What's in a pork share?

Our spring pigs get you ready and rolling for grilling and bbq season. You'll have a full or partial freezer full of pork chops, pork burger, bratwursts, bacon, roasts (pork tacos, yum!) and more, then you'll have pork hocks and ham and sausages to move you through the fall and winter months. A whole pig can feed a family of 4 for a year quite easily. All you need is a 7 cubic foot chest or upright freezer or space in a freezer to hold about 5 cubic feet of meat. A half share would be about 70-75 pounds of pork, requiring 3.5 cubic feet.

Buying a whole or half share of a pig saves you quite a bit of money. On average, cuts of meat are between $6 - 12/lb if you buy them piece by piece. With a whole pig, you'll receive approximately 140-170 lbs of pork meat, bones, organs and fat for about half this cost. We suggest you take everything you can from your pig. If you don’t particularly like some parts like organs and fat, consider feeding them raw to your furry companions. They will LOVE it! Do you feed birds suet during the cold months? Use your fat and add some bird seed to make a bird seed ball for them to peck at through the cold months. Or get creative and make lard soap or salve. Like bone broth for soup base? Take your bones home and slow cook them up for some excellent good-for-you broth.

Here’s an example of all that you’ll receive in a whole pork share:

16 lbs bacon

25 lbs chops

30 lbs ham (can make some into sausage or steaks if not a ham fan)

20 lbs shoulder roast

8 lbs butt roast

10 lbs stew bones

6 lbs spare ribs

18-20 lbs ground or sausage/brats/patties

15 lbs pork fat

10 lbs organ meats (very healthy for you and your beloved pets)

To make it even easier for you, we provide you a short questionnaire of what cuts you like to eat and we will put your cut sheet order together for you (with your final blessing of course). To take it a step farther, we have even put together 3 popular cut sheet options so that you can just pick A, B or C!  And finally, if it can't get any easier, we deliver your pork to a drop site near you. We do this because we really, really like our processor in southern Minnesota and we wouldn't want to make you drive all that way to pick up your pork.

We are constantly trying to make buying local meats and eggs easier and more efficient for you because we understand that your time is precious. Instead of going back to eating regular industrial pork because it's easy and convenient to get it at the local grocery store, we want to make buying local just as easy so that maybe you'll choose local instead, and all you have to do is go to your freezer and thaw your meat. It might be a tad more expensive, but just think, you'll know exactly where it came from (full transparency), you'll know it ate an organic and non-gmo diverse diet, you'll know it got to lay in the sun and play in the rain and eat grass or hay and forage, you'll know it came from an Animal Welfare Approved certified farm and had very little to no stress in its life, you'll know it was never given antibiotics or hormones, and you'll know that it was raised with just 20 or less pigs outside (not 2,499 - 4,995 inside a quarantined building). And the bonus is...you'll be supporting your local and regional economy by supporting a local and regional business!

We would love to sell all of our pork in whole and half shares, but we understand that it is not always feasible. That is why we offer pork bundles, our meat and egg CSA shares and you can purchase a la carte at any time. The opportunity to purchase a whole or half share of a pig only comes around twice a year (in the spring and the fall) so we wanted to let you know as soon as spring ordering opened.

If you are interested, please visit our farm store and pay a deposit for a whole or half share of a pig. There is more information on whole and half pig shares located there too. You can also send us a check in the mail (Jóia Food Farm, 2038 March Avenue, Charles City Iowa 50616) with your deposit $100 for a half share deposit, $200 for a whole share deposit. Orders will need to be in by April 14. We will get in touch with you, send you a questionnaire to fill out and we will make sure you receive the cuts you want. Your pork will be ready by the first to second week of May depending on how much you wanted smoked and cured. Just in time for BBQ season!!!

Please email us with any questions you have about buying a whole or half pig. We'd love to help answer them for you!