Bear Foot Farm Piglet Barn Fund
At Bear Foot Farm , we are a family owned and operated farm. We work hard to keep our livestock happy, safe and treated well. We invest our hearts and souls through long hours to be able to bring our local community the fresh products we do every week.
We have a wonderful partnership with Western Michigan University. WMU allows us to pick up fruit and veggie scraps from the dining hall kitchens twice a week. Each pick up up provides our hogs an average of over 1500 lbs of fresh feed year round. We then supply them with our naturally raised pork in the form of breakfast sausage they use in several menu items.
We have also been lucky enough to have a wonderful establishment like Arcadia Ale buying whole hogs from us and offering our pork on their menu. But in order to fill these needs we find we need to have a year round breeding program. This means having sows give birth in the harsh Michigan winters.
Last year we tried winter birthing, but the brutal cold and snow took lives. No matter how much straw or wind breaks we put up, it wasn't enough.
Many times, babies were brought into the house and placed in the bathtub with heat lights and blankets in an effort to save them. But we can't bring the 800 lb. mommas in and the babies just don't thrive without the mom, her milk and her love! We need a better way to birth in the winter.....
If we can't consistently fill orders year round, we fear losing accounts. Losing that income could mean losing the farm. We need to build a small pig birthing barn to solve the problem of keeping our mother pigs and their litters safe during the winter.
We can't do it alone. So many small family farms run on such tight budgets, and we are no different. We are beginning a Build A Barn Campaign in order to achieve our goal of not only filling orders with quality and humanely treated pork, but improving the lives of our livestock. We sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this. If you can help us help the pigs, we would deeply appreciate it.
***** As a thank you, we are going to randomly pick a name, on the first day of spring, from all those who donate through this page or who have or will be donating directly to the farm. The name picked will have their choice of a half hog, cut and smoked to their specifications or a half share of our fruit and veggie CSA. If the winner is not from the area or can't use the gift we will be happy to donate it in their name to the local food pantry.
Bear Foot Farms
5808 40Th Street
Paw Paw, MI 49079
