Mac's Farms: Premium, Pasture-Raised Pork | Veteran-Owned

From Excelsior Springs, Missouri To Your Dinner Table.

Mac's Farms is what twenty years of military service can produce when the next chapter is a pig barn instead of another assignment. Joseph McDonald started Mac's in 2023 — fresh off retiring as a United States Marine — with his wife Rachel and a young son in tow. They raise two of the most prized heritage pork breeds in the world: Mangalitsa, the Hungarian breed chefs call "the Kobe of pork," and Berkshire, the classic English breed known for its dark, marbled meat. Every pig is born outdoors and raised outdoors. No antibiotics. No added hormones. No soy in the feed. This is pork the way pork was raised before industrial confinement became the default — and it tastes like it.

Mangalitsa + Berkshire Two of the most prized heritage pork breeds in the world

Farrow-to-Finish Born outdoors, raised outdoors — every day, no exceptions

Veteran-Founded Founded by a 20-year U.S. Marine Corps veteran

First-Generation Joe + Rachel McDonald · Excelsior Springs, MO ·Est. 2023

Veteran Owned. Family Raised.

Two Heritage Breeds. One First-Generation Family. The Pork Most People Have Never Tasted.

Most American pork comes from industrial breeds — Yorkshire, Landrace, hybrid lines bred for fast growth and lean, uniform meat. The result is the pale, dry "other white meat" most people think of as pork. Mac's raises two breeds that are categorically different. Mangalitsa is a Hungarian heritage breed often called "the Kobe of pork" — pigs with woolly, curly coats and meat so deeply marbled that chefs source it by name for charcuterie programs. Berkshire is the English heritage breed prized in Japan, where it's labeled Kurobuta and treated as the premium standard. Dark, marbled, deeply flavored meat. Mac's raises both.

Every pig on the farm is raised farrow-to-finish on Missouri pasture. "Farrow-to-finish" means the pigs are born outdoors and raised outdoors their entire lives — the strictest version of the pasture-raised claim. Most pork labeled "pasture-raised" only spends part of life outdoors; Mac's pigs never see the inside of a commercial confinement barn. They get pasture, sunlight, real soil, and a feed program with no soy, no antibiotics, and no added hormones. The animals grow at the pace their genetics intended — which is slower than industrial pork, and produces a fundamentally different product.

Joseph McDonald started Mac's Farms in 2023 — fresh off twenty years of service in the United States Marine Corps — with his wife Rachel and their young son. First-generation farmers, building the farm from the ground up, raising a child in the middle of the work. When you buy from Mac's, you're not supporting a roll-up of old farms. You're supporting a family that's actively building one — by hand, in real time, on Missouri pasture. The pork comes out exactly the way that kind of work produces.

Preparation & Cooking Guides

The Heritage Pork Rule

Heritage pork is not commodity pork — and cooking it like commodity pork wastes the entire reason you bought it. The USDA-recommended 145°F internal temperature is right; the 160°F your grandmother told you about is not. Mangalitsa and Berkshire have meaningfully more intramuscular fat than what's at the supermarket, which means the meat self-bastes during the cook and forgives a longer rest. Cook to medium (145°F at the center), rest 5 minutes, slice. The pink in the middle is correct, not a mistake.

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Sugar Cured Smoked Bacon Love - Mac's Farms

Bacon the Right Way

Heritage bacon has more fat than commodity bacon — which means high-heat searing wastes most of what makes it special. Start in a cold cast-iron pan. Turn the heat to medium. Let the fat render slowly for 8-10 minutes, flipping once. The strips should curl gently, not violently. Pull when the lean turns deeply mahogany and the edges crisp — usually 12-14 minutes total. Save the rendered fat. It's gold for eggs, vegetables, potatoes, vinaigrettes — anywhere you'd use butter.

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Maple Breakfast Sausage

Wake up to the rich, homegrown flavor of Maple Breakfast Sausage Links from Mac's Farms. Farmed with pride from 100% American pork, each 2-ounce link captures the perfect balance of savory and sweet. The subtle infusion of real maple elevates these sausages beyond the ordinary, giving every bite a touch of warmth and nostalgia that recalls mornings spent around a farmhouse kitchen.

