Nantucketers are Breeding American Guinea Hogs 

Over the last four years, Tobias Glidden has been breeding a rare and historic type of pig on Nantucket: the American Guinea Hog. They’re small, they’re gentle, they have black bristly fur — and they’re extremely productive at tilling soil and clearing land for farming and gardening. Their meat is also highly flavorful and notably nutritious. 

Eight of Tobias’s guinea hogs grazed a plot of land on his family’s property on a recent sunny afternoon, under the panels of a solar tracker that powers his home. Tobias, a fifth-generation Nantucketer, is the co-owner of ACK Smart Solar, the only solar panel installation company on the island. The pigs stayed cool under the shade of the solar tracker’s pedestal as they chowed down on vegetation, keeping it from growing up around the panels — playing their part in a practice known as agrivoltaics — when land is used for both agriculture and solar energy generation. 

But Tobias began breeding the pigs primarily as a hobby. His first litter of piglets was born in October 2023, and it was the first time pigs were born and bred on the island in the last 50 or so years, Tobias told me.

The American Guinea Hog is one of the oldest heritage breeds of domestic pig in the United States, dating back to the 1800s. They have excellent foraging skills, and thrive on a variety of plant material, grubs, and insects, using their flexible snouts to root and dig around for food. They help control pests, till compost, and garden soil. The Livestock Conservancy lists the pigs as threatened.  “We’re working on bringing back the breed,” Tobias said, adding that “they’re amazing at making mud. They just strip the ground clear.”

Which is great for creating land for gardens and farms. Tobias moves the pigs around every few weeks, and has them till soil and create areas for growing food. He hopes to someday partner with the Land Bank, and bring his pigs to their properties when they need help clearing invasive species for parks or farms.

“Things like knotweed have roots that go pretty deep,” said Jesse Bell, executive director of the Nantucket Land Bank. With invasive species removal, they want to limit their use of chemicals, especially in sensitive areas close to wetlands. “If we have the option of trying pigs first, we’re definitely open to that.”

Tobias’s pigs also help minimize the amount of food waste going into the trash, when community members, restaurants, and retailers come by to drop off scraps for them to eat. Back at Tobias’s property, a boar, sow, and six pigs wiggled their curly tails as we approached their pen. A neighbor came over with a bag of the week’s food waste, and tossed them scraps of broccoli, cabbage, and pomegranate. 

“Instead of stuff going to the dump to rot, that food is turned into meat, and more importantly, organic and grass-fed [meat],” Tobias said over the satisfied snorts of his pigs. “Plus, they bring a lot of joy and happiness.”

There’s no locally-raised meat sold wholesale on Nantucket. Prepackaged frozen chicken, beef, and sausage sold in stores is raised elsewhere and shipped from off-island. But the American Guinea Hogs being raised and bred on the island are changing that. 

Dylan Wallace, another native Nantucketer and the owner of Eat Fire Farm (and a childhood friend of Tobias’s), recently acquired American Guinea Hogs of his own. He and his wife Caroline thought what Tobias was doing was cool, and they were inspired to pick up piglets last year from a breeder outside of Athol (albeit two weeks before Caroline gave birth to their daughter). Their main goal with the pigs, in addition to helping them manage their land, is to bring local meat to Nantucket. In July, their pigs will be sent to a slaughter facility off-Island where they’ll be processed, packaged, and then shipped back to the island as pre-packaged pork. Caroline explained how there’s no licensed slaughter facility on Nantucket, so in order for locally-raised pigs to be sold wholesale on the island, they need to be shipped to the mainland for processing. 

“Our hope is to do sausage with our herb blend,” Caroline said, adding that Eat Fire Farm has a wholesale license for their farm products, and they hope to send their herb blends to be processed with the pork. Tobias, meanwhile, butchers his pigs on the island for himself and friends. He can’t sell the meat wholesale, but said he hopes to be able to someday.

While pigs can’t be processed for wholesale on Nantucket, smaller animals like chickens and rabbits can. For years, Dylan has tried to start a mobile poultry processing (MPP) unit, and he’s been awaiting approvals from the island’s health department. 

“The state has a program where you can have a mobile slaughter unit that’s exempt from Food and Drug Administration inspections if it’s under a certain amount of birds,” Dylan said. “Once we get through the permitting with the local health department, then we’d be able to sell locally raised and processed chicken. … It’s a dream of ours.” 

People will hopefully start seeing Dylan and Caroline’s locally raised pork on store shelves in the months ahead. “We’re working toward it. But we have a lot of logistics to work through, being the first time,” Caroline said. They hope to offer it at the farmers market, to specialty stores, and they might start a CSA. There are future plans to potentially breed one of their pigs with Tobias’s. It’s all part of an effort to build more self-sufficient food systems on Nantucket.

“With chickens and pigs, people don’t know where their food comes from anymore,” Dylan said. “I just think the more connected people could be with their food, the less meat they would probably eat, and the more selective they would be about it.”

“It’s an act of love more than anything,” Caroline said. “It’s expensive to raise these pigs and bring them off-island. It’s not so much of a money thing as it is wanting to bring local meat and doing it in a loving way.”  

Plus, the pork is delicious. Tobias shared one of his favorite ways to serve it:

“My go-to is to take a shoulder or a rump or any kind of cut of meat, 5 to 8 pounds, cover it with salt and pepper and ground fresh chiles. Put it in the oven at 230 degrees for 6 to 7 hours, or 7 to 8 hours. Fat will render out and you can eat it straight. Eat it with whatever vegetables you’d like. Pasta, rice, you name.”