57: Unlocking the Secrets of Lard for Skincare with Charles Mayfield

Primal Shift Podcast 57: Unlocking the Secrets of Lard for Skincare with Charles Mayfield.

Charles Mayfield: Gosh, for starters, pigs and humans share quite a bit of biology. 

Michael Kummer: What are we looking at in terms of, from a consumer perspective, you know, if I want to buy, you know, good pork, you know, what does that mean? What do I need to look for? 

Charles Mayfield: Now that I've seen your property, we could maybe get away with one pig and, you know, letting it glean off of the, uh, other animals you have here.

Right. From a skin care perspective. What's so special about lard? And I come in and cover up with the stuff and, you know, it was, it blew my mind. I mean, you know, I laid it on really thick and in a matter of minutes, like it, my skin literally ate it. Like it was 

Michael Kummer: It's because those animals are raised in a way that are, how they're not supposed to be raised.

They are sick, really. You know, they are slaughtering sick animals at the end of the day, metabolically unhealthy animals, and you're eating them. It's a marvel. I mean, the Cornish Cross is a marvel...

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Michael Kummer: All right, Charles. Hey, uh, thanks for, for making the time, actually making the time and the trip down here. to talk to me today about, uh, all things, uh, pigs, pork, and lard, 

Charles Mayfield: right? Pleasure to be here.

Yes, I will, I will talk pigs and lard anytime. 

Michael Kummer: Very good. And, uh, what, what most people, you know, don't know, usually when I, we have an interview, I'd have an interview, you know, people are somewhere in the world, usually in the U. S., but at least somewhere offsite. Uh, today you're actually right here in our home, unfortunately not right next to me because my setup doesn't allow it, but you're in the next room.

So, um, very exciting. And the first time. I think I'm, I'm having this set up. So, why would people care about lard? You know, what's so special about lard? Both from a, I guess, nutritional perspective, as well as from a skincare perspective, because you have a skincare company. That makes products out of lard, 

Charles Mayfield: right?

That's true. And, uh, well, let me start by saying you have a beautiful home. 

Michael Kummer: Thank 

Charles Mayfield: you. And, uh, I can't wait to talk you into getting some pigs in the backyard. 

Michael Kummer: Uh, we'll definitely. In this backyard, I'm not sure. On a new property, um, we'll definitely, I'll have you down to walk me, 

Charles Mayfield: uh, through the process for sure.

Happy to do that. Excited for you guys and, and, and the, uh, potential there. That'll be great. So yeah, I mean, why pigs? Uh, gosh, for starters, pigs and humans share quite a bit of biology. And so, uh, if you raise a healthy, happy pig, then they're, uh, I think their meat is quite nutritious for us. Their fat is certainly, uh, nutritious, both from a, culinary cooking perspective, but also from a skincare perspective, I would say, um, well, that lard is apparently the most similar, uh, exogenous substance on the planet to human sebum.

And, uh, and they're just, they're just fun animals. Again, it's, it's one animal you don't have in your current, uh, farming setup, but they're gregarious, they're omnivores. So everything's a potential meal. So they've got a lot of curiosity about them. They're highly intelligent, which I think is an asset for, for a domestic animal is, is intelligence.

And so you can lean into that. And they're, you know, from a, from an agricultural, uh, animal impact standpoint, they're willing, they're willing to do things and in places that, uh, your typical herbivore ruminant animal is not capable of doing. And so in terms of like, yeah, well, rooting, I mean, pigs are, pigs are designed to dig with their noses.

And so, uh, You know, if you give them an environment and an opportunity to do that, they're going to, they're going to be happy to do it. And, and I call them four wheel drive rototillers, you know, they're, they, they will turn soil, uh, in a heartbeat. And so that's a very valuable asset. You've got chickens here.

So chickens are another monogastric omnivore. and, uh, and, and, you know, if you leave chickens anywhere for too long, you get a moonscape. The same thing is applies to pigs, and so you gotta, gotta move them around, you gotta feed them properly. We were talking before we got online about, you know, high or low PUFA diets and various things, and that's That's, that's one of the aspects of a pig that is, I think you, obviously unique is in an industrial or even a, a, a scaled setting.

You, you've got to feed them. Uh, you know, we could, uh, now that I've seen your property, we could maybe get away with one pig and, you know, letting it glean off of, off of the, uh, other animals you have here. Right. But it would take that pig a very long time to. you know, build out and mature. So, yeah, 

Michael Kummer: yeah. So you, you mentioned before, you currently don't raise pigs anymore, but you used to, right?

I did. 

Charles Mayfield: So, uh, so I have, I had three jobs, um, my, my day job, I work in commercial insurance and, and, and most of my focus ironically is in the food, food service, food manufacturing space. It's something I'm very passionate about. And so I, I bring. that passion to, um, you know, to the needs of, you know, a business.

