Description
A perfect meat to fat ratio mince to ensure a juicy and tender pork. Absolutely perfect for burgers, sausages, meatballs, bolognese, stir fry and dumplings.
Beachport Berkshires Story
From little things big things grow…
It all started with two piglets…who grew and grew! Mark, Kate, Lily & Willow Wheal thought this was great, soon they would be able to fill the freezer with their very own pork!
But those two piglets never made it to their dinner plate; instead they became the founding members of their free range pig herd.
As it happens they farm in the highly productive Lower Southeast corner of South Australia, near the picturesque coastal town of Beachport.
Before they knew it a merry tribe of 30 or so pigs were escaping from their yards, making themselves at home in the grassy paddocks alongside their sheep and cattle (and frequently enjoying the lawn of their garden, but that’s a story for another day!).
Mark and Kate were feeding them grain they also grew on the farm as part of our mixed cropping program and the concept of value adding to this grain, combined with the pigs’ obvious preference for running free, sparked the idea of establishing a free range piggery on a larger scale.
Embracing the Berkshires
Mark and Kate refined their breeding program to have only purebred Berkshire pigs, as they are a black heritage breed well suited to an outdoor environment, and so their brand Beachport Berkshires was born.
Fast forward a few years (and plenty of freezer fillers along the way) more than 100 Berkshire sows and their offspring can be seen meandering through their paddocks, grazing on lush pastures, digging in the dirt, eating their wheat and barley and wallowing in mud on hot days.
Being a heritage breed they are slower growing than intensively farmed white pigs and have smaller litters. However, they have increased intramuscular fat (marbling) in their meat which creates delicious juicy pork. As they also have access to pasture at all times the resulting product is a far sweeter tasting pig with superb eating quality.
Many people ask about the black hair on the pigs, but Mark and Kate tell them to just cook it and eat it: their pork is so tasty that “Once you go black, you’ll never go back!”.
Free Range and Beyond
Beachport Berkshires attained our Australian Pork Industry Quality Assurance Program (APIQ) Free Range accreditation in November 2017 and they have since won consecutive Silver Medals for Branded Pork at the Australian Food Awards in 2018 and 2019.
They supply pigs into various interstate markets, but one thing they’ve always wanted to do is supply local people with high quality local produce. So they are very proud to close the gap between farmers and retailers and have their pork sold locally in Millicent, Beachport and Mount Gambier, and on the menu at numerous Limestone Coast restaurants.
