- We heard that there is a farmer, Dave,
at Moto Perpetuo, that's raising pigs on cannabis leaves.
W-T-F. - What the (bleep).
- Why?
How?
Why?
How?
- What does this taste like?
- So, we're gonna visit the farm, in Oregon,
and then we're gonna head over
to Chef Vitaly's restaurant, Imperial.
And try these pigs.
(country music )
- So this is greenhouse two, of nine.
We have Power Wreck, this is Bubba Bomb,
from a dutch seed breeder, and then that's a
lavender on the back side there.
- The number one question on my
mind, and I'm sure like everybody's
mind, are these pigs getting high?
- [Dave] The answer to that is no, pigs
actually have a very similar cannabinoid
receptor system that humans do.
- In order for any minimal amount of THC that
would be in this part of the plant to even
be psychoactive, there's a process that
the THC would have to go through.
- Harvest wise as far as when we're
generating materials for the pigs,
there's two different stages, one;
these plants have been pruned several times
already, so if you just let the plant grow wild
this would be a really full canopy it would be
an insane bush there'd be a bunch
of lower levels, smaller flowers, so we
prune out a lot of that material
and that's what you saw us feed this morning.
Then we come in and we harvest and we cherry
pick the very best buds you know, down about
eight to ten inches depending on the varietal,
come back through, strip off all of the
usable material for processing.
So going to edibles, or vape pens.
All of the green material that's left at that
point is what goes to the pigs.
We also take the root balls out and that goes to pigs.
They love the root balls.
- How much of their diet ends up being
the leftover leaves and stalks?
- [Dave] I'd say by weight it's probably 20 to 25 percent.
- Wow, how old are these plants?
- Just a few months old.
You can grow a 14, 16 foot tall plant that's twelve feet
wide in a single season.
- So it actually does produce a ton of waste?
- Yeah, there's a lot of by product in it and for us we
found a way to use that, that benefits
both sides of the operation.
This is still cheaper even though there's labor
involved in this process.
A lot of that labor is relative to
creating a higher quality flower.
And then the tail end
labor feeding it to the pig is still cheaper than buying
commercial commodity grain.
Particularly because we would
only be sourcing organic or Non GMO grains, not your
standard cheap commodity stuff.
That's part of the reason we
use the pigs, is we don't compost this material and bring it
back into the system.
We're in a legally recreational
cannabis state, which allows us to do this, but it also
allows us to tell the bigger story of an integrated farm
system and how we believe about raising our animals and
producing our cannabis or producing our vegetables.
And that bigger story can be told
once people are intrigued by this
initial kinda novelty, right?
- Yeah.
- That's the story for me.
That, you know that integration.
That farming, that system that works uniquely in Oregon.
- I'm not a pot farmer, I'm a farmer.
And this is an active
and important part of a diverse agricultural system that
works for my scale operation, which is very small.
- All right fellas, I think we've got everything we need to
get here for the time being.
Let's head over to Imperial and maybe taste some of the.
- Yeah
- Weed piggy goodness.
New hashtag
- New hashtag.
- Yeah.
(guys laughing)
(country music)
- So we're here at Imperial.
- Chef Vitaly, thank you again for having us.
We're here with Chef Matthew.
- Hey.
- Thank you so much.
So Paly's place is the place where it really all
began for us, for me.
My wife and I opened that in '95.
Imperial is the second child in our family.
We opened it in 2012.
Matthew's been with us since the beginning.
He started with us as a cook, now he's the executive chef.
The very first time we did this, is about a year ago we did
an event with my buddy Brad Farmery from New York.
And we called it High on the Hog.
Then, not too long ago,
we did an event outside of Paley's place in the parking lot,
it was kind of a pot roast, if you will.
- Whoa.
(men laughing)
- Again, we we roasted her on a spit.
- We're gonna try this pig.
- Wow okay, see the color on that is amazing.
