Danu Hof Farm

“Tell me about your pork” is a loaded question to ask Caitlin McSweeney-Steffes of Danu Hof Farm. The real question is, how much do you want to know?

“For almost all of our cuts of pork I can tell you which pig it came from, what their favorite snack was,” says Caitlin. “Most people don’t need quite that level of information, but we love to talk about what we offer.”

And what they offer is pasture-raised pork with no hormones, no antibiotics and a whole lot of love. Practicing what they call farrow-to-finish with their heritage-breed pigs, the McSweeney-Steffes raise a mix of Berkshire and Tamworth pigs. By crossing their big red boar (who is a sweetie that would do anything for a marshmallow) and their Berkshire sows, they get piglets in red, black, white and a variety of stripes and spots. Known around the farm as “bacon seeds” these pigs spend eight months eating local grains, spent grain from Right Brain Brewery and apples from neighboring Flynn Orchards. This diet creates a meat with a different flavor profile than most associate with pork. While consumers are used to pork being white (due to big growers finishing their pigs on soy and corn), Danu Hof pork is red, looking almost like beef, and makes for a richer, tastier meat.

Danu Hof pork has popped up at restaurants like Terrain in Bellaire and the Bearded Dogg Lounge in Gaylord and has attracted quite a following at their farm store and markets. “People have been geeked that we are offering something like this in the area,” says Caitlin. “There aren’t a lot of pork sources around here that are local and fresh. And we’ve also found that people are looking for feeder pigs and piglets so we’ve been able to meet that need.”

Danu Hof was started in 2017 by Caitlin, her husband Lawrence (Larry) and their two sons. But the farm they purchased, just north of Mancelona, has a much longer history than that. The 160-acre property was put together in 1919 with a farm house built in 1920. Three barns complete the landscape with the big barn, a big Canadian-German style, dating back over 100 years.

“We named it Danu Hof to honor our heritage and the history of the farm,” explains Caitlin. “Danu is the Celtic Mother Goddess and the goddess of farming. The word Hof can mean farm in German, or if you trace it farther back to Norse, it means community farm, or farm for everybody. That’s really what we want our Danu Hof to be.

While neither grew up on a farm, Caitlin’s grandfather has a bicentennial farm in the Upper Peninsula and she was raised in a farming community. The two are both chefs and came to focus more and more on the ingredients they were using. As they planted in raised beds in their small yard in Traverse City, they began a five-year plan to acquire more space. But when they stumbled upon the Danu Hof property, they threw caution to the wind— purchasing the farm, moving and having a wedding all in a five-day period!

Larry explains it like this: “We wanted food freedom for ourselves and the community, to cultivate my own food, own my own land and experience true freedom.”

For now, they still work off-farm jobs— Larry at Shanty Creek and Caitlin at Café Santé—but keeping up with all the farm markets is a top priority. Over the summer they sold at markets in Gaylord, East Jordan, Mancelona and Bellaire. In addition, they have an on-site farm store at the corner of US-131 and Doerr Road, open all year, where they stock their pork and produce and products from other local farms as well.

As the season turns and markets move inside, you’ll find them at the Crooked Tree Arts Center Artisans & Farmers Market in Petoskey through the end of December, the Bellaire Winter Farmer & Artisan Market, and new to them this year, The Village at Grand Traverse Commons Farmers Market.

Caitlin is excited about the new addition. “Larry was born and raised in TC and I lived there for 12 years, so we’re excited to add this market. It’s one we always loved coming to when we lived in town. We feel confident we have the right product mix to succeed and it is a great place to have a full-time winter market to connect with people. It sounds like we’ll be the only pork vendor there and we’ll also offer eggs, produce, seasoning and spice mixes and some tinctures, salves and herbal remedies. Look for our sign and blue tablecloths.”

The main market advice Caitlin likes to share is to ask people not to get hung up on buzzwords. Organic, certified organic, pasture-raised, sustainable, natural, farm-raised and more may dominate the headlines, but the best way to know what you are eating is to ask the farmer.

“We feed these products to our families,” she says. “To me that counts as a good stamp of endorsement. When you take the time to get to know your farmer, we can answer all the questions you have. We all like to talk about our practices and how we raise our animals and crops.”