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Mac's Farms Offerings

Pork Sausage

Member Price

$8.28 $13.57

Members save $5.29

Maple Breakfast Sausage Links

Member Price

$14.04 $20.96

Members save $6.92

Sugar Cured Shaved Ham

Member Price

$13.07 $19.50

Members save $6.43

Spiral Ham from Mac's Farms | Valor Provisions

Bone-in Spiral Cut Sugar Cured Ham - Whole

Member Price

$140.07 $209.06

Members save $68.99

Boneless Sugar Cured Ham - Half

Member Price

$111.76 $166.81

Members save $55.05

Thick-Cut Sugar Cured Smoked Bacon - Valor Provisions

Thick Cut Smoked Sugar Cured Smoked Bacon - 1 lb

Member Price

$13.47 $20.10

Members save $6.63

Mac's Farms Boneless Center Cut Pork Chops (2-Pack) - Valor Provisions

2 Pack - Bone-in Center Cut Pork Chops

Member Price

$13.32 $19.88

Members save $6.56

St. Louis Ribs

Member Price

$30.71 $45.84

Members save $15.13

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Frequently asked questions

Mac's Farms is in Excelsior Springs, Missouri — about 30 miles northeast of Kansas City. The farm was founded in 2023 by Joseph McDonald, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, and his wife Rachel. They run the operation together with their young son alongside them.

Joe McDonald — "Joey" — served twenty years in the United States Marine Corps. After retiring, he and his wife Rachel started Mac's Farms with what their website calls "a crazy idea to start raising pigs." They're first-generation farmers, building the operation from the ground up. The mission is straightforward: raise pork the right way, build a legacy of quality food for their family and community, and do honest work.

Both are heritage breeds — meaning they're traditional breeds raised the way pork was raised before industrial production specialized everything for fast growth. Mangalitsa is a Hungarian heritage breed with a distinctive curly, woolly coat and extraordinary intramuscular marbling. Chefs often call it "the Kobe of pork" — it's prized for charcuterie because the fat content and quality are categorically different
from commodity pork. Berkshire is the classic English heritage breed, known in Japan as Kurobuta where it's the premium pork standard. Dark, marbled, deeply flavored meat. Mac's raises both.

Farrow-to-finish means the pigs are born outdoors and raised outdoors their entire lives — from birth (farrowing) through finish weight. This is the strictest version of the pasture-raised pork claim. Most pork labeled "pasture-raised" only refers to a portion of the animal's life; many operations farrow indoors and only move pigs outside for the finishing period. At Mac's, every pig sees Missouri pasture from day one until processing.

Mac's pigs eat a feed program with no soy, no antibiotics, and no added hormones. (Note: hormones are federally prohibited in U.S. pork production, so the no-hormone claim is a legal baseline — the meaningful differentiators here are no soy and no antibiotics, both of which most commodity pork programs cannot match.) The pigs also forage on pasture, supplementing their feed with whatever they find — which is part of why heritage-breed pasture pork tastes so different from supermarket pork.

Three reasons. First, the breeds — Mangalitsa and Berkshire grow slower and produce less meat per pig than industrial breeds, so the cost per pound is fundamentally higher. Second, the production method — farrow-to-finish on pasture takes more land, more time, and more management than confinement-barn production. Third, the scale — a first-generation family farm doesn't get the per-unit cost benefits of industrial-scale operations. The result is meaningfully better pork at a price that reflects what it actually costs to produce it the right way.

Almost every chop, sausage, or bacon strip in a typical American grocery store comes from one of a handful of industrial production breeds — bred for fast growth and lean uniform meat to meet commodity industry specs. Mac's product is a fundamentally different category: heritage breeds with more marbling, deeper flavor, darker meat, and a fat that renders and tastes differently. The first time you cook a Mac's pork chop or Mac's bacon, you'll notice — it doesn't behave like commodity pork in the pan, and it doesn't taste like it on the plate.

In Kansas City and the surrounding area, you can find Mac's pork at KC Cattle Company's retail store in Weston, Missouri — KC Cattle is another Valor partner ranch, and Pat Montgomery (KC Cattle's founder and Valor's founder) carries Mac's pork because he believes in the product. Chefs at Green Dirt on Oak in Kansas City also serve Mac's pork on their menu. For everyone outside the Kansas City area, Valor Provisions is the way to get Mac's pork delivered.

Frozen, in insulated coolers with dry ice. 1-3 day handling and 1-3 day transit nationwide. Shipping is calculated at checkout. Because pork ships frozen and perishable, physical returns aren't accepted — but if anything arrives damaged, contact us within 30 days for a credit or reship.

Mac's is a partner ranch on the Valor Provisions marketplace. Joe and Rachel raise and finish the pigs in Excelsior Springs; Valor handles the marketplace, the membership economics, the editorial work, and the national distribution. Mac's is one of the newest farms on Valor — established in 2023 — and watching this family build their operation in real time is part of what makes the partnership distinctive. Same standards Joe holds in his own barn show up at the Valor cooler when the box arrives.