Livestock Legacy: Smith Poultry and Pigs
“Back in the day, we were all farmers,” Kyle Smith reminded us during a presentation at last year’s Northeast Organic Farmers Association Conference at Rutgers.
Fast forward 18 months and, if he gets any busier, Smith may have to change the name of his Williamstown farm from Smith Poultry to Smith Poultry and Pigs, because he’s carved another niche for himself with his free-range hogs.
After losing his job as an auto body specialist at a car dealership in 2007, Smith, 37, began raising free-range chickens for meat and, later, for eggs. Raised in Egg Harbor Township, he attended Atlantic County Community College for business administration and then the Cumberland Campus of Rowan College of South Jersey for agricultural business. After earning his degrees at both schools, Smith began working as a jet mechanic at New Castle Air National Guard Base in Delaware, about an hour west of his home and farm on rural Broadlane Road in Williamstown. His four-day, 40-hour work week allows him the off time to make runs with refrigerated pork to restaurants around Philadelphia and attend to his pigs, turkeys, and chickens. He recognizes that his work is a modern-day extension of a long legacy.
“Before refrigeration, the most important thing you could do is have a meat product or protein source available for winter,” Smith explains in his backyard on a mild sunny day, a stone’s throw from his heavily fenced pig pasture. His chickens and turkeys are also in back, in separate fenced pastures. The chickens even have their own ramp to a standard 40-foot truck trailer, so they can duck indoors at night or on cold days.
Smith’s fascination with hogs was inspired by his uncles in North and South Carolina, friends at Bringhurst Meats in Berlin, fellow erstwhile pig farmer Jessica Isbrecht and other young farmers involved with New Jersey Farm Bureau’s Young Farmers and Ag Professionals.
“My uncles down in the Carolinas raised pigs all their lives. I gravitated toward it. Now, having kids, I thought I would try to do it.”
“MY UNCLES DOWN IN THE CAROLINAS RAISED PIGS ALL THEIR LIVES. I GRAVITATED TOWARD IT. NOW, HAVING KIDS, I THOUGHT I WOULD TRY TO DO IT.”
Like many other smaller livestock farmers around the state, he yearns for a USDA-staffed processing facility nearby. Some pigs go to Pennsylvania or Delaware for processing cuts of pork, bacon and scrapple, while other whole pigs, once ordered by a customer, go to the Bringhurst Meats facility located 20 minutes from his farm.
Cows require a lot of land, he notes, but pigs are relatively inexpensive to raise, as they can be fed with pasture grass and alfalfa, table scraps, raw vegetables, and stale bread, among other things.
Smith took his first few pigs from Isbrecht’s Green Duchess Farm in Franklin Township, near New Brunswick, as she began to wind down her operations in 2015–16.
“Everything lined up. All the pieces came together because at this property that I bought, there had been a well-known Black pig farmer who lived right next door. After he passed, one of his hogs got out. I helped his relatives get the hog back onto his farm and it kind of grew on me from there.”
“The pigs I got from Jessica. I forget what I paid her, but part of the price was being mentored by her,” Smith says. He estimates he now raises 50 to 80 pigs on his six-acre farm. “Jess had all the information and she shared it with me. She really helped me out, so it was worth it.” He also credits John Lima at Lima Family Farms in Hillsborough for more guidance.
“These people knew what they were doing, and were years ahead of what I was doing.”
He also liked what his uncles and people at Bringhurst Meats showed him, how all parts of the pig can be used as food. He goes to see his uncles in North Carolina at least once a year and the trips always involve pig roasts. Now, he’s learned so much that he offers backyard pig roasts—two or three each month—as a value-added service from Smith Poultry.
“I have vivid memories from my childhood of meeting up with relatives in North and South Carolina, all the adults and kids having a lot of fun at these gatherings, which also included neighborhood people,” Smith recalls. “They’d smell the pig roasting and make their way over. It was and still is a great summertime activity.”
The Covid pandemic put a damper on his sales of pork to Philadelphia-area restaurants, but it also gave birth to a new opportunity: the chance to provide outdoor pig roasts for loyal and curious foodies.
Now, Smith’s patrons can purchase a pig at his farm, Bringhurst Meats does the basic processing, “and then I can cook it for them at a pig roast.”
He got a used cooker from Ricks BackYard BBQ in Mizpah, and his pig roasting sideline evolved from there.
Today, Smith Poultry offers whole chickens and turkeys, eggs, whole pigs, bacon, scrapple, and various pork products. Smith accepts product inquiries and orders through his website. You’ll find information about his pig roasts there, too.
