The Faul Family's Lean Pigs
 |
The Fauls raise Mangalitsa pigs for fresh meat, not for curing. Their farm is in Kirchberg an der Raab, in Styria.
Their operation is similar to Mr. Dunst's, because they don't feed the pigs much grain to fatten them up. Their goal is to produce pigs for meat, as cheaply as possible.
Like most farmers in Austria, they can't turn the pigs loose on their pastures, or they'd overgraze and destroy them. So they use their pasture to make hay and feed that to the pigs, along with whatever old bread or other food they can get cheaply.
 |
Because they are raising the pigs for meat, they don't have to be as fussy as Mr. Gasser or Mr. Wiesner about diet; they don't need to make special efforts to control polyunsaturated fat.
Even though they raise lean pigs (see the photo above), there is often extra fat left over after they sell the meat.
They raise rabbits too, so they make rabbit sausages by using rabbit meat and 50%-50% rabbit and Mangalitsa fat. The Mangalitsa fat gives the sausages excellent flavor and snap.
 |
Mrs. Faul also collects herbs, which she combines with Mangalitsa lard to make traditional balms. She gave us one that was a bit like Tiger Balm. The lard feels nice on the skin, because it melts immediately and feels light, not heavy and greasy.
Although the Fauls don't specialize in cured products, Mrs. Faul's air-cured shoulder and sausage, which she served us at breakfast, was absolutely delicious - much better than any product we'd ever bought in the USA.
Mr. Faul has built very nice structures to make it easy to manage the pigs. He has some very handsome straw-insulated houses and gate-like structures to allow him to sort the pigs. His community buildings for his pigs looked very nice, and had thick walls to keep the pigs warm. The photos above unfortunately make the structures appear smaller and less-impressive than they are.
After visiting the Faul's farm, we went to a butcher course where the instructor used a sow from the Faul family's farm.
More: