The Farm

Located on the beautiful island of Martha’s Vineyard, the Fork to Pork pigs are raised on three acres of woods in the town of Vineyard Haven. The three dozen hogs live happy, healthy lives being raised outside and fed recovered food scraps from restaurants and commercial businesses. They express their natural pig behavior of rooting around through food scraps, searching for their favorite delights like beet greens, carrot tops, lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, papaya, grapes, all kinds of melons, and scrambled eggs.

Everyday in the season, Farmer Jo collects food scraps from two dozen local restaurants, grocery stores, and other businesses such as the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Most of this food would have just been thrown in the trash, shipped off-island on the ferry, and taken to a landfill or incinerator on the mainland (since there is no such facility in operation on the Vineyard). A small amount of food waste being diverted into compost on-island which is a step in the right direction. But feeding food waste to pigs is a full two places higher up on the EPA’s Food Recovery Hierarchy — feeding food waste to livestock is right after feeding it to humans, whereas composting is only just above the last resort of landfill/incineration.

The farm’s value is two-fold. Not only is it important to reduce food waste in the community but the farm is helping foster a thriving and sustainable local food movement right here on Martha’s Vineyard. Why ship food scraps off-island and then ship large amounts of hog feed to the island when you could just raise pigs on food that would have otherwise been thrown away?

The pigs raised on healthy, high-quality food (think lots of vegetables and fruits, scrambled eggs, cheese, etc.!) lead to healthy, high-quality pork for the farm’s loyal customers. After all, you are what you eat! Jo specifically chooses to raise the swine breed of Idaho Pasture Pigs because of their friendly temperament and forage ability. Once the hogs are full-grown, they are taken to a USDA inspected slaughterhouse off-island where they are processed. The pork is then sold back to the restaurants hat originally supplied food scraps to feed the pigs — it’s a full circle from restaurant to farm to restaurant. Two-thirds of the pigs end up back in the restaurants while the remaining pigs fill the chest freezers of island personal customers who commit to purchasing a whole pig.

This is a new way to do farm-to-table. Hope you'll enjoy eating Fork to Pork!