Pig Wing Farms

03/25/2026

I have a wonderful person I’ve had the pleasure of working with more than once. They grew out Meishan barrows a couple years back. They liked the breed and trusted me again to bring them some Meishan barrows to their home. This time around I’m a more knowledgeable person. This time around I had more information to share and I had made changes in my program.

I gave them offspring of Pig Wing Farms from a gilt we kept because we loved all she brought to the table. Initially in her litter she grew the biggest, fastest, had the best marking, and was a sweet girl with long floppy ears. She was a keeper for our farm. I paired her with a boar from Odd Bird Farm who is a farm favorite over here bringing height, amazing bone structure, excellent personality, and beautiful markings.

I also gave them offspring from Meishan Preservation at Jensen Reserve both the boar and the gilt came from Meishan Pres. When I bought the breeding pair I talked in depth about my goals and Laura didn’t disappoint. Goose has a completely different build than Earl, but brings some equally great qualities to the table. February is runner up as my favorite sow on the farm. She’s by far the biggest lady I’ve got and sweet as pie and great wrinkles and beautiful markings.

Really this past year was a great pairing to give this farm some good Meishan options. It doesn’t stop there with bloodlines. They trusted me! They trusted me to give them advice on feed that I had learned from various sources such as the AMBA conference, Elemental Acres Bird Farms, and from some of my own reading, research, and experience. She went to a feed mill out of state (made the trip that apparently paid off well) worked with them to get the feed for the breed to thrive on.

This farm runs a cattle operation so the weight is precise, not a guess. Live scale weigh in at 6 months of age 300 #! She sent one off to processor at 6 months of age. The youngest one (younger by a couple of months) is the biggest one. These guys are well over 300 # now. The youngest one that’s the biggest is Feb x Goose.

This wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t put my trust into those I worked with and those experience I value. This wouldn’t have worked if she didn’t put trust into me. This wouldn’t have worked on a farm that didn’t put in the effort and the work. She said it best when she said this was a team effort.

Someone asked me the other day if we kept and bred our offspring from our farm, absolutely we do. We proudly have sent out Pig Wing Farm offspring to some of the best, but we’ve also worked with some of the best farms to get great lines and we’re not ready to retire them or stop working with those that align with our values. This is a team effort. I’m so excited to hear back what the live weight is when they get weighed again this weekend. Go team go! Thank you for trusting me. She knows who she is and yes, I stole her photos for this post. Notice how clean and well cared for they are. Care & dedication from this farm as well as fantastic documentation & side by side comparison of the litters she got from me is exactly what we like to see.
* I should also note that the biggest and best from every litter go out as breeders. I wouldn’t consider myself a responsible breeder if I did it any other way. Although she got some beautiful boys, the biggest one (which is the youngest one) wasn’t the biggest in his litter. The goal is to get them all to be superior at some point, but it takes getting the best of the litters out there doing what they do best, making babies.

03/24/2026

Fun facts about our feed:

Did you know organic feed is tested annually to ensure the “junk” isn’t present. How often is our feed tested?
EVERY BATCH!
Not monthly, not biannually or annually…every dagum’ batch is tested to ensure our feed is free of the “junk” we don’t want to feed to our family.

Why did we go through the hoops and spend a little extra on the feed?
First and foremost, we feed our family, our children. Most parents want to feed their kids a certain diet be it less sugar, big breakfast to start the day, small snacks throughout the day whatever it is, this is the way we wanted to feed our kids. We wanted no soy, we wanted glyphosate free, we wanted non-GMO, non-medicated. We wanted to know that we’re feeding them the best we can get. If we’re going through the work of raising them out and the financial part of raising them we might as well do it the best we can.

The secondary reasons are we provide meat to our community. We want to stand firm behind what we offer. We want to be sure that we’re offering quality over quantity. We want to stand apart from others. We want to ensure we take into consideration what our market values.
Our animals health matters to us. We want them to live their best life. If they need higher protein we want to ensure we’re giving it to them. If they do better on certain fibers easy, I can get that for them. If they are supposed to eat a certain amount a day, done. We want our animals to thrive in care and we want less bad days on the farm and more good ones and we truly believe proper nutrition is a foundation to that. A cornerstone I would say as there’s a couple other elements I believe are important.

That’s why we do what we do. It doesn’t make us better, it doesn’t make us a step ahead or even make us more profitable. It makes us, us. It is just the way we decided to run our farm and feed our family and community. It’s what works for us, but might not be what works for another farm. It’s the best WE can do right now so we’re going to do it the best we can. We value these things in our program and we’ve seen benefits from it.

*feed truck delivering the good stuff for our Meishan pigs, Texas A&M quail, ducks, chickens, guineas, turkeys, and peafowl. We feed them all from this company.

03/23/2026

We went from this…to this! Now on the website FINALLY. We’ve been offering our spice blends and many of them have a good portion being grown on our farm and freeze dried for longest shelf life and highest nutritional value. Hopefully you won’t need long shelf life with these, because we hope you use them up because you love them so much. We’ve planted herbs this year specifically for our spice / seasoning blends.

https://www.pigwingfarms.com/shop/Spices-Seasoning-Bleds-c198240557

03/23/2026

Free range is the only way we’ll ever have these loud mouth, 2 legged, fluffy monsters who never lay golden nuggets, but always lay nutritious & delicious nuggets!

