When we decided to raise pork at England Ranch, we didn't go looking for the fastest-growing, cheapest-to-feed hog on the market. We went looking for the best-tasting one. That search led us to the Berkshire — one of the oldest and most respected heritage breeds in the world.
What Makes Berkshire Different
The Berkshire breed originated in England's Berkshire county over 300 years ago. They were prized by the British aristocracy for their meat quality long before industrial farming decided that faster and leaner was better. When the pork industry shifted toward commercial breeds engineered for maximum growth on minimum feed, the Berkshire — and its flavor — got left behind.
What the industry abandoned, chefs and farmers who care about quality kept alive. Berkshire pork is known for three things that set it apart from commercial pork: intramuscular marbling, a darker and richer meat color, and a pH level that produces more tender, juicier results when cooked. If you've ever eaten a pork chop that was dry and bland no matter what you did, that was almost certainly a commercial breed. Berkshire doesn't do that.
Why "Registered" Matters
You'll see farms advertise "Berkshire" or "Berkshire cross" pork without any documentation behind the claim. There's no law stopping anyone from calling their pork Berkshire regardless of what's actually in the breeding.
Our hogs are registered with the American Berkshire Association. That means each animal has documented lineage — you can trace its pedigree back through generations of purebred Berkshire stock. Registration isn't just a piece of paper. It's verification that the animal you're buying is actually what we say it is. That's the kind of transparency we believe in across our entire operation.
How Commercial Hogs Are Different
The pork you find at the grocery store comes from commercial breeds — typically Yorkshire, Landrace, Duroc, or crosses of these — selected almost exclusively for growth speed and feed efficiency. A commercial hog can reach slaughter weight in 5 to 6 months. They're raised in confinement buildings, fed rations designed to put on weight as fast as possible, and processed through a system built for volume, not quality.
The result is a lean, pale, mild-tasting meat. The industry spent decades breeding fat out of pork and marketing it as "the other white meat." The problem is that fat is where flavor lives. When you breed for leanness and speed, you lose the marbling, the color, and the depth of flavor that made pork worth eating in the first place.
This is the same confinement model that requires routine antibiotics and growth inputs to function. Fast-growing animals in crowded buildings eating engineered feed — it's efficient, but it's not producing food we'd want to feed our family.
How We Raise Our Berkshires
Our Berkshires live on pasture. They root, they wallow, they do what hogs are built to do. They eat 100% certified organic, soy-free feed supplemented by whatever they forage on '-cide free pastures — no insecticides, no herbicides, no fungicides.
They grow slower than commercial hogs. That's by design. A Berkshire raised on pasture with real feed develops marbling and flavor that a confinement hog never will. You can't rush that process with chemistry and get the same result.
When it's time for processing, each hog is custom cut and vacuum sealed for your freezer. You get the full range of cuts — chops, roasts, bacon, ribs, ground pork, sausage — from a single animal with documented heritage, raised on clean land, fed clean feed.
What You'll Notice When You Cook It
The first thing people notice is the color. Berkshire pork is darker and richer than what you're used to seeing in the store. That color comes from higher myoglobin content in the muscle — a sign of an active animal that actually moved during its life.
The second thing is the marbling. Fine threads of intramuscular fat that keep the meat moist during cooking. This is why Berkshire chops stay juicy at temperatures that would dry out a commercial chop. You have more margin for error, and the flavor rewards you for it.
The third thing — and this is the one that converts people — is the taste. Richer, more complex, with a depth that commercial pork simply doesn't have. It tastes like pork used to taste before the industry optimized it into blandness.
Taste the Difference
Our whole hog pork is $10.00/lb of packaged meat. You can visit the ranch, meet the herd, and see exactly how they're raised before you buy.