Pigs in clover (From Smallholder)

Pigs in clover

1:50pm Friday 9th July 2010 in

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Three years ago I lived in a town house and the view from my bedroom window was of Shrewsbury Castle, across perfectly manicured municipal gardens. I had no lawn and beautiful cream carpets all through the house. Now, I look out over 30 pig arks towards the Shropshire Hills, with two llamas grazing in the foreground. Instead of a dozen window boxes to water I’ve got 12 acres of pasture and garden to manage.

The pigs have taken over our lives. The first ones arrived a year ago, on a whim of my husband. “Wouldn’t it be great” we agreed “if occasionally, we could say that we had produced everythingon our plate?”

The vegetables (in the summer) were easy. If we ate a vegetarian diet we could do it – an omelette, fried eggs, boiled eggs, salad and potatoes. But we felt we were cheating if we couldn’t do the whole meat and two veg thing. We toyed with the idea of chicken but, after looking up on the internet how to pluck and draw one, I was put off, and that was without considering the actual mechanics of killing one.

So a couple of pigs seemed the sensible answer so Steve, my husband, set off to buy two weaners after seeing some advertised locally.

Two hours later he was on the phone. “Any problem if I brought back ten pigs?” he asked “Only the bloke whose got them only wants £30 each for them, and he’s keeping them in a concrete pen.”

It wouldn’t have made any difference if I had objected as he was already on his way home with them. We had no fencing, no ark and only a small bag of feed. Not the way to start off, but within two days Steve had built them a comfortable little house in the orchard, and fenced them in to their own little corner, with plenty of room to run around. A distinct improvement on the concrete bunker they’d come from.

Steve was already booked onto a pig paradise course that weekend and he was shot down in flames by Tony Yorke, in front of all the participants. “This is the right way to do it,” Tony would say, explaining about the need for secure fencing. “Now let’s ask Steve for the wrong way to set up in pig-keeping,” to general giggling around the table.

That was that. Fait accompli. The pigs had taken over our lives and we metamorphosed almost overnight from smart, suited estate agents into muddy, smelly (and happy) rare breed pig farmers.

For the full story see this month's Smallholder magazine.