Local Food Day in Ashton Keynes

We are very pleased to announce that we will be appearing at The White Hart in our very own Ashton Keynes at their "Local Food Day" from 11am to mid afternoon.

Why not come along and sample some of our wares?

We hope to see you there.  For more information visit their website page at  http://www.whitehartak.com/White_Hart_Inn,_Ashton_Keynes/Events.html.

Sausages available

As you can see from the photo of Paul, we are very happy to announce that we now have received back our very first proper batch of Sausages.

A while ago we made the decision to conclude our piggy-based adventure for the time being as our stockade areas have become totally trashed by a combination of consistently wet weather and the sheer number of animals we have had on them.

So the logical conclusion was to have our final "pig experience" and get sausages made up.  We took the remaining ladies for their "special day out" to H F Stiles and picked them up a few days later from their butchers outlet in Bromham (see picture below).  We now have a freezer or two containing Traditional, Cumberland and super-size Gluten-free varieties and initial response from those who have tasted them is that they are really rather good - we've certainly enjoyed feasting on a few since returning with a car full.

If you would like to get hold of some, just email us via ashtonkeynespigs@gmail.com and we can sort something out.

HF Stiles traditional Butcher shop at Bromham

Weaners available

We have had such success with our breeding again this year that our two lovely ladies have produced over 20 gorgeous little Berkshire piglets between them.

All the offspring have been doing very well, too well in places, as some of them are nippy and determined enough to wriggle their way through the wire fencing to explore a little further across the field, including chatting to the horses currently being kept there, and even the sheep in the next field!  They are quite hilarious wandering around in little packs of piglies like a young kids playing football in a "Magnet-ball style"!

Admittedly this photo was taken not long after the piglies were born but we thought it was so cute we've used it here.

Bacon & Gammon available

After what seems like a long wait we are delighted to announce that this year's Bacon production has finally arrived.

We took the pigs for their last road trip to H.E. Stiles near Bromhan not far from Calne and then on to Sandridge Bacon and just about 3 weeks later we had the back of the S-Max full of quality meat.

Like last year we have gone for a mixture of wet cured and smoked bacon and first tastings confirm that it is quite simply delicious, in our humble opinion, and also that of our patrons who have sampled their wares.

We have also innovated the way we supply the meat this year, making it available either as a whole half a pig, or as "pig parts", effectively 1/6 of a pig, ie a 1/3 of a half.  An example of this can be seen in the photo above where we have divided the whole pig up into 6 parts.  Each 1/6 part pig comes with 5 packs of bacon and two other hefty joints apart from one 1/6 which has a decent joint and one slightly smaller one.  Both these approaches have proved very popular with a flurry of activity on the night we returned back with the goods.

If you would like to get hold of some of this quality product, hand-reared through the mud, snow and sun, then contact us via our email at ashtonkeynespigs@gmail.com or calling 07834 709 037.  But hurry, we are down to our last few portions!

Our first very own Hog Roast

Nigel (right) and mate enjoying their work!

Another first for Ashton Keynes Pigs this year was using one of our pigs for a hog roast, another very exciting development.

The occasion was for the 20th Anniversary of Ashton Keynes Twinning Association with their twinned village of Grandchamps des Fontaine, near Nantes in France.  Now, given that the family twinned with Neil run their own restaurant and Edgar the dad is a very fine chef, as well as being very French (!) and the fact that this was to be the centrepiece for a meal for 120 people meant there was a lot of pressure to deliver not only great tasting food but a real performance of open air cooking.

Luckily we knew just the man in the shape of Nigel, second generation Hog Roaster!  He and his mate not only cooked our prize pig to perfection, but provided a great show in the process.

Our pig held up very well and there were a huge number of compliments from Nigel and diners about the quality (and quantity) of the meat.  We would thoroughly recommend this as a great spectacle for any events so contact us on ashtonkeynespigs@gmail.com for more information about how we can help make this possible for you.

