With his bucket loader packed with pails of animal feed, Trillium Meadows farmer Hans Lindenmann slowly navigates the steep hills and sharp turns of the snowy pathway that lead to his herds of red wattle pigs and European red deer.
It’s a piercingly sunny and bitingly cold February morning – -20C with the wind chill – and he has to knock on the pigs’ shelters to get them to venture outside for breakfast.
“The deer are fine outside all the time in this cold,” Lindenmann says. “The pigs need some encouragement to come out.”
As he cleans out their concrete feed-troughs with a shovel, the massive, shiny red-coated hogs with their wiggly wattles, or tassels, dangling from their jowls soon appear.
They’re spurred to put a bit of porcine pep in the step of their cloven hooves: Lindenmann is dumping buckets of fresh produce – heads of lettuce and other greens, peppers, apples – on the ground in their enclosure.
They scramble to munch the same food we eat: it’s a cool connection.
“I go to Ark’s Harvest in Vankleek Hill to get some of their food,” he says.
The non-profit venture and store, with locations in Hawkesbury and Cornwall, is dedicated to food security and sustainability through their food-share program.
It’s a philosophy that Trillium Meadows espouses: Lindenmann collects leftover produce that is past its prime for us but which the pigs devour greedily.
His regular trips to the store are part of Trillium’s sustainable farming and form a closed-loop food system that reduces waste.
Lindenmann grows hay elsewhere and purchases grains from local farms – Trillium Meadows is too hilly for successfully growing other crops – which he grinds for his livestock on-farm.
From Switzerland to Vankleek Hill
Hans and Marianne Lindenmann came from Switzerland in 1998 and bought the 100 acres that is Trillium Meadows. It’s just the two of them and their son who work the farm.
In Switzerland, Lindemann was sort of forest ranger-manager and was involved with hunting, so he knows big game and forests very well.
“When I saw I saw the deer farm here, I decided I try to buy it. It took a year to get all the permits, and we did some upgrades.”
Until a couple of years ago, Trillium Meadows raised wild boar, but across the province there was a backlash when the creatures would escape farms and do damage.
The province subsequently banned raising them.
Citing that the problem was mainly in Quebec, Lindemann says his stock was always contained, but the province would have none of it. He switched to heritage pigs.
“I would have continued with wild boar because I had a huge clientele. People really liked the meat,” he says.
He and Marianne searched for a unique breed, first giving consideration to the woolly Hungarian Mangalica before settling on red wattles.
“There were four heritage vendors at one market, but nobody had red wattle,” Lindenmann says of the breed, the males of which can reach over 300 kgs.
Over his two decades in the business he’s also had to teach butchers how to make the cuts.
“I had to teach them how to separate the muscles because there are tender muscles and there are tough ones, and you don’t want them on the same steak. Now I have really good relationships with the butchers.”
Knowing where your food comes from
The rich red-wattle meat is a fattier pork than commodity pork – and that means more flavour, according to Lindenmann.
“The difference from factory pork and heritage pork is huge in flavour and in structure and when you cook it. There’s not so much water in it.”
He adds that the farm has a significant customer base in Vankleek Hill, and that people are serious about wanting to support local producers and want to know where their food is coming from.
“The farmers’ markets are great for that,” he says. “Each week, we talk to customers and answer their questions. They like that.”
But raising the heritage breed – their origin is uncertain, but they’ve been in North America since the 1800s – also means added cost to the consumer: commodity pork goes to market in less than a year, while Trillium Meadows’ pork can take up to 14 months.
“That’s a lot of feed and care,” Lindenmann says, adding that his pigs are not fed commercial feed that accelerates their growth. “They grow slow.”
The European red deer is an extremely lean meat, with no marbling and only five per cent fat.
“The meat is high in protein, minerals and vitamins. If you have health concerns with red meat, then deer is for you,” he says (though he’s not offering medical advice, of course).
The deer – about 200 of them – are in the fields all year with a primary diet of grass supplemented with barley, corn and hay silage.
Natural farming
Depending on the season, the Lindenmanns sell ground meat and a variety of cuts like ham, shoulder bacon, pepperettes, sausages – spicy garlic and mild-smoked – and cold cuts.
They sell a specialty BBQ box of combined deer and red-wattle cuts, as well as a dozen individual deer cuts and 14 red-wattle cuts. Their deer antlers are also very popular for dog treats.
You can find Trillium at the Vankleek Hill Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings and the Ottawa Farmers’ Market on Sunday mornings. You can buy products at the farm but by appointment only.
Before Covid-19, Trillium Meadows was served in five Ottawa restaurants; currently they supply product to Black Tartan Kitchen, Prohibition Public House and Little Mac’s.
As we sit in the tractor, we have an elevated view of the stands of hardwood on the undulating hills: the snowy scene is pocked with deer hoof-prints – with coyote tracks nearby.
“What we do here is natural farming, or as close to natural farming as it can be,” Lindemann says of the frosty idyllic scene.
“We try to do what nature does.”
Food writer Andrew Coppolino lives in Rockland. He is the author of “Farm to Table” and co-author of “Cooking with Shakespeare.” Follow him on Instagram @andrewcoppolino.
