Industrial corporations have slowly been taking over our food supply for a while now. Never before have we had to question what is in the foods we eat. 

• Antibiotics
• Growth Hormones
• Preservatives

Finding healthy and clean food should not be a chore. 

We’re here to help. 

Our animals are never given any treatments

Would you take medicine for strep throat, in the event that someday you might happen to get strep throat?

No! Of course not! You’d probably take medicine that helps cure the issue at the time it was needed for the specific reason. None of this preloading on medication. 

Our animals are no different. We never give any antibiotics, growth hormones, or other weird concoctions. We raise healthy, happy, and strong animals with robust immune systems. Their diets are clean and natural and they get unlimited access to exercise and social engagement. 

Like people, occasionally an animal does feel under the weather. It’s pretty rare, but it can happen. We have no qualms about treating the suffering of that animal if it means saving it’s life or ending it’s misery. 

We treat only if needed. Otherwise, we let nature take its course. 

It’s amazing how resilient animals and people can be in the right environment without any external influence. That’s our goal. A holistic farm that nurtures and incubates our animals so they can achieve and express their very best. What’s good for the animals, is good for all of us.

It’s a challenge to create dishes that everyone will enjoy. We make that task easier with fresh products shipped directly to you.

Getting everyone around the table is one of the most meaningful times of the day for many families. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a roast in the oven, brats on the grill, or BLT’s at lunch. We all want to be appreciated for the meals we make for others. You want to give the very best and make those around you happy, and we want to help make that happen. 

All of our meats and products have been raised to be the highest quality cuts you can get. 

We’re also going to give you the recipes to bring out the most flavor and life out of our cuts, so your meals are fantastic and flavorful.

Say goodbye to industrial style dry pale pork and sink your teeth into rich and juicy pasture raised pork from Souder Station Farm.

Stressed out animals raised in inhumane conditions create meat no one should eat. 

Pigs raised in confined factory farms can be susceptible to diseases and even death just from the intense stress they undergo living in inhumane artificial conditions. 

Commonly called Porcine Stress Disorder, stress losses are estimated $50 million dollars a year in the swine factories. That’s a lot of unnecessary waste.

In some instances the animals don’t die from over stress. They are sent along through the facility to be picked up at your local grocery chain. The meat from these animals can develop a condition known as PSE, or Pork Soft Exudative.

Basically PSE is bad. It creates meat that is super soft when raw, yet loses all of its moisture once cooked and turns hard and dry. No one wants a dry cut of meat.  Pigs should not be forced to live in an artificial concrete cage for their entire life. 

It doesn’t have to be this way though. 

Animals were meant to be outside in the environment. Rooting in the rich earth, basting in the sunlight filtering through the trees, and visiting the watering holes to drink and splash around. 

Pastured pigs stress should consist of having to choose whether to sunbathe in the grassy pasture or lounging in the shade of the oaks.

Souder Station Farm pigs are Happy, Healthy, and Strong. We ensure they have everything they need to overcome any stresses in the natural world. Cool waters and shade in the summer, ample hay and bedding in the winter, lots of land to explore and enrich their lives, and compassionate handling and movements up until the day comes for retirement. 

We follow Organic practices, but we are not a fully certified livestock farm. We absolutely love and support almost all of the Organic standards. They were designed to protect the welfare of animals, plants, and people. They encourage healthy air, soil, and water. The underlying current of organics promotes sustainability, stewardship, and responsible management. 

So why aren’t we a certified Organic pig farm? 

Here’s 3 reasons why Organic standards don’t  :

1. The requirement that any single thing the pigs and chickens eat has to come from an approved Organic certified source. While this may sound good in practice, it leaves a lot of food value to end up in landfills. Every year we get loads of customers that bring us their old pumpkins and apples from their homes and we offer free choice to the animals as treats. 

According to Organic standards, this act would disqualify us from certification. However, by using these otherwise waste streams we can offer the animals a more diversified diet, keep foods out of landfills, and strengthen community connection with their food source.  

2. Pigs and chickens are omnivores and eat a large volume of grains. They eat a lot of grasses as well, but not nearly as much as ruminants like cows, sheep, and goats. Omnivores, like humans, need a varied diet. 

Organic grains are nearly double the cost of our Non-GMO All Natural grains. Our consumers have always been more concerned with the welfare of the animals, how we treat them, and our transparency about our actions more so than they are a specific brand of feed. Clean meat should be accessible to more people. At our scale certified Organic grains push our prices so high that it becomes hard for our customers to shop with us.

3. Lastly,  Organic Certification is basically a third party certification badge. It carries a certain understanding relating to principles and practices that a consumer can easily see and understand. However, as many folks have seen, large industrial factory farms have found loopholes and ways to get around Organic Certification, while still labeling their products as “Organic”.