- We're gonna pull our pork secreto out of this guy.
And the secreto is a muscle that when an animal gets this
big it kind of, it distends, it gets large enough that you
can differentiate it from the other flat meat and has a lot
of really nice inner muscular fat, the flavor is really
good, and it cooks up nicely at medium.
You know, you don't have to
kinda hammer it like you have to do with the rest
of the pork.
- [Brent] Essentially the darker it is, the more
flavor?
But then also knowing
it's like 14 months old, which is over double
what a pig normally gets to grow to?
This is gonna be so good.
- [Ben] You can't really tell anything of
its diet right now, other than that it lived a really great
life, from the color of the meat.
It is really cool that
you're curing it.
The diet will probably present itself in a year from now.
- [Chef Vitaly] That's kinda what I'm hoping to see is when
you add thyme, a little bit of salt,
you know that's why when
you taste pigs from Spain the famous Pata Negra,
you actually do taste
that earthiness from the acorns
that they eat at the end of their lives,
or throughout their lives.
- [Brent] Yeah, how did you guys get
interested in serving the secreto because this is not
something that's like familiar on American menus.
This is a Portuguese, Spanish cut primarily.
- [Chef Vitaly] That is exactly the reason why we wanted to
do something totally different.
We wanted to introduce
people to a familiar, yet new cut.
Comes from the same piece
of meat that they've been eating forever except in a
different way.
- They have a beautiful cut.
Matthew, will you cook this for us?
- Please?
(rock guitar music)
- We thought would be kind of a cool way of bringing back an
old technique of planking, but planking on something that's
distinctly local, yet again bringing this,
like, farm to table thing even further.
It's full circle for us.
Put the plank into the fire, get it all smoky, pull it out
toss a piece of meat on it,
and keep on repeating the process.
There's a historical society here in Portland, literally
blocks away from here.
I went there digging through menus
that dated back to 1920's.
And there are menus that
literally state: planked and underneath
a whole bunch of different cuts that you can.
- [Brent] Huh.
- [Chef Vitaly] So when we were actually toying around
with this idea,I put scallops on here, I put muscles on
there, I put salmon on here,
I put you name it, I put it on here.
It was all really tasty, but it made sense to do it
with a nice piece of pork like this because it actually
takes enough time to develop the flavor.
- [Brent] It's really amazing to see like how
much thought is going into every process of this animals'
like life and what happens to it after its life.
- [Chef Vitaly] You know,
we gotta be able to tell that story
in a very light hearted but constructive fashion.
And it just makes me feel all fuzzy and warm inside really.
- [Ben] (laughing) I actually just forgot
that we were about to eat pork.
[Brent] Yeah.
[Chef Matthew] It almost smells beefy with all the smoke
that's on it, you know?
(rock guitar music)
- Get in there guys and then maybe try, try a little bit of
this romesco as well.
Just kinda swipe the romesco in there.
- [Brent] Oh yeah.
This is amazing how much flavor you're imparting through
that plank from that smoke and just little bit of seasoning
on the outside.
- Seriously this doesn't, really doesn't taste like pork.
- For me I would say that it doesn't really impart the
flavor of the cannabis or what we would, what we understand
that flavor to be.
What I do taste is a healthier animal.
It's juicier pork, it's, the texture is more resistant.
There's no like mushiness involved whatsoever.
- It's a better diet.
- No, no it doesn't taste like weed, thank God.
(men laughing)
But you're right, every animal is
healthier with salad in their diet.
Like that's just the way it is.
Pigs are no different.
Just a really really great cut cooked really really well.
- This is Oregon on a plate.
- Yeah, and in a glass.
Cheers, guys.
- Cheers.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you guys.
- Thank you chef, thank you chef.
To learn more about drugs, man,
- Yeah.
- Click here to check out a video from our friends at Vox.
- [Narrator] When you take LSD,
your brain looks something like this.
You can actually see a higher degree of connectivity.