‘Let pigs be pigs’ Lubec family’s policy is to farm the right way and do what’s best for the animals

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LUBEC – Each wearing tiny head lamps, Jessika Zanoni and her 8-year-old daughter Zoie sit on their haunches in the corner of a pen in their barn, listening to the night sounds and trying to be inconspicuous. Every once in a while, a long, low moan or a small grunt erupts from the sow lying on her side in front of them.

The 550-pound, golden red sow is a heritage breed, a Tamworth, that has a disposition as sweet as Maine’s most famous pig – Wilbur of E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” – and she is giving birth.

It’s pigging season at Olde Sow Farm in Lubec, a diverse, organic farm tucked into the Down East woods. “This is an unlikely farm in an unlikely spot,” Jessika said, referring to Lubec’s more traditional role as a fishing and tourism destination.

And although the Zanoni family ultimately sells the organic meat from their pigs to high-end restaurants and markets, their farm is based more on quality of life than on high profit.

“We are your true small family farm,” Jessika said recently. “We like to think we are doing it the right way. It’s all about our family, what is best for us, the land and the animals. Everything we do, we do as a family.”

It was a crisp fall morning and her drift of pigs was grazing contentedly, munching on summer’s leftover weeds or pulling hay from a round bale to make a comfy bed.

Zanoni’s Tamworth herd is not confined. The animals are pastured and held in by a simple strand of electric fence, including Boris, a 600-pound Tamworth boar.

“We let pigs be pigs,” she said. “Why fight what works? They want to live communally. By allowing them to graze, they grow slowly and the meat is much tastier.” The pigs rotate through the farm’s 30 acres of pastures all summer and are housed – communally and with outside access – in a barn during the winter.

Another drift of pigs is housed in the open-air foundation of what was once a chicken house. New mothers and their piglets are found close to the Zanonis’ log cabin home, in a barn raised by family members.

Jessika and Dante Zanoni began their growing organic pork business just a year ago and are already selling prime cuts to some of Maine’s most prestigious restaurants and markets. Some of their specialty sausage was offered recently at the Common Ground Fair for $8.50 a pound.

“Originally, my quest was to do what was best for the pigs but also what was best for us,” Zanoni said. “When you are an organic farmer, you have to be accountable to someone and there is a guarantee of quality. I wouldn’t do anything different for my own family.”

Maine’s pork industry has seen an upswing in the past five years, after a sharp decline due to a lack of processors and increased federal regulations, according to the Maine Department of Agriculture.

There were only 400 farms with pigs in 2000, down from 1,700 in 1991, but the overall hog population was estimated at more than 5,000 just two years later.

Production is confined to Maine’s local freezer markets, which are booming because of consumers’ growing concerns over factory farm meat. At Zanoni’s, buyers can see the hog they purchase, inspect what it is being fed and could even follow it through the processing, if they wish.

Clark Souther, president of the Maine Pork Producers Association, said demand has surged for fresh pork at farm stands and farmers markets and for piglets that consumers can raise themselves. “We sell everything we can get,” Souther said recently.

Finding a niche appears to be the key.

“The whole philosophy is to add value,” Jessika said. “We sell every part of the pig, from fatback to pigs’ feet. Everything but the oink.”

Because of the farm’s remote location, the biggest problem the Zanonis face is getting their product to market. Each time a hog is ready for slaughter, it must be trucked from Lubec to Madison, to Luce’s Meats processing facility – a 177-mile, four-hour drive. It then must be marketed from Yarmouth to Bar Harbor.

In contrast to the very rural lifestyle the Zanonis enjoy, Internet marketing is becoming more and more a part of the Olde Sow Farm, Jessika said. “We can ship next day to anywhere in Maine.”

Chef Brian Dame of The Edge restaurant in Lincolnville praises the Zanonis’ finished pork. “The meat is phenomenal. The flavor is out of this world,” he said.

“But beyond that, it is our responsibility as restaurant owners to support Maine’s farms.” Dame offers at least five different pork dishes on the menu and identifies each as locally grown, organic meat from Olde Sow farm. “Our customers definitely respond to that,” he said.

Sous chef Jarod Spangler at Pepperland Cafe in South Berwick is another of the Zanonis’ customers.

“The whole idea of our restaurant is to support local farmers,” Spangler said. “We also noticed the better products come from the smaller farms.” Spangler buys half-pigs from Olde Sow and makes his own sausage, pates, headcheese, and pork stock. “It is wonderful meat,” he added.

But it is the farmers markets and fairs such as Common Ground Fair that really appeal to the Zanonis’ quest for a rural lifestyle. “When we head to the Belfast Farmers Market, we make a day of it,” Jessika said. The trip, the selling, the atmosphere, all become learning experiences for the Zanonis’ four children – Zoie, 8, Jude, 6, Veda, 3, and Ayla, 1 – who are all home-schooled.

“This is the lifestyle we have chosen for ourselves,” she said. “It was a part of our business plan for me to be a stay-at-home mom. This is how we live, how we want to live.”

The log cabin is surrounded by gardens and barns, turkeys have roosted in the trees, chickens range the property, leaving eggs for the children to gather.

“The goal is for Dante to be able to work full time on the farm by 2010,” she said. He now works off the farm as a computer technician and salesman in Machias, but still puts in plenty of time with the animals, including taking the hogs to the slaughterhouse.

“It was very hard to send the pigs to slaughter the first time,” Jessika admitted. “But I know that if it wasn’t hard, I probably shouldn’t be farming. This is what raising domesticated animals is all about. We give them food, shelter and water and, in turn, they give us meat.”

Pork is the world’s most widely eaten meat, according to the National Pork Board, representing 42.6 percent of all meat consumed.

In Iowa and South Carolina, two of the country’s largest pork producing states, hog factories often tightly confine pigs and feed them daily doses of antibiotics.

But Maine’s pork producers tend to be small – 95 percent of them have between one and 24 pigs.

The Zanonis have 61 pigs, with seven nearing slaughter size. “We started with two pigs and now have 14 breeding stock,” Jessika said. She said she was fortunate to find her boar, Boris, in Maine, but had to go to Pennsylvania to find sows of the heritage Tamworth breed. “We had to start with eight-week-old piglets. It has been a whirlwind of a first year.”

Not one to slow down, however, Jessika is planning on opening a micro-dairy next spring to provide cheese and other products from her small, six-cow dairy herd.

“My goal is to be profitable by keeping costs low and selling only the very best product,” she said.

Olde Sow Farm pork products can be found at the Belfast Farmers Market, Apollo’s Bistro in Waterville, Pepperland Cafe in South Berwick, Rosemont Markets in Portland and Yarmouth, The Edge in Camden, The Inn at Shoppee Farm in Machias, The Cheese Iron in Scarborough, and at the farm.