Pigs In Blankets

Along with most of the South of England, we have had some very cold days (lowest -5c around here) and even a dusting of snow. The water trough has at least 3 inches of ice on it, which we have to bash though with a hammer in the mornings.

I felt very bad for the poor pigs, out there in their pig arc. It is corrugated iron, so not very well insulated at all. We do give them straw from time to time, to keep them off the ground and comfortable - but they eat it, so a bale only lasts a week! They had snuffled the earth and remains of the straw into the corners, blocking off any draughts, and all sleep in a hollow in the middle.

People keep telling me that with those four boys in there all together, the body heat would keep them warm enough alone. I did check on them one night, and wheras the ground outside was frozen hard, the dusty earth inside the house was still loose, dry and friable. I can conclude then, that it must have been around or above freezing in there, but nontheless, still too cold to be comfortable. They are off in the next few days for slaughter, but I wanted their last week to be a happy one.

So as soon as we heard that the cold weather was on the way, we went and bought three big bales last week, and stuffed the pig arc full.

They checked it out approvingly:

And soon dived in, burying themselves completely. Only coming out on the promise of dinner.

Can you blame them?

Emerging Bleary Eyed from the Dark

Reader, if you are still there, I must apologise wholeheartedly for the lack of posts. I got close to posting a festive one about all of the lovely festive baking I got up to, and the rustic greenery and berry decorations which adorned the house...but the truth is, neither actually happened. This winter I have been struck by what is either SAD or just lazyitis, but I am ashamed to say that I have done NOTHING.

In November, we had a delivery of lovely seasoned firewood...



And for months, every evening has basically looked like this....

I have read some fabulous books (Paulo Cohelio's The Zahir, Lucinda Riley's The Girl On The Cliff being two of the best) and doing a bit of college work here and there (floristry), but mostly watching television, sleeping and generally hibernating. It has been bliss! I know most 'proper' gardeners have been flicking through seed catalogues and eagerly planning from their armchairs, but I find I need a total break where I can be a normal person for a few months, where my every waking moment doesn't involve doing mental gardening in my head and I don't have compost under my fingernails.

A high point of the winter was the lamb delivery. Our three lambs went off in November, and two weeks later, arrived ready for the freezer. It is really tasty meat and it is such a luxury to be able to get a roasting joint out almost every Sunday. Mmmm.

Another high point was the greenhouse surviving horrendous gale force winds, in the worst storm for years. This despite the fact we didn't cement the posts in like we should have done. Fingers crossed...

A low point was a fox attack. We lost our lovely drake one night, as the automatic door failed to work on the duck house - our fault for not checking it regularly enough. I heard a lot of quacking in the middle of the night and went to check what was going on - the fox scarpered but sadly had already bitten the drake, who died of shock. Needless to say we now check every night that they are tucked up in bed. We have been lucky that so far (touch wood!) this is the first fox problem we have had. The worry now is that he will be back for more, so we will have to be extra vigilent.

The only time I have ventured outside (other than to feed the animals) this winter has been to take the dog for walks in our local woods.

It's been months since I have touched the garden, which now looks like this:

The 'greenhouse of death' is a black, withered mess

The chooks have been moved out of their enclosure, which in the very heavy rain we have had recently, became a boggy mess.

Instead they have been free ranging in the veggie patch, stripping the rainbow chard down to nothing and the lower kale leaves - but I don't mind.

The pigpen is also a boggy mess on one side. The other side is better drained, and gets the sun, so they like to lie and catch whatever sunlight they can on bright days.

So it would all be a bit depressing - if it wasn't for the little hints that spring is on the way:

I can feel my sap starting to rise...

New Arrivals

This is the first evening that I have had that 'autumn' feeling and I must admit, I like it. As I sit typing, the sow cooker is bubbling away with the leftover chicken carcass from our first roast dinner in ages - it will make stock for the freezer (to be used in future gravy or recipes) or possibly chicken soup tomorrow, with the leftover breast meat shredded and some sweetcorn. There is also the drip, drip, plop of the apple and mint jelly which is straining from some muslin from an upturned stool (recipe another day). And on my lap is....a sleeping puppy!

Isn't she lovely? Her name is Libby and she is an 11 week old miniature schnauzer.

We are completely in love and both agree that having a dog around really makes our house, lovely though it is, feel like home. She is too tiny to come to work with me at the moment (we have staff kennels - how good is that!?) so, being so close to home, I am coming back every two hours to play and take her out for a walk in the garden.

We have some other new arrivals...our new porkers! Following the success of our pigs last year we have bought four tamworth x saddleback weaners. This means that they are off their mothers milk and eating solid food  - and about eight weeks old.

