T-burg farmer launches new, packaged meat line

With a pig farm and a farm-to-table food operation on his plate, Devon Van Noble of Van Noble Farm is now adding another tenet to his business: retail products. With the recent launch of a small batch, smoked and cured pork line, he said he’s adding on to his existing hot, prepared food and venturing into the packaged goods industry.

Bacon, pulled pork, pate, smoked pork, pork loin and bacon ends are now available for order on his website and can be picked up on the farm in Trumansburg or at Ithaca’s Press Bay Alley Food Hub. All the products are made with Van Noble’s pigs, which are raised and butchered on-site.

The new line is the next step for Van Noble in his quest to make the small farm into a long-term, profitable endeavor — a notoriously hard thing to do.

“We’re trying to find winter work for ourselves and our staff and have a less perishable way to deal with our product,” Van Noble said. “We’re trying to find a way to make our revenue more consistent and make our product more available.”

Van Noble has been raising pigs in Trumansburg for the last few years and more recently began using them to supply his catering and pop-up food business. Last year, he and his large, metal smoker were a staple at the Ithaca Farmers Market, serving up pulled pork sandwiches to the masses.

This year, he’s been hosting drive-thru barbecues at the farm while working on the packaged goods line, with the last one scheduled to happen this Saturday, Oct. 10.

“It’s really difficult to make money off hot food,” Van Noble said. “You have all this waste after events, and we can’t use it. We’re not a restaurant. We’re not serving food every day.”

Van Noble said that the idea for a retail line has been in the back of his mind for some time but that events in March pushed him to finally move ahead with it. At about the same time that COVID hit the U.S. and meat shortages sent shoppers into a panic, there was a smoke accident in his kitchen that rendered it unusable for months.

“The timing was OK because we renovated it and put new floors and ceilings in. And at the same time, I was able to secure a loan from the COVID disaster funds,” Van Noble said. “I was able to get a bunch of new kitchen equipment and used it as an opportunity to switch gears quickly.”

Kitchen upgrades allowed the retail line to go from an idea to a reality and included a new vacuum sealer, a new convection oven and an indoor electric smoker.

Van Noble has switched gears a few times over the years to get to this point. The Florida native originally came to Ithaca as an undergrad at Cornell University in an agricultural policy degree program and dreamed of being involved in environmental issues on a big scale to help him “save the world.”

“Early on, that’s what I wanted to do, but closer to the end, I recognized what was really important about the future of our planet,” Van Noble said. “I knew that working in a small community and working on a much smaller scale was what I wanted to do.”

In 2011, he got a part-time job with Groundswell Center for Local Food and Farming — an organization that strives to build a more diverse, equitable food system — and enrolled in the Sustainable Farming Certificate Program.

In 2012, he secured a part-time job tending to pigs for The Piggery. He said he quickly realized his passion for livestock farming and soaked up as much knowledge as he could from the team at The Piggery. Not long after, the owners fronted him a group of sows to start his own pig farm and offered him a contract to buy all the pigs he could raise.

“Over the years, they wanted to grow their business and their butcher shop and needed more pigs, so they offered me a contract to do my own thing,” Van Noble said. “And that’s when I switched over to working on my own farm.”

When the contract ended a few years later, Van Noble started the prepared food business. Not a trained chef, he said he began by learning how smokers worked, perfecting his barbecue and doing lots and lots of pig roasts.

He said friend Carolina Osorio Gil had a big part in helping him develop his menu and showed him the signature chimichurri and quick pickles he uses today. Eventually, he began catering weddings and joined the Ithaca Farmers Market as a food vendor.

Former co-owner of The Piggery Brad Marshall helped Van Noble develop the recipes and get approval from the state for the new packaged products, and Van Noble does most of the butchering and processing himself.

Van Noble said he’s most excited for consumers to try the pulled pork and smoked pork, which are both cooked, ready-to-eat products. Van Noble said that pork raised in a happy environment just tastes better.

“The flavor comes from somebody who’s cared about the animal’s life from when it was born up until the point when it’s served to you,” Van Noble said. “It’s a small farm serving small batches of processed meats; you won’t get that quality of flavor from a large-scale operation.”

Van Noble said he’s planning to rent the commercial kitchen out to other meat producers and has already let both a chicken and a lamb farmer do some processing.

Van Noble’s passion for helping others in the local farm community runs deep. He’s currently working with Groundswell as an adviser to a program funded by a USDA grant to expand the existing “beginning farmer trainings.” Mentor farmers, including himself, will teach participants the basics of farming and how to make a living doing it.

“Now, more than anything, I really want to extend all this and share it with other people,” Van Noble said. “I’m really excited about the future of sharing this lifestyle with other farmers who potentially want to start their operations and create more community here than I’ve got.”

An official announcement is set to go out later this month, but Van Noble said the program will be seeking four to six participants interested in farming. The program will offer an immersive experience and target people of color in the Tompkins County area who want to learn about getting into the industry.

Order packaged meat products from Van Noble Farm at vannoblefarm.com.