by Leah Bender
For our next farm profile, I spoke with Eric Kreidermacher, owner of Pork and Plants, our primary supplier of pork! Eric emphasized to me throughout our conversation that he and his family strive to be different from other farms in a number of ways: keeping to a low-input system, sustainability, their choice of animals, their commitment to healthy living, and much more.
Located in Southeastern Minnesota, Pork and Plants has been a family owned and operated business since 1967. Since taking the reins from Eric’s parents, Eric and Ann Kreidermacher have continued to expand and evolve their family’s business; they operate an organic hog, cattle, and poultry farm alongside a commercial greenhouse (hence ‘pork’ and ‘plants’).
I read that Pork and Plants was founded back in 1967 by your parents, and I’m curious: did you always want to inherit and take over your family’s business? What made you decide to stick with farming?
“Well for myself personally, I knew two things growing up: that I wanted to be a farmer and that I wanted to have a big family. I always wanted to stay in farming if I could! I'm one of four kids and I'm the only one who stuck with my parents and the work they do.”
What are some challenges that come along with being a family owned and operated farm?
“Haha, that’s a long list! Nah. Being a family owned farm is the way we’ve always done things, and we’ve always been a bit different than other farms-- always looking to pave a new path. Growing up, my father farmed hogs while my mother farmed plants. When my wife and myself took over the farm, we got into direct sales and other new ways of doing business. We’ve always been a bit ahead of the curve, and that’s been challenging. The other challenge can be, well, family itself. You can’t escape your family when you live together and work together, you know! There are always pros and cons to that-- it can be good and bad. But I love my family and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
What does an average day of work on your farm look like for you?
“So, there’s no such thing as average-- it all depends on the time of year, and that goes for both of our businesses, pork and plants. This time of year it’s all farm related: we spend most of our time on the farm moving cattle, feeding our pigs, our chickens etc. In the Springtime we do all of that in addition to our greenhouse business.
Our businesses exist side by side but they also interact sometimes…each has different needs day to day. We’ll be watering plants, transplanting, fertilizing, then we have the selling season. It’s always been super cool to me how every day is different here!
There’s no monotony.
In farming it’s all seasonal, especially for us right now. Many of my neighbors are crop farmers, and most of them have nothing to do right now on their farms, so they're actually on vacation. Meanwhile, we’ve been making hay! My harvest is in the summer while for my neighbors it’s in the fall. For the most part, we are completely different from other farms. Even in terms of my family-- we all do different things here on the farm. My second oldest daughter does most of the pig stuff, my youngest daughter does poultry, I do cattle, and so on…we split responsibilities. It’s gotten easier as the kids get older!”
What are the benefits for consumers when they choose meat and/or produce from a small local farm such as yours rather than whatever they can find at the supermarket?
“The biggest benefit is health and having a healthy lifestyle. People need to know their farmers and where their food comes from! Our food system in this country has sadly become very toxic, manipulated, and bad for human wellbeing as a result. Whether it’s our farm or our greenhouse, we’re all about quality and health. Our philosophy is that it all starts in the soil-- healthy soil makes for healthy plants, which makes for healthy animals, and then makes for healthy people! I view most things as being a circular system, a loop of nature.
We started doing this for our kids-- we wanted them to grow up healthy. Like I said earlier, we’ve always strived to do things differently, and that includes how we raise our animals: the diet we feed them is soy-free and corn-free. Initially I fed that way because we didn’t want to grow soy or corn just for feed, but as a result we’ve come to realize just how detrimental soy is to our animals and by extension, our people.
Besides health, the other benefit is helping to maintain community. When you work with local farmers, it helps to support us financially, and in turn we try to support our own community-- the local grocery stores, gas stations, small businesses, etc. Again, it all comes around in a circle! Modern-day food systems are so massive and disconnected, which is something that has always really bothered me. We strive to be different by keeping it small.”