The gentle art of Sausage Making

Neil & Paul working in unison

The gentle art of Sausage Making involves a surprising amount of science, hand-eye coordination and good common sense.  

First you need quality ingredients, which we had a plenty with our prime quality Berkshire pork that we picked up earlier in the day, skins which we obtained from a wonderful little company in nearby Cirencester, The Natural Sausage Company,  http://www.naturalsausageskins.co.uk, who were very knowledgeable and helpful.  They also provided a standard mix and with the meat mincer ready we were good to go.

Now, as anyone who has made sausages will know, the mincing is the easy bit, getting the mix in the cases is the tricky part.  It is a game best played with spouses / partners / good friends, a bottle (or two) of wine and can lead to less mature minds seeing all sorts of innuendo but all good fun and very tasty results!

Paul & Iona twisting away

Pork ahoy!

Prime pork loaded up and ready to go

For months we had been rearing our very own first batch of pigs home made pigs , from introducing Alphie to our ladies, catching them being extremely intimate extremely quickly (!), the surprise and joy when they first popped out, to the concern of whether "Runty" would survive the weekend, to finally their first (and last) "special day out" for a chosen few.

We took them to the H.F. Stiles and Son a family based but highly professional outfit in Bromham, just past Calne.  They were extremely kind and helpful to us, putting up with our lack of knowledge of the arts of butchery, even though both Paul and I have now been on a couple of courses, it is the sort of knowledge that you need to keep topping up and clearly we need more work, although we are keen to learn.

In the photo you see Paul with they guy from Stiles (whose name I am sorry to say I have forgotten) with our car load of produce.  First tastings and feedback are extremely positive again, so we are very pleased with the whole process.  

If you would like to sample some of the fruits of our labours, get in touch via email at ashtonkeynespigs@gmail.com.

Prime rare-breed Berkshire pork ready for Easter Feast

Fabulous, succulent pork

Well that time has come again when after all the months of caring for our pigs we are due to produce our first batch of truly home-made pork!  We have gone from visiting prospective boars to transporting the lucky lad, Alphie, to our lucky ladies, Gladys and Mabel, and then much to our amazement having all these piglets appear. 

The meat is planned to be ready for Easter Friday 6th April and this year we will be inviting anyone who wants some meat along to a "Back Street Pigs Sausage Tasting" Evening soon afterwards.

So, if you are interested Half Pig email us at ashtonkeynespigs@gmail.com or call 07834 709 037.

Back Street Pigs at both ends

It was always in our plan to use some of the space at the other end of Back Street if need be but we must admit we hadn't expected to have quite so many there in one go.  As it turned out we had to move all the little piglies there one Sunday morning to a new piglie paradise that Paul had engineered.

He must have spent ages getting it ready, pulling up old hedges and stuff and then the piglies have done the rest rooting around to their hearts content.  A lilttle while ago we had to take the boys away as they were starting to get a little bit "jiggy" with their sisters and cousins and that sort of behaviour is best avoided!

You can read a bit more about our Back Street Pigs here.

Heads down for a pig out!

Captured in all their glory are a few of our young lads.  It's hard work being a growning piglie and takes a lot of effort, especially at meal time, mainly fending off your siblings!

Here you can see a picture of some of our prime boars as they tuck into their daily feast of pig feed.

It's always great to see them getting stuck into their food and rooting around.

The power of a pig's memory

When we first went on our Pigs Paradise course all those many months ago, one of the most amazing sites to us Pig Novices was that of two enormous pigs being kept in place by two strands of wire. 

Initially we were very sceptical that such flimsy material could keep these powerful animals from escaping and we decided to go for a fully fence posted compound.  We've since had to be a little more enlightened in our use of electric fencing for the tremendous flexibilty it offers.

Recently we have moved the two sows across the garden into the orchard, partly to give the main compound a little rest and partly to put the ladies to great use as rotory cultivators rooting over the area that was once fully grassed and is now ready for the long promised raised beds for the veg garden.  Well done girls!

