and continued to fine tune for temperament, milk production and mothering.

Most pork has fat just on the outside of the meat. That’s because other farms keep them closed up in pens. Our pigs get to play outside all day.

For some inscrutable and ingenious reason they chose to raise their pigs in a way that is unheard of in today’s marketplace. The process takes 30% longer. They grow slower, eat more and exercise. Alethea and Gary only bring 6 pigs to market a week.

Alethea and Gary raise this authentic and certified Berkshire pork on her picturesque farm in Bridgeport, Vermont. On one side of their land you can view the Adirondacks, and on the other you see the Green Mountains. For them, quantity is not in their vocabulary but rather a commitment to supreme quality at whatever the cost. The reason the meat is outstanding is because of the special way the pigs are raised and bred. The result is a marbled reddish meat that is tender and succulent. Most are finished on acorns to add the faint sweet nutty taste of Alethea’s favorite cut, the pork rib.

All of her pigs lead a quiet happy life and are pasture raised with each other grazing grass and legume pasture in the Champlain Valley. Her Berkshire and Heritage breed Tamworth pigs produce the best pork you will ever taste! Their grass/hay diet is supplemented with whey from local cheese makers, all natural grains, and the farm’s own produce, apples, pumpkins and nuts in season.