By Chris Aldridge

Kentucky Ag News

Russell Lindsey’s experience at a local grocery store during the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the Louisville auto worker to move to Breckinridge County and start his own hog farm.

“At the heart of COVID, I went to the grocery store, and they didn't have anything,” he said of the bare shelves in the meat department. “The only things they had were hot dogs and turkey lunch meat.

“One of their employees told me I could only buy two packages. That scared me and really pushed me. I always wanted to do this, but I decided right then, ‘I need to get my own farm.’”

In 2021, Lindsey bought a small 3-acre tract near Hardinsburg, Ky., and Hogg Azz Meats became a reality. “I wanted a name that was catchy to draw people's attention,” he noted.

The Kentucky Proud business sells everything from whole and half pigs to bacon, sausage, and pork cuts, such as his best seller, tomahawk pork chops. On weekends, you can find him at Louisville’s Derby Park Traders Circle Flea Market near the annual site of the Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs. His products can also be ordered online at hoggazzmeats.godaddysites.com. 

Although Lindsey grew up in Louisville, Kentucky’s largest city, he spent summers working on his uncle’s hog farm just across the Ohio River near New Albany, Indiana.

“I'm actually a third-generation pig farmer,” Lindsey said, noting his family is originally from Pickerington, Mississippi, before moving to the Louisville area. “In the early 1980s, I would go with my uncle when he took his hogs to the slaughterhouse in downtown Louisville.”

Lindsey tried the same route when his first crop of mixed American Yorkshire and Chester White hogs were ready for slaughter.

“I found out there's a whole different process now,” he said. “You just can't walk up to (that slaughterhouse) anymore.”

So, Lindsey takes his hogs west to what he calls “a great father-son operation,” Beef & Bacon Custom Processing in Calhoun, Ky.

Lindsey is committed to raising his pigs using sustainable farming practices that promote the health of his animals, his land, and his customers.

“They love to graze on freshly cut grass,” said Lindsey, who supplements his pigs’ diet with grain. “I have a neighbor who, whenever he gets a roll of hay, throws one over for them to snack on.”

Lindsey said he enjoys the process of raising pigs from birth.

“I’m having fun, actually,” Lindsey said. “The most pigs I have had was 35 last year. I’ve got 24 right now; 18 of them are piglets. My goal is to have around 50, maybe 25 (hogs) and 25 (piglets). I think I can manage that.

Lindsey, who commutes over an hour weekdays to his full-time job at Ford Motor Co.’s Kentucky Truck Plant in northeast Louisville, hopes to make farming his full-time profession in the near future.

“My plan is to retire in about five years, do this full-time, and grow this operation,” Lindsey said. “Pigs are my background, but I want to branch off to other things.

“People keep asking for chicken, but chicken eggs bring snakes. I'm afraid of snakes, so I'm gonna stick with pigs right now.”