This Little Piggy....

At the age of three I made the decision to be a pig farmer. My family will tell you that when I start something it is hard to distract me and after briefly toying with the idea of an acting career, I spent the next 16 years plotting how. Living in the country next door to a small pig farm with pigs in pigsties and spending many hours helping out started my farming passion. We even had our own pig each year, that come slaughter day, my Mum worked her way through Jane Grigson's Charcuterie & French Pork Cookery making fantastic joints, sausages, brawn, bacon and Chitterlings.
My first proper farm job on my precollege year was a mixed arable, cattle and pig farm. But this was the time when pig farming was on it's knees and the pig enterprise was being wound down and eventually the housing was converted into livery stables. So I did some pig rearing but was definately distracted by big shiney tractors and combines. My desire to be a fulltime pig farmer finally disapeared during my first tour of Harper Adams Pig finishing house. High welfare, I am sure but to me keeping intelligent animals with no straw in semi darkness was not how I imagined my pig farm would be. This was in the old days and I can still remember being told by a very senior member of staff that outdoor pigs would never take off as who would want to work with them in the cold and wet.
Quite a few years later when we moved to Higher Fingle and the children decided their favourite food was sausages, we took the family allowance and bought a couple of in pig gilts and a trailer (that's the advantage of lots of children, lots of child benefit!) After the piglets were fattened, we sold some of the pork locally and that paid for all those sausages. After a few years of not losing money, a life style farmer (Devon is full of them) started rearing pigs nearby, having more time and energy to market the pork, quickly undercut our amateur enterprise and made it no longer cost effective to continue. Now they have retired there is now a gap in the market that we could look at filling. But this time the cost of food has risen by 40% and it now becomes a more risky enterprise.
Thinking about the great CSA's I saw in the states and not just how important the help with cashflow was, but the commitment by the customer to support the farmer and buy, I am hoping to try an experimental pig CSA. It works like this;

• you buy a share in the pig, I am thinking about a 1/4 share being £75
• this pays for the piglet, the food, the straw and any other whim a pampered free range pig will need
• it also pays for the transport, butchery, including some sausages and packing ready for the freezer.
• Nevil will promise to ensure that the pigs are kept in piggy luxury.
• If you like you can come and scratch the pigs back, give it a name and help feed it.
• then after 6 to 8 months you collect around 12-15kg of fantastic pork.
• You can officially describe yourself as a pig farmer (ok only 1/4 of a pig but all new entrants start somewhere).

What I would like to be able to do is prove that a CSA can work for an ordinary farmer as a way of spreading the risk and helping with working capital. I have an idea that if landlords and banks can accept it as a way of financing part of a farm set up it could be possible that new entrants could be supported with everyone winning. It may only be a few pigs this time, but why not a small flock of sheep or laying hens. It could make the difference to making a small starter farm viable or not.
So anyone that wants to support my study and my greedy childrens sausage habit please get in touch soon and sign up for the best deal in the farm yard!
www.higherfingle.co.uk