In the Porten family, I want the daughter, the son, the mother and the father! They all pitch in to run the farm and sell their products at the Thionville market on Saturday mornings, in particular. “We didn’t push the children to work with us. Margaux, the youngest, is a butcher and saleswoman in our store in Basse-Ham and on the market for a year. She always wanted to do that,” explains Pierrette Porten, who started the adventure alone thirty years ago. His son, Florian, 31, worked in electrical engineering in Luxembourg before joining the family company in 2015. “His arrival allowed us to buy land to raise pigs. We were known for our ducks, our chickens and our foie gras, and now people are discovering that we also do pork. “Only the youngest of the siblings did not follow the movement. She is a nurse. “My children do what they want as long as they are happy,” proudly declares the fifty-year-old who works with a portrait of the family behind her.
A rolling business
The family serves an average of 150 customers in the market. “Between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., there are not too many of us to cope with the crowds,” observes the farmer. “We have a regular clientele. We know what people want when they arrive in front of our stand. We exchange recipes with them. Customers know our children, ask us how they are, when they will see them. It’s nice,” confides the one who started the market fifteen years ago with a table, and who now has a fully equipped sales truck.
