Eat Like a Hillbilly
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Nestled in the heart of Waxahachie, Texas, Hillbilly Nutrition is a first-generation family farm, raising heritage Red Wattle-Large Black breed pork and pastured eggs encouraging you to, well, eat like a hillbilly! Hillbilly Nutrition was founded by Tracy and Gary McCoy, a couple who loves food, cooking, and the outdoors.
Getting Into Farming
How did they get into farming, you ask?
Well, now that’s a story worth telling.
Coming from two very different lines of work, oil and gas consulting and real estate, food has always been the McCoys’ shared love language. Eating and cooking with ingredients from a box off a store shelf was never their idea of delicious and natural food. There were too many questions that the food industry seemed to have no answers for regarding health and wellness.
Tracy’s quest to find nourishing food that supports a healthful body and mind led her to the local farmers’ markets. The produce she found here was starkly different from what the couple was used to buying.
Shopping locally and learning about the community’s farmers and producers was both captivating and edifying. Understanding animal husbandry and sustainable farming from Texan farmers and ranchers opened up a whole new perspective on food sources for Tracy and Gary.
Therefore, the McCoys felt it natural to start up a local foods co-op in the community. Grass-fed beef, pastured pork, pastured chicken, eggs, raw dairy, kombucha, local honey, elderberry syrup, (how long does elderberry syrup last?) and a handful of other sustainably sourced foods became features of this fruitful co-op.
Transitioning From City Slicker to Hillbilly Farming
TexasRealFood: So how did this business translate into a full-fledged farm?
“Gary and I were always passionate about the outdoors. This desire to live away from the bustle of the city in a place where we could have more room to grow kept swelling. During the initial phase of starting the farm, we made a list of pros and cons. We still had to commute to our off-the-farm jobs, but we needed a place outside city limits. Country life meant we would see our closest friends and family less, but our hearts were calling us to more wide-open spaces. So when we found our little piece of paradise in Waxahachie, Texas, we knew she was the one.”
TexasRealFood: How smooth was this transition from co-op business people to farmers?
“With almost no family background in farming, the journey to cultivating a farm has been one of reading several books, listening to audiobooks, conducting online research, and having discussions with other farmers.”
“During our co-op days and before moving to the farm, we paid particular attention to the requests of our customers. As a result, we versed ourselves in what feeds the farmers used, how their animals were raised, what their living environments looked like, how often they were rotated and if they were on pasture. The co-op experience gave us the lessons we needed to run a farm.”
Today the Hillbilly Nutrition farm prides itself in humanely raising animals free of hormones, antibiotics, and vaccines. The pastures are free from GMOs, pesticides, and herbicides.
Why Should We Eat Like a Hillbilly?
“With their Southern roots, hillbillies are known for their humble, unrefined, and simple upbringing. When we looked to re-define what our definition of food was, we gravitated towards nutrient-dense, real, and simple ingredients that didn’t require much more than the food itself,” says Tracy.
“As Hillbilly Nutrition evolved, we realized that this simple approach to what we ate started with how our food was grown, raised, and processed. The reduced interference that took place in the fields and at the farm gave us the real ingredients we were looking for,” she adds.
The meat from their Red Wattle-Large Black crosses is renowned as some of the tastiest pork available in the restaurant industry. The flesh is tender, flavorful, and has a beautiful hue. The Hillbilly Nutrition pork is also hormone and antibiotic-free, as well as being free of nitrates and nitrites.
The pork is processed about 45 minutes from the farm and sold by the cut.
Furthermore, the South Pole and Angus beef at Hillbilly Nutrition is sourced from OutHome Farm, a veteran-owned and operated, small-scale farm and ranch in Freestone County, Texas. Their goal is to produce the healthiest, highest-quality beef they can while conserving the land for future generations.
Dry aged for 28 days, their beef is 100% grass-fed and finished. You can find OutHome farm beef here at the Hillbilly Nutrition online store.
Starting in 2020, the Hillbilly Nutrition Farm expanded into providing subscription boxes. Varying in size, their Family Boxes comprise ground beef, ground pork, sausages, breakfast meats, roasts, shoulder and ham steaks, chops, and pork belly (What wine goes well with pork belly?) .
Looking Ahead
TexasRealFood: What would you say are your major aspirations for the farm as we enter into a new year?
“Hillbilly Nutrition wants to expand its footprint and reach in the coming years. We would love to be able to own and operate our own custom butcher shop where we could cure our pork into delicious salamis and prosciutto. Our love of delicious pork began on our honeymoon trip to Italy where you could walk into a butcher's shop and see delicious meats curing in the back and even hanging from the ceiling. Someday we will have our own brick-and-mortar shop where we can serve cuts from our very own pigs across a counter as well as ship them to your front door."
We can't wait to see what's ahead for Hillbilly Nutrition! Let us know if you've had a chance to eat like a hillbilly in the comments below!
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