The Rebel Truth | Most Pork Is Broken. Berkshire Hogs Aren’t.

Our first guest on The Rebel Truth is Rick Wagen. Rick is a mentor, friend, and partner farm—and that’s the exact order our relationship has progressed with him and his wife, Carey.

Rick and Carey own and operate Flying W Ranch right here in Rockford, Michigan, where they farrow and raise Berkshire hogs on pasture—not in big barns.

And I’ll be honest… Rick is one of the people who first introduced us to regenerative farming.

I first met him the most “small-town Michigan” way possible: I kept driving past his farmstand on the way to my daughter’s school. One day I stopped. I was curious. We started buying honey, eggs, and meat from him. Then in 2020, when we decided to start farming, Rick became a huge resource for us—answering questions, sharing what worked, warning us what wouldn’t.

A couple years later, when Rebel needed a pork partner who aligned with our standards, that relationship turned into a partnership.

So when we launched The Rebel Truth, starting with Rick just made sense.

Who is Rick Wagen (and why did we start The Rebel Truth with him)?

Justin hosted this conversation with Rick, and right out of the gate he said what we’ve all been thinking:

“It’s probably your fault that I have a farm.”

Rick didn’t miss a beat:

“Yep, and I apologized for that once before.”

That’s Rick. Straight shooter. Practical. And quietly doing the hard, honest work that keeps real food alive in a world obsessed with cheap convenience.

Rick and Carey are both Army veterans (Rick served a little over 20 years, Carey served 25). And you’ll hear that “still serving” mindset all over this episode. A lot of regenerative farmers we respect are veterans—because the mission doesn’t end when the uniform comes off.

How do you go from the U.S. Army to raising Berkshire hogs on pasture?

Rick shared that the idea started during their transition years. Carey wanted “a lot of animals,” and Rick—being Rick—didn’t want “a bunch of pets.”

So he said, basically: “That means farm.”

Originally, they planned to raise pigs only in warm months—spring through fall—so they wouldn’t have animals overwintering in Michigan. That plan lasted… less than a year.

Rick sold a couple pigs to a farm-to-table restaurant, and part of the payment was more feeder pigs. They arrived at the end of August, and suddenly Rick had winter pigs.

Welcome to farming: where the plan is real until reality shows up.

Why Berkshire hogs instead of “regular” pork?

Rick didn’t pick Berkshires because it was trendy. He picked them because they’re simply a better pig for pasture and a better pork on the plate.

• Flavor wins. Rick said Berkshires consistently win taste tests because they have a different pH and fat-to-meat ratio.
• They’re built for the outdoors. Berkshires are a heritage breed, which means they’re more capable of thriving outside in real weather—Michigan winters included.
• The pig itself matters. Rick’s experimented with the idea of raising commercial “pink pigs” on pasture, but his belief is the breed difference still shows up in taste and quality.

Justin added what most people never see: industrial pork is designed for speed and output, not flavor, health, or resilience.

How long does it take to raise pasture-raised Berkshire pork?

Rick said they plan on about 210 days from birth to processing, adjusting as needed.

In a confinement system, pigs can be finished faster—around 5.5 months—because the entire model is engineered to reduce movement, control feed intake, and accelerate growth.

Rick described the “highly engineered” confinement setup: RFID tags, computerized feeding systems, and precision rations.

That might sound efficient. But it’s not resilient. And it sure as hell isn’t natural.

Why don’t you raise pigs in barns if it’s “easier”?

This was one of the most important parts of the conversation.

Rick said barns can seem easier—until you account for what they require:

• Concrete, pits, ventilation, and major infrastructure costs
• Manure storage and lagoon management
• Higher disease pressure from confinement
• Animals living on top of waste and breathing it in 24/7

Rick’s take was simple: he doesn’t want to live that way, and he doesn’t believe it’s healthy for the animals.

Justin put it bluntly: if you need a hazmat-style protocol to enter a facility, something is off.

Do pasture-raised pigs need fewer drugs and interventions?

Rick acknowledged they still deal with injuries and occasional illness—because animals are animals.

But the health pressure is different than confinement barns where one cough can spread fast through shoulder-to-shoulder animals.

Rick also shared they don’t push breeding the way industrial systems do. For example:

• They aim for 2 litters per sow per year (industrial systems often push for more).
• They wean at 28 days because they believe milk is the healthiest start for piglets.
• Industrial operations may wean as early as 9 days to get sows back into heat faster—often using hormonal tools to speed it up.

