About
HB Slakter
Know more about the farm that grows your food.
Natural, delicious pork doesn’t just happen.
Unfortunately, these days are long gone. At HB Slakter, we’re doing the best we can to return to the spirit of this close-knit community and food supply chain transparency. True, you may not be able to throw an apple to your pig on the farm, but you can learn about HB Slakter’s owners – who are the ones throwing apples, pears, watermelons and more healthy goodness to your pigs every day.
Jon comes from an education background, while Scott works in marketing. These two 40-something brother-in-laws and owners of HB Slakter both have Scandinavian farmers in their recent family trees and experienced the value, health and taste of traditional, small, family farm herd management and processing (the “Slakter” in HB Slakter is Norwegian for “Butcher”). Jon and Scott are married to farm-loving wives and have 8 children between the two families. These cousins share the responsibilities of managing the farm, feeding the chickens, moving the pigs from one wild forage spot to another, and helping with all the other chores that make small family farms work.
These brother-in-laws have a long standing passion for managing small herds of heritage pigs on wild pastures at the family farm and made it their hobby. This hobby produced some of the best tasting and most nutritious pork they could find anywhere and they proudly fed their families with it. Soon, this hobby began putting pork on the plates of neighbors, friends and other people “in-the-know.” Jon and Scott kept hearing compliments from their customers about HB Slakter pork – particularly about the taste difference they’d experienced and the overall enjoyment they had preparing these traditional, heritage pork cuts.
This led the brother-in-laws to start reaching out to local restaurants, markets and consumers who valued heritage breeds and traditional pasture raised pork. The HB Slakter name represents their mission; to place healthy, great-tasting, wild-foraged and pasture-raised pork produced on local, small-family farms into the freezers of families and restaurants around the midwest and across the country.
Location
The HB Slakter farm is located in Jefferson County, WI. While technically having an address of Watertown, WI – we’re much closer to the small agricultural community of Ixonia, WI where the green natural pastures and year-round creeks are as common as fireflies on a warm summer evening – or the children trying to catch them.
Ixonia, WI has been a great foundational location for HB Slakter’s pork. Here Jon and Scott have had a wealth of knowledge from the area’s farmers, all with years of experience raising traditional livestock and managing pastures, and full of wisdom and hard-earned lessons on how to manage a healthy herd of traditional, natural, heritage pigs.
The Farm
The land where the HB Slakter farm can be found has been in service and managing livestock for over 80 years. In the 30 years before HB Slakter took over, its pastures had been unused and overgrown – returning to natural, healthy, unmodified states complete with wild pears, apples, mulberry, raspberry and natural prairie grasses, clovers and more. They are all fed by a spring-fed marsh and creek which runs throughout the property. A small set of honey bee hives make sure all the wild flowers, fruits and more are pollinated as they should be. The fields and woods around the farm present a perfect set of natural, foraging-rich pastures and woodlands for our heritage pigs to roam, eat like the omnivores they are, and live out their days, happy as can be with their families and herd-mates, dipping in the natural wallows and napping in the pasture grasses to their heart’s content.
Our heritage pig breeds
HB Slakter has experience with many different heritage pig breeds but our herds are composed of 3 primary heritage breeds and the crosses within these breeds which produce a nutritious, mineral-rich, and fantastic tasting cut of pork.
We focus on Berkshire, Duroc and Hampshire for the quality of pork, the texture of the bite and the nutrition these breeds produce when given wild forage pastures like the HB Slakter’s farm offers.
Giving Back
HB Slakter offers classes and hands-on farm experiences to many students from urban school systems. The objective is to provide children an introduction to the sights, sounds and work that goes into the food they eat. Our goal is to help these future business people, educators, farmers and consumers have a greater understanding and appreciation for their food, as well as the benefits a healthy and natural process creates for them, their families, and their communities.
Natural, delicious pork doesn’t just happen.
Unfortunately, these days are long gone. At HB Slakter, we’re doing the best we can to return to the spirit of this close-knit community and food supply chain transparency. True, you may not be able to throw an apple to your pig on the farm, but you can learn about HB Slakter’s owners – who are the ones throwing apples, pears, watermelons and more healthy goodness to your pigs every day.
Jon comes from an education background, while Scott works in marketing. These two 40-something brother-in-laws and owners of HB Slakter both have Scandinavian farmers in their recent family trees and experienced the value, health and taste of traditional, small, family farm herd management and processing (the “Slakter” in HB Slakter is Norwegian for “Butcher”). Jon and Scott are married to farm-loving wives and have 8 children between the two families. These cousins share the responsibilities of managing the farm, feeding the chickens, moving the pigs from one wild forage spot to another, and helping with all the other chores that make small family farms work.
These brother-in-laws have a long standing passion for managing small herds of heritage pigs on wild pastures at the family farm and made it their hobby. This hobby produced some of the best tasting and most nutritious pork they could find anywhere and they proudly fed their families with it. Soon, this hobby began putting pork on the plates of neighbors, friends and other people “in-the-know.” Jon and Scott kept hearing compliments from their customers about HB Slakter pork – particularly about the taste difference they’d experienced and the overall enjoyment they had preparing these traditional, heritage pork cuts.
This led the brother-in-laws to start reaching out to local restaurants, markets and consumers who valued heritage breeds and traditional pasture raised pork. The HB Slakter name represents their mission; to place healthy, great-tasting, wild-foraged and pasture-raised pork produced on local, small-family farms into the freezers of families and restaurants around the midwest and across the country.
Location
The HB Slakter farm is located in Jefferson County, WI. While technically having an address of Watertown, WI – we’re much closer to the small agricultural community of Ixonia, WI where the green natural pastures and year-round creeks are as common as fireflies on a warm summer evening – or the children trying to catch them.
Ixonia, WI has been a great foundational location for HB Slakter’s pork. Here Jon and Scott have had a wealth of knowledge from the area’s farmers, all with years of experience raising traditional livestock and managing pastures, and full of wisdom and hard-earned lessons on how to manage a healthy herd of traditional, natural, heritage pigs.
The Farm
The land where the HB Slakter farm can be found has been in service and managing livestock for over 80 years. In the 30 years before HB Slakter took over, its pastures had been unused and overgrown – returning to natural, healthy, unmodified states complete with wild pears, apples, mulberry, raspberry and natural prairie grasses, clovers and more. They are all fed by a spring-fed marsh and creek which runs throughout the property. A small set of honey bee hives make sure all the wild flowers, fruits and more are pollinated as they should be. The fields and woods around the farm present a perfect set of natural, foraging-rich pastures and woodlands for our heritage pigs to roam, eat like the omnivores they are, and live out their days, happy as can be with their families and herd-mates, dipping in the natural wallows and napping in the pasture grasses to their heart’s content.
Our heritage pig breeds
HB Slakter has experience with many different heritage pig breeds but our herds are composed of 3 primary heritage breeds and the crosses within these breeds which produce a nutritious, mineral-rich, and fantastic tasting cut of pork.
We focus on Berkshire, Duroc and Hampshire for the quality of pork, the texture of the bite and the nutrition these breeds produce when given wild forage pastures like the HB Slakter’s farm offers.
Giving Back
HB Slakter offers classes and hands-on farm experiences to many students from urban school systems. The objective is to provide children an introduction to the sights, sounds and work that goes into the food they eat. Our goal is to help these future business people, educators, farmers and consumers have a greater understanding and appreciation for their food, as well as the benefits a healthy and natural process creates for them, their families, and their communities.