Why do you use red wattle hogs? What characteristics do they have that you prefer to other more conventional hog breeds?
“With both our pigs and cattle, we like to be different. I grew up on a hog farm with durocs and other conventional breeds. My dad always did a confinement system, whereas I wanted to have our pigs free to forage and pasture as much as possible. The Red Wattle breed stuck out to me because there were so few of them at the time, despite being known for their high quality meat, docility, and doing well foraging outdoors. Some pig breeds are known to be more high strung, like the ones I grew up with, which could often be a bit edgy or grumpy. So it was the rareness of the Red Wattle breed and the quality of the meat.
American Milking Devon is our cattle of choice, because they had also become uncommon, despite being some of the first cows to come to America on the Mayflower! They’re a tri-purpose breed: milk, meat, and even drawing carts back in the day! They’re also more docile than other breeds. I wanted animals that my kids could grow up around without having to worry about them constantly. You still have to handle them correctly of course but let me tell you-- some of these cows and pigs think that they’re dogs when it comes to their behavior. Like I said, I have always wanted a happy family, kids, and wife, so we make our choices based on that. We also need to be profitable to survive, but my family’s happiness comes first.”
Could you tell me more about the sustainable/regenerative farming practices you use on your farm?
“Sure! Like I said, it all starts with the health of our soil. Our farm has changed over time: I used to grow conventional row crops, now we grow organic mixtures and forages for our cattle, as well as healthy grains for our pigs. It’s healthier for our animals, and it just so happens to be easier on the soil as well. Our current crops are way less destructive than corn. We use different kinds of inoculants with our seeds and rotate crops in order to bring our soil health back.
In our modern age we have separated just about everything in the food system…crop farming and animal farming are usually separate businesses now-- farmers will rarely do both. We want to be different and to maintain nature’s circle. In winter, we feed our cattle using bale grazing: we strategically place our bales in our fields so that cattle will graze and make manure where we want them to. Our annual yield of forage and grains increases every year because of our bale strategy! We also plant clover and legumes to help with the soil’s nitrogen for next season’s grain crops. I don’t want to use a high-input farming system…I aim to be self-reliant and to use an internal system as much as possible-- it’s much more sustainable. There are different approaches to sustainability out there, but I aim to have a low-input, self-sustaining system.”
You mention on your website that you have seen the difference that quality, healthy food makes in your family and your customers' health-- do you have any personal stories to share about that?
“My last child, my youngest son, struggled with a lot of Colic in the beginning. We had only just started to get into healthy eating and living when we had to deal with this. We took him to several doctors, and all of them said that aside from trying various medications and drugs, there was nothing to do but wait for it to get better. We asked about my wife’s diet and whether it might be affecting our son when she fed him, and the doctors insisted it had nothing to do with it. Nonetheless, my wife decided to make a few healthy changes to her diet and, bam, just like that the colic went away!
We saw our son’s smile for the first time, and he wasn’t crying constantly. That experience made us realize that food is truly important. On the customer side, we have some regulars whose son was dealing with a lot of different food allergies and sensitivities. They found us and started feeding their son our pork and poultry, and what do you know-- he could eat it! It helped to underscore for me why having our animals on a soy-free and corn-free diet is important.”
Where do you see your business in ten years-- do you have any big plans or aspirations?
“There are a lot of different factors there, but our ultimate goal is to keep doing what we’re doing. Things are inevitably gonna evolve and change of course-- we’ll figure out better systems and ways of doing things. Ultimately, I want to live and hopefully die on this farm. Ten years from now, it’ll be my children maturing and-- if they decide to take our business over-- figuring out what they want to do and how they’ll change things. It’s truly a constantly evolving system…if you told me 30 years ago what I’d be doing today, I’d say that you must be crazy! So maybe 30 years in the future, I’ll be saying the same. The most important thing is my kids, and giving them the opportunity and space to do things their own way, to have different focuses.”