The reality is, most consumers have a pretty good intuitive sense of what organic means, and it isn’t always what the regulations spell out. From a farmer’s perspective talking with customers, there are a lot of varied opinions out there about what “Organic” means. (The same goes for pasture raised, free range, all natural, etc, which we’ll dive more into later)

At Souder Station Farm, we like to think of ourselves as “Customer Certified”. We’re here to help you make sense of all the labels out there and you can freely choose whether our practices match up with your vision and understanding of Organic. 

We want to maintain transparency at all times and absolutely support Organic agriculture and the sustainability it promotes.

At Souder Station Farm we feed our pigs excellence and encouragement. We feed them bucketfuls of goodness. Okay. I’ll be serious. For a minute anyway. We are always on the lookout for alternative, organic, local, sustainable, and affordable options. As such, our feed is always evolving. 

Our pigs are fed a base ration of grains from  2 different mills. We source Non-GMO Natural Feed from Green Mountain Organics in Vermont. 

During times when we have very few animals on the farm we will purchase small lots from our local local mill, Feed Commodities, in Detroit Maine. The local mill always has the freshest feed available until we are unable to justify the large bulk purchases of grain from Green Mountain. We like to ensure that the animals get a baseline of basic balanced nutrition. The feed mixture we often get called a Sow & Pig mixture that has a higher amino acid profile for healthy growing pigs. It is corn and soy basic mix, with vitamins and minerals added. The corn and soy in the mix are both a GMO product. We are currently transitioning towards a fully All-Natural feed mix in order to help further Organic agriculture. 

On the farm we add kelp chips and diatomaceous earth to the mix as well. We feel that the kelp chips are a small price to pay to ensure that our animals are getting a full spectrum of minerals and vitamins. diatomaceous earth is a naturally occurring powder that is ground up diatoms. Diatoms are marine algae. We add it primarily as a form of natural wormer.

More grains! We also help out our local breweries as well. Both the Winterport Winery in Winterport, and The Orono Brewing company in Orono send us their spent grains from the brewing process. Much of the leftover grains is just fiber, and the pigs only eat a small portion of the available dry matter. However, the ducks, chickens, and pigs all love the treat! Plus, we love having all that extra organic matter going back into our soils. It’s an amazing way to recycle.

Grass! Hay! Dirt! Roots! Bugs! Worms! Nuts! Berries! Fruits! Vegetables that we grow!

My apologies for getting so excited. Our pigs get an amazing diet that they glean from the natural forest. pastures, and woodlots on the property. They capitalize on season abundance. We grow things like pumpkins and squashes as well for them. We also collect apples and acorns from neighborhood lawns as treats when available. if you have apples and want to come feed the pigs bring them on over! They would love you! 

So there is an overview of what we feed our pigs. We have a base rate of feed to ensure they get basic nutrition. The rest is all supplementation on whatever is available. Both in the form of off farm inputs, and on farm forage. If there is one thing I can say, they get just as much, if not more, variety than we do. Wild pigs wish they had it so good.

Some of our products do, and some do not. 

Typically the sweeter varieties of sausage will have some level of sugars. Common sweeteners include all natural Maple Syrup, Honey, Molasses, Brown Sugar, or Pure Cane Sugar. 

When making dry-cured sausages sugar is added as a food source for bacteria. Much like making wine or fresh bread, the dry-cured sausages undergo a fermentation step. The bacteria consume the sugar as part of the curing process.

Many of our products have not been cured in any way, and contain no sugars. Our ground plain pork contains no sugar as well. We list all ingredients for each product so you can be sure of what you’re getting.

We have products with and without Nitrites!

Nitrites are added to almost all salamis, sausages, bacons, hams, and smoked shoulders on the market today. 

Nitrites are a salt used in the curing process to stop Botulism from growing.

Almost any package of salami you see in store shelves that claims “No Nitrites added” will often have a small *asterisk beside it. When you read the fine print, it’ll often say something like:

“*Except those found in celery salt”  

It’s a marketing ploy. The only reason they add celery juice, salt, leaves, etc is for the nitrites. Don’t be fooled. 

There’s no need for hiding from nitrites. They’re everywhere in our diet. The most massive amounts of nitrites in our diet comes from leafy greens and root vegetables. Celery and beets tend to be particularly high in nitrites.

We have absolutely NO issues with nitrites and readily use them as needed, but we’ll gladly let you know when. There’s no smoke and mirrors here, just transparency about what we do. 

Just as some folks are concerned about sugar, we’ll always be completely transparent with our labels so you know exactly what’s in your foods. 

If it says “No Nitrites” on the package, we mean it. You shouldn’t have to wade through fine print to find out what you’re eating. If it has nitrites added for safety, we’ll say so. There’s no reason to hide it.