That is trying to grow and has to protect itself and you know, most businesses require insurance And so it allows me to be an asset and a resource for them I was farming for about seven years and I had a very Slightly scaled higher than what you have here, but not much higher. I had a real micro Polyface model is really if you're familiar with polyface farms in Virginia So I, I had a, um, a scaled down version of Polyface.

We were raising beef, pork, chicken. Uh, we did a batch of turkeys every fall, uh, and was raising those for about, I think it may be at the height. I had about 45 or 50 customers spread out between Atlanta, uh, and Chattanooga and, and, and my hometown in Athens, Tennessee. And so did that for about seven years, uh, and had one year, we launched Faro in January of 2022.

Okay. And, uh, and, and so that year was the only year where I farmed, I farrowed and I day job. And it was like, man, something's got to give. And unfortunately, uh, one of the reasons, one of the reasons that we, I launched the company was to highlight The benefits of raising a pastured pig. And so fortunately, there are other farmers, uh, in the southeast that, that raise pigs at a standard, uh, for animals and, and the land that meets my personal criteria.

And so I was able to offload the, uh, day to day of raising the animals, uh, myself, I miss them. Uh, pigs are fantastic and there's nothing quite as, uh, rewarding as, as consuming your own bacon. Uh, but, um, but yeah, so we, we, I shut the farm down and started shutting it down and sort of the last nail in the coffin in December of 2023.

Oh, I was raising. Excuse me. December of 2022, we launched We launched earlier that year. And so, uh, I, I look forward to farming again. It, it, it, it will come when, um, uh, I have the capacity to hire a few people to help me. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah. Yeah. That's really one of the things we've noticed, you know, between, you know, my wife is a, you know, stay home mom.

She, you know, homeschools the kids and, you know, I have a day job, you know, I'm not a, you know, homesteader or a farmer, you know, by, by trading, who doesn't pay the bills. But it's, it's, it's fun. But it takes a lot of time, you know, and, and sometimes, you know, priorities collide, you know, between, you know, having to You know, earn money and doing what I really like doing, you know, being outside and building a new chicken tractor, you know?

Charles Mayfield: Yes. Yeah. Well, I'm, you know, I'm hopeful that Pharaoh gives me the opportunity to sort of meld those two things together, you know, create a, uh, a reasonable business, uh, around, uh, pastured pork and, um, and just raising, you know, healthy, happy. And so we'll see how it goes. But I, you know, I tell people that, that one, cause I, a lot of the interviews I ended up doing are around regenerative agriculture and, and, and, and meat production.

And I tell people, it's not a lot of work every day, but it is work every single day. And so I applaud you and your wife for, you know, I, you know, for those that do raise animals every day away from the farm, it's a, there's an added layer of, organization and, and reliance on other human beings to make sure everything stays.

Michael Kummer: What is the big difference in terms of, you know, both for men, how are pigs raised traditionally in the conventional food system and how, you know, then I think that's, that's one of the extremes, I guess the worst type of extreme, right? And then there is the regenerative way. And then there is probably something in the middle.

Charles Mayfield: Sure. Yeah. Right. 

Michael Kummer: What are we looking at in terms of, from a consumer perspective? You know, if I want to buy, you know, good pork, you know, what does it mean? What do I need to look for? And what are the difference from a health animal welfare perspective, as well as from a, you know, from our health perspective, by consuming the meat of an animal that might've not been, you know, raised well, and I think.

You alluded to it, you know, already, but, you know, monogastric animals, uh, slightly less forgiving because they literally are what they eat much like humans, right? In comparison to a, you know, a cow, you know, having cow on, on, on grain for the rest of, you know, for the last few months of the, uh, of its life is probably less of an issue from a nutritional perspective than, you know, a pig that was fed grains.

or life, right? Yeah. You, 

Charles Mayfield: you and Anthony Gustin talked about this quite, quite a bit. Um, I don't know. When was that interview? Maybe last year? That was a couple of months ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great interview, by the way. Um, yeah, that's one of the challenges I, you know, and from a skincare perspective, I think that's arguably the biggest reason why you see predominantly, I mean, we're the only lard game in town when it comes to skincare.

Uh, most of the other animal fat based products use tallow, which I. Uh, I'm pro tallow. We use it in our products. Um, I say that the swine is defined, but the lard is hard. And so what we're talking about here is, is yes, how does a monogastric omnivore metabolize it's, it's environment and it's, and it's a food, right?

I, I like to separate those two, even though they're part of the same puzzle. But, uh, but I, I think one of the disingenuous aspects of sort of industrial food at large is we, We've focused too much on the diet of an animal and too little on the environment of an animal. And so, Yeah, so one of the challenges with monogastric omnivores, humans are monogastric omnivores as well, is One of the challenges is dietary and the other one is lifestyle.