Rick said they tried a hormone product once—not to increase litters, but to sync breeding—and immediately decided: never again. It was a chore, risky for human exposure, and didn’t deliver the results.

His conclusion: Nature will do its deed.

Can you really visit Flying W Ranch and see the pigs?

Yes. And that’s the point.

Rick said people can come by anytime. You can even hold a day-old piglet if you want.

Justin nailed the contrast:

Try showing up at a CAFO and asking to tour. Security (or police) will show up real quick.

And there’s a reason for that—disease risk, yes, but also optics. If your system can’t survive daylight, maybe it shouldn’t be the system feeding the country.

What does food security have to do with small farms?

Rick brought up something we’ve been saying for years: consolidation creates fragility.

When you depend on mega processing plants and highly optimized supply chains, one disruption can break the whole system. Rick referenced what happened during COVID: once one part of the chain breaks, demand doesn’t disappear—supply does.

He also pointed out something “preppers” understand instinctively:

“Keep it walking.”

Meaning: when your food is alive and on pasture, you don’t need massive storage systems to survive.

But Rick also said something that should sober all of us up: the skills are disappearing. People don’t know how to cook. They don’t know how to raise food. They don’t know how to process food. And the more comfortable we get, the weaker and more dependent we become.

What are the biggest threats to America’s food supply?

Rick listed several, but one stood out:

Subsidies and artificially cheap food.

When cheap food is propped up through subsidies and synthetic inputs, consumers lose any connection to what food actually costs to raise. Meanwhile, the soil becomes dependent on more and more chemical inputs to maintain yields.

Rick said it plainly: the soil is going to break.

Justin added a perspective that blew Rick’s mind in real time: synthetic fertilizers have origins tied to wartime production. That doesn’t automatically make them evil—but it does raise a serious question:

What happens when we keep forcing short-term output at the expense of long-term soil health?

What does “regeneration” actually mean?

Rick explained it with a phrase I wish every American understood:

Turning dirt back into soil.

Dirt is what gets under your fingernails. Soil is alive—full of microbes, biology, and nutrient cycling.

In Rick’s words, when corporate agriculture depletes soil into dirt, the solution becomes: more synthetic fertilizer, more chemicals, more inputs. That creates diminishing returns, and eventually—dust bowl conditions.

Justin echoed this with what we’ve seen firsthand on our own land: when you rotate animals, build organic matter, and let biology recover, life comes back. Dung beetles show up. Pastures thicken. Moisture holds. Nutrition increases.

It’s not fast. It’s not easy. But it’s the right direction.

Can food be weaponized against a nation?

Rick’s answer: yes.

Not just intentionally—but unintentionally through consolidation, loss of skills, and centralization of processing.

If only a few entities control processing, distribution, and supply chains, any disruption—disease, policy, foreign ownership, or even lab-based “solutions” pushed as superior—can quickly become leverage over the population.

Rick said something worth sitting with:

If corporations get big enough and influence enough, control becomes easy.

Why keep doing this hard work after retirement?

Justin asked Rick one of the most human questions in the whole episode:

“Why are you getting up every morning, freezing your ass off, taking care of these animals, feeding people?”

Rick’s answer was simple and powerful:

• Because you need to do something worthwhile.
• Because feeding people good food matters.
• Because if you sit down, you’re going to die.

That’s the kind of mission-driven grit we respect deeply.

Why is it so hard for young people to become farmers?

This part matters for the future of American food.

Rick said the quiet truth: if they didn’t have pensions, they couldn’t have started Flying W Ranch.

Starting a farm is expensive. Land is expensive. Equipment is expensive. And the market expects “Meyer prices” for food—prices that often don’t reflect real costs.

Justin asked the question we all need to be asking:

Is that by design?

Whether intentional or not, the outcome is the same: fewer farms, more consolidation, less resilience.

What’s the one thing Rick wants you to remember?

Rick closed with a line that should be tattooed on the modern food system:

If you want to know you’re getting quality food, you need to know the guy raising it.

Not the label. Not the grocery store lighting. Not the marketing department.

Know your farmer. Look them in the eye. Ask questions. See the land. See the animals.

Because it’s hard to lie to someone when you have to live in the same community and look them in the eye.

Want to listen to the full episode?

If this conversation hit a nerve (in a good way), you’ll want to listen to the full interview with Rick Wagen of Flying W Ranch on The Rebel Truth.

Real talk. Real farming. Real food.

Thanks for giving a damn,
Jenni