“There’s a whole variety of different grasses, clovers, alfalfa that we intentionally planted for them.” Steve’s commitment to pasture-raised Berkshire pork is the real deal.

“We’re all about pasture-based,” Steve tells me as the pigs playfully jostle for a spray of hose-water. Today Steve cares for about sixty pigs and makes it his mission to give them a good life while they’re on his farm. They have a pretty substantial degree of intelligence.” The more you’re around the animals the more you see how they communicate, maybe in a different fashion than we do but they’re really smart. Assistant farm manager Maya Powalisz-Trochlell tells me she can tell the pigs’ mood just from the way they sound, “The more you understand what the pigs are talking about the more that you enjoy hearing something or not hearing something. Almost immediately they come out to say “hi” with a series of grunts, barks and small nibbles at our pant legs. Whether that’s turkeys, deer, coyotes, rabbits…whatever you would have naturally in this area.”Īs we round a bend we get our first glimpse of the piglets resting in the shade of an old wooden flatbed. “Anywhere on the farm there should be something that’s very attractive to wildlife.

“We’re really trying to work with nature.” As we make our half mile trek from his barn out to his pigs Steve points out new peach and apple trees he’s planted along with his vegetable garden.

“We’re trying to do as much as we can from an environmental standpoint,” Steve tells me as we walk his 130-acre farm of rolling hills full of free-range pigs and cattle. Steve and Marie Deibele from Golden Bear Farm in Kiel, Wisconsin are those kinds of farmers. Often that means pairing up with farmers who are committed not to just making a buck but to farmers who take a vested, almost paternal, interest in the animals they raise. That’s why we here at Outpost are serious about where our food comes from and when it comes to our meats there are strict guidelines that must be met before we even think about selling it to you.

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that conventional farming and industrial agriculture isn’t good for the earth, the animals…or for us.

Golden bear farm in kiel