Tuesday 4 October 2011

When foraging and pig keeping collide.


I do apologise if this sounds like a smug-fest, it's not what I intend, but sometimes I'm amazed at how lucky I am.

This morning I packed Willow off to school with a bag full of home grown patty pan and crooked neck squash for the harvest festival (I think she would have preferred a packet of Jaffa cakes but there you go) then I stopped by the pigs to feed them and scritch their ears (they recognise me now and come galloping over, grunting excitedly when they see me) and finally, back at home, I fed our chickens and collected the warm eggs.

It all feels a very long way from my urban background and a concrete planter full of nasturtiums.

I'm also discovering that foraging goes hand in glove with pig keeping. We've still got a sack full of walnuts from last year so Adam has been dispatched to collect a new bag full (the nuts have begun to fall but there are more to come I think, fingers crossed for gales at the weekend) and the old ones will be used to supplement the hard pig food over the winter and hopefully save us a bit of money. In the mean time I'm now adding acorns and beech nuts to my foraging wish list.

They're also getting left over veg from the veg growing arm of Diss Community Farm, but in the manner of wayward toddlers, they're not massively keen on the Cavolo Nero and are holding out for fermenting apples instead. The Livestock project overall is running well, the feeding rota is going smoothly. It's working out that most of us have about 2 feeds during the week and are taking 2 weekends each over the next few months so the time commitment isn't too heavy, a very civilised way to keep pigs!

I've ordered my sausage making kit from Amazon so it's just a matter of waiting now - come on piggies, eat up!

5 comments:

  1. Haha, when I post on my blog I often ask myself if I'm being too smug. Its a fine line to tread, but I think GYO etc can't help but lend itself to smugness cos its so darn good. :)

    Handsome pig btw - is it insensitive to say I look forward to hearing about the sausages??

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  2. In my defence, I'm genuinely more amazed than smug! Can't quite believe what we manage to do while owning no more than a postage stamp garden.

    Not insensitive at all - the sausage are our raison d'etre!

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  3. How are the girls going to take that their dinner is from the pigs??

    I can't wait to see your sausage making kit in post....and all the natural manure you are getting as well....it all goes nicely together hand in hand and there will never be any waste again!!

    As for the foraging...you can now never worry that you are perhaps taking too much...you have a lot of mouths to feed!!

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  4. Very true! No-one can object to a community project!

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  5. Pity we're not nearer. We're deluged with acorns here!

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