Stratford farmer chooses all-natural, free-range for his pork
A breath of fresh airBy Lori Berglund — Daily Freeman-Journal Editor
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STRATFORD - Travis and Debbie Flaherty have an unusual hobby. They call it "staying home."
"This place is kind of our hobby," Travis said. "I enjoy staying at home."
And there's plenty to do at home. He's busy restoring an old barn. They plan to build a rock garden from the rocks that were originally the barn's foundation. There's a young vineyard to tend, and then there's animals of all sorts just about everywhere.
Perhaps this desire to make home their hobby is understandable. Travis commutes daily from their farm home southeast of Stratford to near Woolstock as a supervisor for Knife River Quarry, while Debbie heads her car in the opposite direction for her job at Cub Foods in Ames.
This is a busy couple, and the farm is a retreat. But this retreat is not a place to put up your feet and let the world go by. It is a working retreat, with projects and chores at every turn. It is a neatly-kept farmstead, a work still in progress, and a living reminder of what farms used to be in another day and time.
There are pigs, goats, miniature donkeys, geese, peacocks, and even a vineyard to remind Debbie of her childhood in California. But while Debbie is a West Coast native, her husband is strictly an Iowa farm boy. A native of the Rockwell City area, he grew up in 4-H and FFA and spent several years raising hogs in what has become the conventional way-in large confinement operations.
That was up until about five years ago now. At that time, he decided he wanted to try a different way of raising pigs. He still had all the respect in the world for those who raise hogs in confinement, but he wanted to buck convention by, in many ways, returning to farming methods of the past.
This little farm of the Flahertys - reminiscent of the busy farms of the early and mid 20th Century with multiple species of livestock roaming in outdoor pens - is perhaps still the idyllic vision of an Iowa farm. It's the kind of place people want to imagine their food coming from.
It is quiet here. It's clean. The air is fresh.
And yet this little farm produces about 1,100 market hogs a year. That may be a tiny number in comparison to large confinement operations, but being bigger isn't what it's all about for Flaherty.
To him, it's a matter of choice: the choice to raise his hogs his own way; choices for the hogs in how they spend their days; and a choice for consumers in the meat that they eat.
For hogs, this may not just be Iowa; it may be heaven.
"They love the sun," Flaherty says as he walks through the hog lot on a brisk autumn day. "If they can be out of the wind and in the sun, they love it."
Some of the hogs are bright and clean, showing off the hues of red and black inherent in their breeds. Others are caked with mud, and seem to be smiling about that fact.
"This pig here wanted to roll in the mud," Flaherty notes, while others have chosen to stay clean and dry. "They all got choices."
And those choices, Flaherty believes, make for a more relaxed animal.
"They're not so high strung," evidenced by the lack of squealing to be heard.
"If they don't like that pig next to them, they can get away. There's not a lot of fighting," he says.
Some studies have also indicated that lower stress levels improve the quality of the meat produced. But Flaherty also credits the breeds themselves.
"Some of this is breeding," Flaherty says. "This is what I would call old genetics. They're the old, proven stand-bys; Durocs, Hampshires, and Yorkshires. They're not the suped-up, lean pig, because we need the back fat."
While the back fat protects the animal from winter cold, it also enriches the meat with flavor and texture.
"The fat is where the flavor is at," Flaherty notes. "I have a lot of older people that love this pork."
Of course, the pork industry at large promotes the leanness of today's pork, and many people have diet restrictions that favor leaner meat. But Flaherty offers a compromise.
"If they can't have the fat, they cut it off after it's cooked, that's their choice," he says.
But regardless of whether or not one plans to eat the fat, Flaherty strongly recommends leaving the fat on while the meat is being cooked. The fat produces a flavor and texture that "the Greatest Generation" may remember from their childhood, and current generations may appreciate as a rare feast.
"When you cook it with the fat there, it's unreal," he says.
Flaherty has a number of local customers who regularly purchase a live hog, which is then taken to the locker of their choice for processing.
However, the vast majority of the pork he raises is shipped fresh to an area of the country where the all-natural, free-range, movement has taken an even stronger hold.
"When we load them on a truck here they go to Sioux City, Iowa. They're processed there and then they're shipped fresh to San Jose, Oakland, the Bay Area, and that's where 99 percent of it is consumed, the Bay Area of California. That's where all this started," he says. "They wanted to go where the pork is raised and where the corn is abundant, which is the Midwest. So we raise them here and they're shipped out fresh. Nothing is ever frozen. It's a fresh product, it's served fresh," he says
Flaherty raises his hogs for Niman Ranch Pork, which sells the pork as an "all natural" product.
"The feed is an all-natural feed," he says. "It comes out of Marshall, Minnesota, and it gets custom ground at Stanhope."
This all-natural pre-mix provides all the trace minerals necessary for a healthy hog. In addition to what goes into the hog, he pays attention to what does not.
"I don't use any drugs, no anti-biotics, no stimulants, none of the extras," Flaherty adds.
What he does use is regular old Iowa corn as a grain for the hogs. By contrast, "organic" producers would be required to use only organically grown corn.
The hogs also have access to fresh alfalfa in the series of rotating outdoor lots that he employs. As one crop of pigs is sold and another is born, Flaherty rotates the hogs from one lot to another, seeding down the used lot to fresh alfalfa and giving that land a chance to regenerate. By the time a full rotation is made, he estimates it will be about five years, giving each crop of hogs a clean strip of land on which to live and grow.
A good place on which to live and grow, the kind of place people want their food to come from, that's what the Flahertys are creating at this farm home that is much more than a simple hobby; it is a lifestyle choice. A choice to savor some of the flavors and the ways of the past and share them with the people of today.
Contact Lori Berglund at editor@freemanjournal.net