Yeah, and it and You have to provide, I mean, in my world, I say a pig or a chicken for that matter, but a pig for sure deserves a one bad day and right. And that's the last one. That's right. And, and I got to tell you, Michael, um, so I'm giving a talk at hack your health on sort of pigs and lard and you know, the history there, and it has been.

A real adventure for me in doing the research for this talk. So you brought up like, what does historical pig raising look like? And I will tell you, even today, it is a far, far cry from what pig raising was. even 200 years ago, right? And, you know, interestingly enough, pigs, you know, earliest records of domestication look to be about 13, 000 years ago.

Uh, so we've, we've had a relationship domestically with pigs for, for quite some time. Uh, but man, you, you rewind the clock, uh, just a handful of years ago, even, even near the founding of this country and the, even the pre and post first contact with Columbus. So pigs are not native to the United States, to the Americas.

Which is kind of cool, right? So you've got North and South America really represent like a, a micro, uh, experiment in, in, in pig, uh, success. You know, earliest pigs were here in like 1493. It was the second voyage. And then De Soto later in the early 1500s dropped some pigs off in Tampa, Florida. What is Tampa today?

Um, But up until, gosh, up until 150 years ago, there were no fences, like pig, pigs just roam free. Uh, now you, you know, you, you trade them. Again, this gets into the intelligence of a pig. It's, it's, it's not a similar or dissimilar from our relationship with dogs. You know, we have a, a lot of humans have a co evolutionary relationship with dogs.

Canine species that goes back a long time. And so if you lean into the intelligence of a pig, uh, I would say the biggest difference today versus, you know, a couple hundred years ago is there are no fences. A couple hundred years ago, we weren't raising nearly as many. pigs, you know, 200 years ago as we're raising today.

Um, you know, a couple of hundred years ago we had no, no grocery stores, no, no gas stations, lots of things we didn't have. But I will tell you this, the pig has from a food sourcing standpoint has been a primary source of, of protein for humans for a very long time. And one of the reasons being And you are, you know, this, it takes a couple years to fully mature, say beef a cow.

Um, you have to, you have to hunt deer and elk. You know, Elk's a huge animal. Deer deer's smaller. But when you, when you decide to kill, uh, uh, an animal, right? You have to be able to, to hang that animal up and eviscerate it and, and, and eat it, you know, pre refrigeration. Mm-hmm. . Which, which we've only had for about 120 years, uh, pre refrigeration.

You, you had to do, you had to salt and cure. Or consume that animal relatively quickly. Yeah. And so unless you killed it in the winter, mo most of the animals, most of the animals that we slaughtered as a, you know, as a, if it's 1850, you know, in the United States of America, um, you know, from November through March.

Most of your animals were killed because you could hang them outside, and they wouldn't spoil, so it gave you, it gave you some margin and some room to salt it, or, you know, create the sausages and various things that have a longer shelf life, and so that's That's probably the biggest impact and difference between what we see today versus what you would have seen, you know, a hundred years ago, even.

Michael Kummer: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so, no fences really meant they could, you know, find food anywhere. They could, they probably had a much more diverse diet than being penned in, you know, and only getting what we feed them. Right. 

Charles Mayfield: Yep. Well, I mean if you think about how a dog works today, you know, if you if you live I mean you live in a rural area of Atlanta, but but You know, you've got, I don't know, what, five or six acres here, you know, rewind the clock a couple hundred years.

Um, exactly one acre and a quarter. Yeah. Okay. Well, so, but you know, let's just say you had your little farmstead, you know, a hundred years ago. So you might have a barn and you've probably got some fencing, but one of the primary uses pigs, uh, played in. Uh, older agriculture is a gleaning field. So you've got your corn field or your garden or various things.

And you know, you go through and you harvest, they go through and clean the field up. And of course, again, one of the advantages of having a monogastric omnivore is any scraps from the table, anything that's typically wasted, uh, in a, in a familial, you know, environment or, you know, your family, eats dinner and there's some food left over.

You can, again, there's no refrigerator. We don't have Tupperware. We don't want anything to go to waste. Um, you know, breweries and distilleries, you know, we've had alcohol in this country for a long time. And so pigs because of the nature of their Omnivorous, uh, upbringing are able to, uh, rid you. You're able to leverage up, you're able to take what is a waste product.

Mm-Hmm, and, uh, and, and feed, feed an animal that ultimately tastes really good and, and is also very curable. You know, the fat, back to one of the magic things about pigs is they, they are, they have the ability to put on subcutaneous fat in a caloric situation. So if you've got enough food, you can fatten a pig up.

Uh, very quickly. Yeah. And so, yeah. How long 

Michael Kummer: does it take from birth to slaughter a pig if you raise it well? 

