What makes our pork so tasty? Must be the whey!

Whey separating from the curd.

Curd is hung in bags and whey drains.

Reserve your bulk pork box now for pick up in July!

I certainly love bacon as much as the next gal, but our pigs aren’t JUST here to fuel my BLT needs.  Our pigs have an important job on the farm.  A job, you ask?

Cheesemaking is an amazing process where milk coagulates, (ie milk proteins congeal together) either via acid development or using rennet and you are left with curd (read: cheese) and whey (protein-rich liquid byproduct).  In fact, when you make cheese, between 80 and 90% of the volume of milk you started with ends up as whey!

Whey could easily make its way down the creamery drain, but what a shame!  All of those nutrients would go to waste.  So where does the whey go?  We feed it to our pigs!  Pigs love whey, it is a great source of protein and other nutrients and it sure makes for some tasty pork!

Whey drains from the cheese and is collected in buckets.

Pigs also have the important job of consuming “test batches” of cheese that didn’t quite hit the mark while working out the kinks in a new recipe.  A job which they gladly accept! 

Feeding whey to our pigs certainly takes some extra work and effort but we are happy to see a by-product turning into high quality feed.  The combined result:  less waste and more tasty pork!

More pork will be available soon, reserve yours now if you don’t want to miss out later this summer, it goes fast!

Whey is collected into buckets and fed to the happy pigs!