03/23/2026

Has anyone tried this? As fly season approaches we are an all natural farm and prefer the ecosystem we build to the sprays we can’t trust. Especially being on well water and raising our children and animals on this land we know we want to remain chemical free. We are taking on Purple Martins to help with the fly population, but these might be great in smaller space and would love any feedback from anyone that has heard of this and tried it. Thanks!

Fly Predators are tiny beneficial insects you sprinkle near manure areas once a month during warm weather. By killing flies before they hatch, Fly Predators dramatically minimize your fly problem and dramatically maximize outdoor enjoyment for you, your family and your animals.

03/21/2026

Our flavor lab was in FULL force yesterday as we put our spices together for a combination we know will elevate the flavor on your table. We often think farm to table is just the eggs or the meat, but in this case we’re bringing some of our freeze dried herbs to the table to complement our meats, never overpower. We want to enhance, elevate, and marry into our natural meat flavors. We’re not about masking the flavor, but bringing all the flavors of the dish out in full force.

Sunday we will have our these available at market. Restocked on some tried & true ones and bringing a couple new flavors to the table. One flavor is EXACTLY what we put into our most popular sausage so I’m excited to see it come to the farm in a new form.

03/20/2026

Texas A&M quail getting a refresh on natural bedding…the most natural I can get my hands on. One of our next projects (likely this summer) is to build out an open concept quail enclosure. Netted so they can fly around and still be safe from predators. I’m at the beginning stages of my research on this and my plate is extremely full with to-do lists as we continue our move into the new property. It’s on the list though! I will continue to raise Texas A&M quail, but I’m considering raising and releasing some Bob White’s once we get the Meishan pigs settled. The pigs will help with predators and hopefully the peafowl and guineas will help with predators as well that would hunt the quail. We’ll keep you posted as we embark on that in some months. Until then, fresh dirt, leaves, sticks, pinecones, pine needles, and acorns for the win. We’ve found this to be a great alternative to hay, wood chips, store bought bedding. Bonus: IT’S FREE!

03/19/2026

Heading to the market this Sunday with this Meishan goodness and it’s going up on the website. Ingredients you know! Ingredients you can pronounce. Zero preservatives! You know how we raise our Meishan herd and what we feed them and this one was a crowd pleaser at the last event. So much so the demand had me working over time to bring it to the next market and to the website for shipping and FREE local delivery.

Freeze dryer is running to get these ready for our customers, the best customers. Harry and packed with natural flavor.

Come check us out on Sunday or online.
www.PigWingFarms.com

Lakeside Market in Riverside until 4pm

03/19/2026

We’ve got some goodies being packaged today for the market so we’re busy in the flavor lab! Mainly what we’ve got going out are some tried and true and a little less experimenting today. I’ll get some photos of the finished product and get them up on the website too. Next week I really need to sit at my desk and get on the website and make it a little more user friendly and organized into categories and get more of the products we offer on the website.

Yesterday I made a snack for our old pups.
Peas, spinach, our farm FRESH eggs (you know what they are fed and how they are raised), some of our Meishan pork gelatin, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, a little of our farm fresh chicken bone broth, and Tumeric. Avery devoured her bowl and scooped up her brother’s bowl so I guess it was a win. We will make some more for her today as a snack.

Taking the farm to more than our table:

03/18/2026

As if we needed another use for Meishan lard…here ya go! Miller Homestead shared this post today that I found so informative. Great article on cheese making use lard or tallow or animal rendered fats in place of cheese.
This makes sense to me because I know that you can use animal fats to preserve meats. If you put a chunk of raw meat in a jar of animal fat and seal the jar it will preserve the meat. So, cheese making with lard seems like a great idea. I will have to attempt cheese making as we progress on the farm, but for now this one is for all those already making the good stuff.
*check comments for the magazine and article shared by homestead

I love sharp cheddar cheese. This is one I’ve not mastered any other lactation mostly because I have zero patience for all the steps involved. But this time I’m gonna give it another go.

Alan found me a cheese making article in the latest issue of one of our homesteading magazines.

Now the great thing is I learned something new in the article. I learned that I can use beef tallow on cheese cloth or muslin to seal my cheese for aging instead of using wax. You can also do this with lard.

I’m going to try the tallow method with muslin this time and see how that goes.

03/18/2026

I had someone reach out and ask me how we set up our farrowing areas and while we don’t do much with this breed I sent this awesome farm in Texas some pictures of our farrowing set ups through the years. When I was sending the photos I found some cute ones and figured why not do a Wednesdays flashback of our awesome Meishan pigs.

“Your rest is not to be found in figuring your life out, but in trusting the One who has it all figured out for your good and His glory.”

03/18/2026

Dear VA community…any great tax people in VA that excels in the farm/agricultural side of taxes? It’s time for Pig Wing Farms to file our taxes and we’d love to not navigate it ourselves. I’m almost 100% sure I’m missing write offs, loopholes, hidden tiny print or whatever else.

Feel free to email me directly at brooke@pigwingfarms.com if you are that person or have a referral. Thanks!