Charles Mayfield: Yep. Raise it well and feed it well. Again, if we, if we dropped a pig on your property here, okay, so when, uh, if you, assuming you didn't farrow that pig, Okay, so you got, uh, You've got gestation of a pig.

So mama gets pregnant, it's three months. Three weeks and three days. So that's gestation. The pig is born, uh, the, it's farrowed. Mm-Hmm. . Uh, and so about eight months, seven to nine months is generally the time it takes from birth to what I would call market weight. And so that's anywhere from 275 to 325 pounds.

Oh wow. Um. So yeah, back to our, some of the stuff we were talking about earlier, a pig's going to reach, uh, meat maturity a lot faster than a cow, right? And it's, it's manageable. You know, a fully mature, ready to eat pig weighs two or three hundred pounds. Cow's going to weigh twelve hundred. And so, you know, in our, in our homestead or in our, in our small community, in our tight knit community, we can slaughter a pig and feed everybody and Grind up the rest and cure it and hang it and all that fun stuff.

You've got a lot more meat to deal with, physically deal with, and as well as culinarily when you build, uh, excuse me, when you slaughter those larger animals. 

Michael Kummer: Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely true. And that was one of the things why, you know, we're like, okay, if we slaughter our own, you know, cows at some point, you almost need, I mean, you need, you need somewhere to hang them, right?

Otherwise, it's gonna be a pain in the butt to You know, process the animal and, and with a pig, I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's also heavy, but it's significantly more manageable than, than a big ass cow or, you know, bull or a steer or what have you. 

Charles Mayfield: Uh, yeah, I mean, uh, a side of beef side of beef is going to weigh two or three or 400 pounds and just, just thinking, I mean, again, we're so far removed from our food.

Even I contextually can't understand what dealing with a side of beef is like, but my god, it's several hundred pounds, you know, for anyone that lifts weights, like take a barbell, load it up to 225 and just, just try and carry that around on your shoulder for the afternoon. You can't do it. So yeah, that's it.

That's a component of it. And, um, but yeah, I, The other aspect that has changed, I gotta tell ya, we've, we've, the, the pig industry, just, just look at the last hundred years, right, even, even, even a hundred years ago, you had, you had this major, uh, meatpacking hub out of Chicago, but everything was outdoors, um, you know, as opposed to today, You know, the industrial pig pork industry has moved indoors.

It's, it's temperature controlled, you know, huge bar similar with poultry. Um, I'm not as big a fan of, of poultry period just cause that's a relatively new phenomenon. I love chickens for eggs, but chickens for meat, I, I, you know, this is back to your interview with Anthony. I, I agree with him. Um, now, you know, farm raised or pastured or industrial chicken still better than a box of Cheerios.

Nutritionally, right? I'll, I'll, I'll sign up for that, but, um, but pork, my gosh, even, even a hundred years ago, we didn't have GMOs. We didn't have microplastics. You know, if you think about all the ills of, of the human diet today. That is, that is mirror that over to, uh, pigs. And so in the industrial setting, they're getting the lowest quality.

grain, um, genetically high PUFA, uh, probably microplastics, you know, um, discarded candies. I mean, if you, and they're feeding this stuff to cows too. So really the diet, oh yeah. Feedlots, it would blow your mind what rolls through a, through a feedlot, uh, any given day 

Michael Kummer: from a skincare perspective. What's so special about lard?

I mean, I get, you know, any type of, you know, animal fat can, you know, help on the skin, but what's, what's so special about lard? 

Charles Mayfield: Well, so our skin, our skin wants to eat things. It's our largest organ. And so, uh, if you think about, if you walk up to a buffet, okay, and in, in this skincare buffet, line. We've got, you know, we've got lard, we've got leaf lard.

We can talk about leaf lard. There's so leaf lard real quickly is the tallow version of pig fat, which is visceral versus subcutaneous. So you got lard, you got leaf lard, you got tallow, you've got palm oil, coconut oil, olive oil, and then over. And then next to that, you've got a lot of these seed oils. Um, and then next to that, you've got petroleum derivatives.

So petroleum and. You know, the active ingredient or the primary ingredient like Vaseline and very, you know, these are, these are all waste products from the petroleum industry. So you got this huge buffet of fats, okay? Your skin is going to preferentially, preferentially choose, First and foremost, animal fat.

So, kick all the petroleum, all the seed, and then even all the plant oils to the side for a minute. It's going to preferentially want animal fat. And then, beyond that, it's my contention that it's going to choose, preferentially, the fat from a monogastric, omnivorous mammal because that most genetically resembles us.

Um, so, you know, in terms of the lipids, in terms of the vitamins, natural vitamins and minerals, how they're stored, you know, these are non synthetics. Um, I, I believe that our skin is going to most most hungrily, uh, seek out, uh, lard. Now again, tallow is not far off. Shares a lot. And like I said earlier, we use it in our products.