Not even we could manage four pigs worth of pork in our freezer (two pigs worth lasted us almost a year) so we are planning on keeping one for ourselves, one will go to our landlady (we have a feudal type arrangement going on whereby we don't pay to rent the land and share the proceeds!) and each set of parents is buying one for £100.They live in a lovely paddock which was hitherto unused as it was a fenced-off copse area - perfect shelter for our piggies. It is a bit like a savings account having a freezer full of pork - because come the end of the month when we run out of money (as we always do!) we can still eat well, with lots of 'free' meals - ham, egg and homemade chips being our favorite - or there is always roasts - all with veggies from the garden. It is what this smallholding life is all about I suppose.


£100 may seem like a good profit per pig - it certainly has paid for the £160 initial outlay in buying the pigs - but it isn't. Animal food costs have gone though the roof, with the price of oil and a poor wheat harvest across the globe. Where last year we paid £10 per 25kg bag of pig food, we now pay nearer £13. Whether or not to feed pigs kitchen scraps is highly controversial amongst pig keepers.It is a breach of DEFRA rules - and I couldn't possibly comment. All I can say is that it would seem like a criminal waste of VEGAN kitchen scraps to compost them at a time when pig food is astronomically expensive. We have this old WW2  poster hanging on our kitchen wall as a reminder of more sane naive times:

If you can't read it clearly, it reads 'Keep it dry, free from glass, bones, tins etc. It also feeds poultry your council will collect'

How times have changed. In his much acclaimed and revered bible 'The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency', John Seymour sums it up nicely:


'The pig fits so well  into the self-supporter's economy that the animal almost seems designed with that in mind. It is probably the most omnivorous animal in the world and will thrive on practically anything'

Civil servants in agricultural departments all across the land must quake at the advice that follows - 'The pig bucket is very relevant indeed...In the self sufficient holding, the dustman should never have to call. Under the kitchen sink there should be a bucket, and into it should go all the household scraps except such as are reserved for the cat or dog...this means scraping all of the scraps first into the sacred bucket; then dribble - rather than run- the tap over each plate so that the water carries all grease and other nutriments into the bucket'. Enough said!

Pigs eat 450g of pig nuts per day for each week that they have been alive. We calculate that this means each pig will eat £70 worth of food in its 7-8 months (yes, that is all they get! More if you want nice big bacon rashers). So, add to that the price of the pig = £110, we have already made a loss. It also costs £40 each pig for abattoir/butchery costs, making a total of £150 per pig. I think we will have to send the 'rents an extra invoice! And that is assuming there are no vets bills - we were lucky last time and generally speaking *touch wood* they are too young at the time of slaughter to develop most adult illnesses. They seem happy - and put themselves to bed in their pig-arc which is full of fluffy straw.

So all new arrivals are nice and snug this chilly autumn night.

Farmers for a Day

Last year we raised three Gloucester Old Spot pigs. These were for our own consumption in a Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall inspired self sufficiency drive. It was a great success - they were relatively easy to care for and produced excellent meat, which lasted us several months. We fed them on organic food and they were not medicated which makes them organic to us - although obviously they were not certified as such.

Our three pigs worth of organic-ish pork.

We were inundated by family and friends wanting to buy some, and decided this year we would up production slightly. In a bid to learn more about the pig business, we spent a day helping out at the wonderful  Marshfield Organic Farm near Bath, to try and pick up some practical skills.

Lesson 1 being how to load pigs into a trailer. Someone once said to me about pigs:

'Never wrestle a pig. You get muddy and besides, the pig likes it'

Slowly slowly catchee piggy...

So true. You just cannot force a 15 stone pig to do something it doesn't want to do. Hence we tempted 7 of the 8 pigs into a trailer with food. One just would not comply, so Oli did an excellent job of 'driving' it accross the field by cunningly laying a trail of pig nuts. Apart from one incident where it ran off to chase some sheep, it was a great success.




Mud up to armpits = happy pig.

Marshfield Farm is nestled in the rolling Bath countryside and just about as far as you can get from intensive production. Call me a wuss but  watching the pigs jumping gleefully into the deep mud brought a lump to my throat. This is how farm animals should be kept - outside, in small groups and under the watch of a farmer who cares about their welfare just as much as his profits. They sell their excellent meat through farmers markets. It seems simple to me - if you like the sight of pigs frolicking in  fields rather than crammed up in concrete sheds, buy your meat from a farmer, not a supermarket.

As it is lambing season, every 3 hours, the farmer scoots around on a quad bike, checking the lambs. This one is a triplet who was very skinny and weak. It's mother didn't have enough teats for all three, so decided to cut her losses and stop feeding this one. It will need to be bottle fed for two months at least - if it survives - and is currently living in the boiler room to keep it warm. We have offered our services if it picks up, so watch this space!

Days like today really restore my faith in British farming. Marshfield has sheep, cattle, chickens, laying hens and pigs all reared organically. Intensive farming is often cited as the only way to feed the growing world population. I disagree - Marshfield Farm is proof that small scale mixed farming can still work if we consumers are there to support farms by buying locally.