Haase’s hogs are built for the outdoors

By RICHARD SIEMERS

The Land Correspondent

BLUE EARTH, Minn. — While Scott Haase was growing up on a corn, soybean and hog farm outside of Blue Earth, Minn., the Mangalitsa (also Mangalitza or Mangalica) breed, once a popular lard hog in Europe, was on the verge of disappearing. Only 200 of the breed remained in Hungary. Thirty years later, Haase is raising this “comeback hog” on a homestead a mile and a half from where he grew up.

“I drove by this farm place every day growing up and never once considered the idea that I might live here,” Haase said.

He went off to college, earned degrees in manufacturing engineering and art, and after being employed at an orchard for a while, he and his brother, Brent, operated Haase Family Farm until they gradually took it over as 50/50 partners. They raise corn and soybeans on 1,400 acres.

Scott’s 10-acre homestead along the Blue Earth River is a separate venture which he calls Blue Dirt Farm. While he and his brother are incorporating some regenerative practices (they plant cover crops on about half of the farm), his focus on Blue Dirt Farm is regenerative agriculture.

“I wanted an agriculture that allows for independent decision making rather than following standard practice,” he said. While his college degrees were not related to agriculture, engineering and art may actually help in looking at an issue in non-conventional ways.

“When I moved here, I didn’t know what I wanted to raise,” he said. He started with chickens — the usual homestead animal — and later got some pigs. “Pigs were smaller and seemed a little less intimidating than cattle,” he said.

His learning process for a non-conventional approach involved much reading (especially by experts in grazing), attending informational events, meeting people and talking with others. One decision he had made was to raise a heritage breed of hog that would do well outside.

“Just in asking around through my network I got connected with Mark Peterson,” Haase said.

“Early on, he mentored me in the basics of keeping pigs as well as marketing and processing. To this day I continue to learn from him, and the piglets we purchase to grow and finish out at Blue Dirt Farm are nearly all born on his farm,” Haase wrote in a blog at his website.

Peterson was an early advocate of Mangalitsa, which was still a very new breed in the United States.

“I tried some pork chops he served me. They were delicious. I wasn’t aware at the time how much fat they have. I really liked the quality of the meat and of the fat. The fat has a buttery kind of consistency.”

The Mangalitsa breed fit Haase’s homestead style. They live in a wooded area, and are moved among paddocks, along with a selffeeder of grain to supplement their foraging.

He uses a single wire electric fence with high voltage for the perimeter. As long as they are kept happy with plenty of water, food, and space, they don’t challenge the fence.

“Under most conditions a single strand of electric poly braid at 8,000 volts is sufficient to keep the pigs right where you want them to be,” he said.

In the winter, the Mangalitsa grows a thick, wooly coat. That, along with a thick layer of fat, makes them well-adapted to Minnesota winters, living outdoors with only the shelter of the trees.

Haase said when the acorns are falling, it’s “a really special time. There’s a month or two I use very little feed.”

He is starting to raise some of his feed on the 100 acres of the family farm for which he has sole management. (Those acres are also the site of field research by a soil scientist at Minnesota State University-Mankato.)

The Blue Earth River can flood, so not all of his land is usable for the pigs. He has around 30 in the herd right now, and eventually he will move them off-site for a while so he can stockpile forage and get the grazing ground in good shape for the winter.

The piglets he gets are Mangalitsa-Berkshire cross, which gives them the “hybrid vigor,” a slightly faster growth rate, and a slightly higher meat-to-fat ratio. Through his website he sells them in whole pig, half pig, and a variety of cuts.

Hogs are not Haase’s only enterprise. He raises turkeys, also on pasture and woodland. This year he will have about 200 birds: Orlopp Bronze (his first year for these), Broad Breasted Bronze, and Broad Breasted White. He will use a U.S. Department of Agriculture approved processor for most of them, but will butcher pre-ordered fresh turkeys at Thanksgiving.

These days, cattle no longer look so intimidating either, not since he learned about virtual fencing. He has only two cow/calf pairs on his homestead. While visiting he pulled out his phone, checked on where