Tallow is fantastic. The, it's interesting. See tallow, lard was the first animal fat to be attacked, if you will, by, Big food, big pharma. Okay. So Crisco, which was introduced in 1911, which is cottonseed oil. Crisco was bleached white because at the turn of the century, if you fried or cooked anything, you were doing it in lard.

And for your listeners that don't know, lard is white. You know, natural rendered lard and leaf lard are both white. Tallow really at the turn of the century was really more reserved for candle and soap making. And you're familiar, Michael, you're familiar with tallow. At room temperature, tallow is hard as a rock, right?

And candidly, I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen. I love to cook. I've got a couple of cookbooks to my name. If you've got to dig into a, a block of tallow to measure out a half a cup or a quarter cup of fat, you're not gonna do it like you, you gotta keep it over here on the stove, top right melted, which, you know, again, 200 years ago, if it, especially if it was winter, you, you had a fire in your.

In your, uh, wood burning stove pretty much all the time, but the reality is lard, because at room temperature, it is, it is, more, less viscous, more like a cream, uh, scoopable. And so I believe, I believe that's one of the reasons why it was predominantly the fat that we most associated with cooking and frying, you know, a hundred years ago.

And so Crisco comes out in 1911. That is, uh, that takes, it takes a lot of the wind out of the sails of, of, uh, of LARD and, uh, and then subsequently you have other, uh, things in history that, that really demonized saturated fat. You know, you've got the Ansel Keys situation at Eisenhower. And so it's just been a, it's not surprising to me that I end up having conversations daily with people like, wait a minute, LARD, LARD's good for us.

And it's like, It's absolutely necessary. It's, I think it's a necessary fat, both culinarily and also, uh, skincare. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah. I mean, you could argue anything, you know, with, you know, bacon fat or lard or whatever, you know, tastes better. You know, regardless of what you cook, even if you make, you know, Something like, you know, brussel sprouts.

Nobody likes brussel sprouts unless you had bacon, you know, or bacon fat. Then suddenly it tastes good, but because of the bacon fat, not because of the brussel sprouts. 

Charles Mayfield: I, you know, I joke all the time. I, I, I've been fairly carnivorous now for the last, uh, couple years. I'm really enjoying it. I've got a paleo background and, you know, I, I think all of, I just, eating real food, that's a really nice starting spot.

But I joke with people, I'm like, if you look at bread and if you look at some of the, like it's. even brussel sprouts. It's really just the vessel to get the really tasty stuff in your mouth, right? It's that salt, that, that butter, that salt and fat. Um, those are the things we really crave. So yeah. 

Michael Kummer: So tell me about, uh, about your, your skincare products.

Um, you know, I've traditionally, I've not never cared much for any topical skincare products until a few months ago where I got more into, uh, Dove more into the topic and now I appreciate the benefits. Um, you know, I have a couple of telegrams. What exactly do you do and how did you develop your products and why?

What's the. Who is the audience? Who needs a teller? Uh, who needs a lard? Uh, 

Charles Mayfield: well, we all need the lard in our lives. Um, who's our audience? Great question. Well, I mean, Everyone has a skincare routine, you know, for, for men, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, most men deny that because the, the skincare industry caters to most of the women, but you know, uh, you've got a big beard, I've got a mustache, but most men shave some part of their body at some point, you know, everyone takes a shower depending on where you are in the spectrum of sort of healthy living.

You've got all these Axe body, you've got these body sprays and scents and all that stuff. So we're constantly, you know, sunscreens. There's, everyone's got some degree of a skincare routine. And, you know, candidly, the skincare industry is just wrought with, uh, poor chemical ingredients that disrupt our hormones, you know, and, and, and candidly dry our skin out.

Yeah. And so, uh, you know, where does our product, well, first of all, our products, we have. Only a handful of products, um, four total. Uh, we have a skin food, we have a face food, I have a sublingual, which is, you think, I put it in my mouth, that helps my skin, I have a sublingual elixir, uh, that helps lower inflammation, sort of works on skin care from the inside out, and then we have our most recent product, which I debuted at, um, at, uh, KetoCon Hack Your Health last year, uh, is Epic Dermis, which is a similar lard based product.

It's in a portable packable tube. Uh, so, you know, it's just a little easier to go on to go with, but that's it. And, you know, pe it's a question I get all the time, like, how do I use your product? And it's like, well, how do you use products now? Because our products can sort of fill in and, and, and are you a morning R skincare routine person?

Uh, are you an evening ski? Maybe a little bit of both. Uh, I mean, I'll tell you what I use it for. Mm-Hmm. . So I haven't had razor burn in three years. So my morning routine, I get up. I didn't do it this morning cause I'm on the road, but I'll get up and I'll shave for work. And do it too. Yeah, you're due.

