Our new Pigs 

Our New Pigs

​This weekend we brought nine beautiful oinkers home to the farm. It’s always fun when we have new animals arrive at the farm. Most of the fun is watching mike attempt to heard them to where they are suppose to be.  Mind you,  he is much more ‘adam Henson’ about it now. He used to have the mindset of crocodile Dundee but the capability and knowledge of laurel and Hardy. Being a fairly new smallholder we have been ‘ winging it ‘ since we arrived here. But the more animals we have,  the easier it seems to be. Our first pigs we got back in 2013 escaped on their first night,  we were all running around trying to catch them, like something out of a very on movie.

e even recruited the builders to help, one of whom ended up face down in a puddle of mud!  Ah the memories 😂 This time though it was all pretty straight forward,  now we are old hats at this!  🤔 So we have nine lovely kune kune pigs,  varying in ages. Not the most attractive of breeds but full of character and unusually tame on arrival.

Libby may disagree,  she was convinced mummy pig was going to charge at her and was escorted back to the car by her big brother. Mikey, harri and Charlie on the other hand for stuck straight in. Helping create barriers to get them into their stables and shooing them in the right direction. All this while Mikey serenaded us with his own version of baby got back ‘ he’s got big balls and you can not lie,  you other brothers can’t deny, when the pig arrives with his giant nuts and shoves them in your face….. ‘ Come on,  We were all ten once,  big animal balls are still funny at 34!! So one of the questions I keep getting asked is, will we eat them. It’s an answer I’m nervous of putting out there as it is so controversial but yes…. Eventually we will. Now, unless you are a vegetarian or vegan your argument against us doing that is lost on me. If you eat meat,  you have eaten a slaughtered animal. The packaging it comes in is irrelevant, it had been alive and it was killed…    For your consumption. The only difference is, I can tell you, when I am tucking into my pork belly, is that the animal had a good life. He ate well, he ate organic food, he lived in fresh air and had clean beds and fresh water. When it comes to the end I know it is done quickly and humainly with absolutly no suffering. Can you tell me the same??? So to my friends who scowl at me when they hear we are eating our animals eventually,  the only thing that pops in my head is…   Hypocrite! Usually the same friend that is tucking into my pork belly and telling me how nice it is one month later!

The children are not always happy about it at first,  it is hard to come to terms with the fact that the animal you have been looking after will no longer be with you and instead in the freezer.

However, they also understand that if they enjoy meat It is far better to know it has been nurtured by them that stuck in a tiny pen and overfed until they can’t stand up. I’m not a meat snob,  and I’m not preaching, I buy meat from the supermarket.  I’m just making my point about home reared food.

We also make it clear when an animal arrives, what its destany is…  whether it is a pet chicken who will only be for eggs, a dog that will stay with us forever, geese that will be for security and a cow that will be for the table. So if you want to try some really special meat, with a taste that doesn’t compare….. Give me a shout 😋