Pigs With Character
‘…pigs with character farmed by people with character will tend to produce pork with character,’ says Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall in The River Cottage Meat Book. Our friends can be the judge of whether or not Colin and I have ‘character’ but our lovely Oxford Sandy and Black pigs had character in abundance.
They left the smallholding this week and the pigpen feels very silent and empty. Their relaxed snuffling around and happy grunting for the feed bucket has been so much part of life here over the autumn and winter months and it’s only the knowledge that they have lived a contented life and will give us delicious meals for months to come, that makes it bearable.
We have been delighted with the pigs from start to finish and friends and quality suppliers have been an important part of the story. It began with Gillian and David at Ardunan Farm supplying us with four lovely, healthy weaners, followed by Clare at Vitrition delivering good quality organic feed, Ranald at The Orchard contributing plentiful local fruit and vegetables, David our kind neighbouring farmer who loaned us his stock trailer, Alan the patient and helpful slaughterman at Wishaw Abbatoir and concluded with William the butcher at James Chapman’s, the award winning family butcher.
This story is primarily about us enjoying keeping our rare breed pigs but it’s also a lot about welfare and ultimately it’s about taste.
It takes a lot of time and effort to produce The Lint Mill pork and we’ll never make our fortune doing it, but our few lucky customers and our B&B guests, who really care about the provenance of their meat, appreciate this story, our pursuit of excellence and the taste of real pork.
Thank you Oxford Sandy and Blacks, we’ve loved having you at The Lint Mill.
Read all the pig blogs from over the last year:
We are the lucky recipients of some of this fantastic pork. So far we’ve eaten pork chops, pork shoulder, sausage, gorgeous bacon. It’s wonderful to be able to say that it tastes like pork used to taste years and years ago. It’s succulent and rich and the crackling, Mmmmmmmm!