You're due. Well, you've got some product. Did it get here yet? Oh, okay. Well, I, I dropped it in the mail last week, so hopefully it'll all arrive. So, but, um, my, my morning routine is, you know, I, I get up, I cold, I work out my cold plunge and then I go hop in the shower and get ready for the day and after I shave.

I, I put a pea size in my hand and just lather up my face with it. Haven't had, haven't had razor burn in three years. That's my routine. And you know, a little ends up in my hair. Um, and that's great. Now I've got two kids that are about your kid's age. You know, if we get a scrape or a bump or a bite, I mean, I, we end up using it on almost anything, um, anything where.

I'm about half convinced that itching, itching's not from the bug bite or the poison ivy, itching is from you have chronically dry skin and you've done something to stretch your skin out, right? You know, you get a mosquito bite, there's a welt, right? I believe that the itching is more because you have dry skin.

And it's, you know, as the skin stretches, it's cracking. You think, think on a microscopic level. Right. And so, uh, my poor kids, bless their heart. They I've tested this stuff on just about every situation that's ever come across. But yeah, I mean, Michael, the best part about our products and again, there's, I.

I'm, I'm pro animal fat products, but the best part is it's, it's, what's not in our creams. And so, you know, a lot of these chemicals, natural fragrance, fragrances, you know, avoid that at all costs. And so everything in our creams is designed to do one thing and that's feed and nourish your skin. Um, how you choose to feed and nourish your skin, whether that's, again, I've, I've taken a shower, I've washed it, you know, a lot of women that wear makeup in the evenings, you know, they wash off the day.

Well as that's an ideal time to apply a little bit of our cream. It's probably night before bed use is probably the number one recommendation I give people around our products, whether that's face or body, because It is a fully, it's a full fat product. There's no water in there. There's nothing to evaporate.

People associate a cream, you know, I've applied a cream to my skin and a minute later, my skin's dry and people think, Oh, it's soaked in. No, that cream, it's again, look at the ingredients. That cream was probably 70 to 80 percent water and you, you smeared it on and the water evaporated. It. All the active ingredients and again, the seed oil or the petroleum derivatives, all that's still sitting on the surface of your skin dry.

Um, and will, and will be absorbed over time. Um, our fat, full fat product goes on the skin and it, it, it stays there for a minute. But if you give it 5 or 10 minutes, your skin comes along and eats it. And it's gone. And that's the origin story of, of Pharaoh. I had a really, so here you go. I had a really, really bad sunburn, like probably second degree burn.

Like one of those, one of those epic life, life story sunburns. And you know, I was raising pastured pork at the time and rendering some of the fat and playing around with making soap and cooking with it. You know, I mentioned the culinary background. So I, I had a jar of, of lard. Uh, actually leaf lard in my refrigerator that I was using to fry and, you know, cook those Brussels sprouts that we all love so much,

And so in an, in an act of sort of curiosity and desperation, I come in from this. I mean, you've been there, every, everyone's been there like not pink, like lobster red, really, really bad. And I come in and. Cover up with this stuff and you know, it was, it blew my mind. I mean, you know, I laid it on really thick and in a matter of minutes, like it, my skin literally ate it.

Like it was, you can imagine like greasing up really hard and then all of a sudden it's gone, which that was fantastic. I only put it on twice, uh, in the evening when I got home and then the next morning before I went back to work. And so two applications. And you know this, Michael, when you get a bad sunburn, it's, it's painful.

Yeah. Um, you're hot. Uh, but you also peel at some point, you know, the sunburn goes away and, but, but, but it's coming, right? I have memories of like two and three weeks after a bad sunburn when I was a kid. And all of a sudden, like your whole body shits. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah. 

Charles Mayfield: I never peeled. And that was, that was, that was really what convinced me to dig a little deeper and understand, you know, first and foremost, understand what's in skincare.

Right. I mean, again, we, you're, you're in the health and fitness community, right? It's like, read your labels. What are you putting in your mouth? And so I took that lens and applied it to skincare. And it's like, It's the same story. Like, I can't pronounce half these ingredients, and most of them are preservatives, and it's like, what's that for?

Well, it's to keep the The cream from, you know, going rancid or going bad. And it's like, huh, okay, maybe, maybe I don't want that on that skit. Right. So that was the story. And, uh, you know, we, we only have a handful of products. I think they work for, you know, some, we're, we're not the cheapest game in town with our products that we handcraft everything.

Um, and again, raising pastured pork is, is raising a quality. lard resource is harder than a quality tallow resource. Yeah, that's just, I'm not saying it's not important to raise beef, you know, what's best for the land, what's best for the animal, all those things. And you can, you can make a lot of mistakes or poor decisions when it comes to raising beef and that's not going to manifest in, it.

in the visceral fat of that animal. It's technically not going to manifest in the visceral fat of a pig either. This hasn't been studied, so I'm not, I'm not making any claims here, but one, one of the factors is the difference between visceral and subcutaneous fat, right? Lard. I mentioned earlier, leaf lard and lard.

We use both in our products. Lard is the subcutaneous fat. Mm-Hmm. leaf lard is the visceral fat from the pig, right? Visceral fats. Biological function is not storage, it is protection. It's, it's padding your, your, your organs, right? So even, even in a not necessarily good environment for that pig. Right, whether that's nutritionally or environmentally, or, you know, it's going to, it's not going to preferentially store that toxicity in its own body.

visceral fat. It will be in its subcutaneous fat. Gotcha. That's right. It has more impact on a bacon. Correct. Bacon or sausage. Right. And so you, I want to come back to a question you asked earlier. Like, what do we tell a consumer on from, from a dietary standpoint? Um, I tell them to, I mean, start off. If you have to buy pork or chicken, try not to get it at the store.

Right. But even at the store. Depending on the store, but like there's a, there's a, there's a brand out of North Carolina called, um, Hickory Nut Gap. Okay. For your listeners that have access to Hickory Nut Gap sausage, it's what I feed my kids and myself now that I'm not, uh, high integrity pork. Joyce Farms, White Oak Pastures, Polyface Farms.

There's, there's high integrity pork everywhere. You got to go looking for it. Uh, the, the website, uh, eatwild. com for any of your listeners, like go to eatwild. com, plug in your, go to your state. You'll be able to find, uh, those and, and a handful of them are available. in, in a typical grocery store setting.

Right. Um, so that's, that's, that's what I tell folks is preferentially, I mean, you can, again, support your local farmers, but if you, if you got to buy meat at the store, you're, you're often safer doing a ruminant meat. So beef, lamb, um, it's not like we, we don't sell a lot of goat meat at the store around here, but, but find your room in it.

Uh, animal meat, uh, from the store. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah, yeah. Well, that, that's, that's good advice. Um, and one of the reasons, you know, we decided to raise our own chickens for meat because nothing of what, you know, I don't even want to, you know, buy a Cornish cross. You know, for various reasons, even if they're the best raised pastured, what have you, but it's still a Cornish cross.

The genetics already suck. You know, 

Charles Mayfield: it's, uh, well, you know, it's funny too, like even digging into the history with, um, I love, I love how these conversations always come back to really just like farming, right. But even digging into the history, you know, the history of us eating fowl period is very different today than it was a hundred years ago.

I mean, A hundred years ago, if you were eating a bird, there's a good chance it was one of two things. It was a spent laying in. 'cause you know, two or three years in, it's, it's time to get a new one. Right. Um, in which case you made chicken soup out of that. Yeah. Or, you know, some low, slow, braised wet, um, or you were eating like a duck or a goose that you went and killed.

Mm-Hmm. Um, you know, fresh, uh. Yeah, chickens. I mean, we, we've only been eating chicken as an industry for 75 years. Tops. Tops. Um, so yeah, that, that animal and, and, you know, it's a marvel. I mean, the Cornish cross is a marvel with what we've, been able to do with breeding and genetics. It's not a marvel for animal health.

And, uh, and, and I would even say, uh, human health. Again, better than a box of Cheerios, but, um, yeah. And similarly, Michael, with pork, I mean, again, we have the. All pork, a hundred years ago, actually let further back or less further back than that, but a hundred years ago, all pork got copious amounts of vitamin D because they were, they were all raised outdoors and you know, again, humans and pigs, very, very similar.

Okay. So. So, we already know what happens when you, uh, when you rob a human of adequate vitamin D levels. It ain't pretty. 

Michael Kummer: No. 

Charles Mayfield: Okay. So, I would even make the argument today, you know, the industrial pig, it's not even, it's not even the same finished product. Right. Um, because it's been, it's literally been robbed its entire life.

of the sun. Right. And so, which makes it more susceptible to disease. You know, pigs are predisposed. They have small lungs for their size. So like the two or three things that, uh, physical curses of a pig are, are, are all respiratory. And so you crowd them into a crowded house and, you know, turn the air off.

for, uh, far too long, you know, you, you've got real problems and that perpetuates, you know, pharmacological intervention at an industrial scale. And so we've really done a number to, um, to ruin the pig. Uh, but there's, but there's hope. 

Michael Kummer: There is, there is always hope. And that's one of the reasons, you know, when people say, Oh, you know, poor with the, you mentioned it before in a whole saturated fat, Oh, you know, you know, cholesterol and heart attacks and whatnot.

You know, if, if, you know, it's not. The pork is not the issue. The fat and the pork is not the issue. It is in modern pork, but not for the reasons that everyone tells you, you know. It's because those animals are raised in a way that are, how they're not supposed to be raised. They are sick, really. You know, they are slaughtering sick animals at the end of the day, metabolically unhealthy animals, and you're eating them, 

Charles Mayfield: right?

Yeah, one of the things you, uh, you and Anthony talked about on your episode, which, again, I would tell your listeners, if you haven't listened to that one, it's a really good one. I don't agree with Anthony on everything, but But he does a great job and, uh, it was a good, it was a good interview. Yeah, I thought he did a really good job of laying things out.

Oh, that's it. I don't, I don't agree with him on the pig side of the house versus the chicken because We have a, a, a much deeper track record of us and pigs from a, again, 200 years ago, there was no such thing as a meat chicken, a hundred years ago, there was no such thing as a meat chicken. And so we didn't eat chicken.

Um, we have a much longer history with pigs. And so I, I agree that, you know, high PUFA, Or, or, or high omega 6 consumption. That's, that, that was the point that you, you guys made in your talk was, it's not about the ratio as much as it is. The total level. 

Michael Kummer: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um, and, and I agree with that.

And, you know, the thing is, I mean, pork, you know, tastes really good, you know, get it from a source that raises, you know, the animal well. Um, and you know, and then, you know, enjoy it. You know, it's, there is nothing wrong with, with it as long as just, you know, be aware of where you buy your stuff from, you know, how the animal was raised, what it was fed, what the environment was the animal lived in.

Um, And if you do that and you make the right choices, then I don't think there is anything wrong with, with consuming that and, you know, and enjoying it. It tastes delicious. Arguably, the most delicious fat is, you know, is lard. I mean, by, by far, I mean. 

Charles Mayfield: Not even close. I mean, um, yeah, lard spread. I mean, lard spread was almost as more popular than butter at one point.

Michael Kummer: My grandparents, I mean, they had like, you know, this, you know, dish of lard. They just scooped it out and, and, and ate it. I mean, that was 

Charles Mayfield: And 

Michael Kummer: it keeps on. 

Charles Mayfield: And it keeps longer. It's got, you know, because lard is really more of a pure fat, you know, with, with, with butter, you've got all those milk solids in there, which are absolutely delicious, but, you know, um, lard is more akin to like a ghee where you've, you've cooked all that other stuff out, but man, oh gosh.

Yeah. Read any like homestead or book from a hundred years ago. And it's like, lard, lard, lard, lard. It is. It is, uh, it was, it was the fat of choice, uh, for, for a lot of situations. And so that's, that's why I'm here is to just let people know it's still there. You got to source it and, uh, and, and, you know, and hopefully again, it's.

You know, companies like Pharaoh and, and, and, uh, we're, we're unique right now. We're the only lard based sort of skincare company, but I'd like to see more healthy, happy, uh, uh, we call it smart lard, right? So, um, we we've trademarked that because I don't. Not all lards are created equal. You do need to raise a healthy, happy pig, which is beautiful, right?

It's that that's the that's the real joy that comes from this is knowing that with you know with our product and with people consuming pasture based lard That means there's a, there's a pig out there that had a really awesome life and, and helped, you know, helped heal the land and, you know, and had, had had one bad day and, uh, of which that we are eternally grateful and thankful.

Michael Kummer: Yeah, 

Charles Mayfield: makes sense. 

Michael Kummer: Where can people find you? Where can they? Find your skincare product, follow you, see what, what's, what's going on, what are you up to? 

Charles Mayfield: Yeah, so the Instagram, uh, is probably the best place to, to keep up with us. That is, uh, pharoeskin, is our, at pharoeskin, um, F A R R O W. Uh, the website is pharoe.

life. Okay. And if you, if you sign up when you go to the, you know, there's a flash page. If you sign up for our email list, we send you a 15 percent off coupon. Like. Right away. Uh, as a thank you. Uh, but yeah, farrow. life, uh, F A R R O W, uh, dot L I F E is, is, is our website. That's where you order it. We, we don't sell in stores or, uh, other places.

It's, it's, uh, and we make every batch as fresh as possible and, and ship it out the door. So. Awesome. Well, I'm looking 

Michael Kummer: forward to trying it out once, once my, uh, char arrives. Uh, thanks so much, uh, Charles for spending the time with me. Um, And, um, I hope I'll have you again soon on the podcast to talk more about pigs, pork, and lard.

Charles Mayfield: Well, we're gonna, we're gonna get to, uh, we're gonna get you porked up here. Either here or the, the new property for sure. And thank you for inviting me here. It was, it was, you have a beautiful home and it's, it's great to see it. And, and I got, I got the, the, uh, nickel tour before we, we hopped on here. So it was great to see all your, all your farming.

Michael Kummer: All right. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Cheers.