You will notice that the fence has somehow been knocked down but they haven't escaped - once zapped by an electric fence these intelligent creatures remember not to do it again.  Also in the background you can see the new pig house that we manoevered into place earlier that week.

Expansion plans for the growning brood

When you are blessed with 16 piglies in one go that is quite a considerable growth in the size of brood you are dealing with on a daily basis. 

As a consequence we have had to expand not only our pig compound but also our sleeping accommodation.  Paul spotted an advert on e-Bay for some Pig houses and we decided the extra flexibility that it would offer would be a real asset.  It means we can more easily move it around the field so the plan is in the summer to move the sows around and give our primary pig compound a much needed rest.

However, as you can see from this pictureit is quite large, much too large for Paul's trailer as it turns out.  Luckily the people we bought it from up near Daglingworth were immensely kind and allowed us to borrow their trailer to transport it back to Cleveland House.  They were so kind to take pity upon us novices and was a really practical demonstration of how phenomenal the spirit of commaraderie is amongst "pig people"!

Poor little ice breakers

It may not have been the coldest of winters but if you are a little piglie it has got pretty chilly on occasion and this funny white stuff all over the ground is jolly cold and as for the water trough, it is awfully lumpy despite all that banging by our Pig Keepers.

Indeed, we've had to take the hammer to break up the ice on the water trough on more than one occasion this winter.  Still, not as often as we had to last year and at least it was only a hammer and not a pick axe like we had to at one point!

Dressed for action

What lovely present! 

Just before Christmas our lovely wives had sneaked off for a girlie moment and raided our favourite retail outlet at our local CountryWide store to purchase the ultimate in pig raisers gear, all-in-one overalls!

And here are our valiant pig raisers in all their rather snug fitting glory.  Unfortunately the outfits were a little too snug, even allowing for a little extra Xmas padding, fortunately those nice people at CountryWide are entirely used to people buying these suits on the snug side and allowed us to exchange them for ones that are TWO sizes larger than we would normally wear.

Since then they have had pretty much daily usage as they are great to don for those early morning pig feeding sessions in the dark of the early new year.

Green & Black Pigs

Dealing with grass cuttings used to be a real chore. Now it is all part of the fun with our pigs. 

Deprived of grass much of the year they seem only too pleased to get a bit of green thrown over the fence at them.

They love rooting around even more than usual and if we hide their food under it that seems to make it even more fun!

Making Bacon

In short, after much hard work, ringing contacts then ringing contacts of contacts we eventually found a Berkshire boar that was not too far away in Burford.

One morning Neil cycled over like some proper farmer to view the prospective suitor for his gilts, known as Alphie  He met the family who owned him who were raising Alphie in an idylic location adjacent to the old Mill House in Burford.

A few weeks later her was introduced to our ladies and as it turns out it didn't take long at all before he had done the business and we were well on our way to Piglies.

Berkshire weaners for sale

We are now at the stage of letting the outside world know that we have some Berkshire weaners for sale.  We have posted a couple of notices

http://www.berkshirepigs.org.uk/tradeboard

http://www.thepigsite.com/forums

With pigs this cute, I'm sure we'll be innundated with enquiries.

Teeny weeny weaners - Berkshire Weaners for sale

Teeny weeny weaners

After the mythical "3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days" and quite a surprise one morning our piglets arrived, all 16 of them!  They were beautiful.


Our ladies took to being Mum so well completely unprompted by us, we just helped them along but by and large left them to it.


Soon we had the piglies running around the place meeting up with their cousins and just generally being cute.  Our kids loved it and have been very active in helping out and enjoying mucking in, quite literally as we will tell you about in a future entry.

Pregnant Pigs

Pig up the Duff??

It had always been one of our major ambitions as smallholder pig keepers to keep a couple of our gilts and find a suitable boar to get to the next stage and make piglets.  For various reasons we had been a little slow in getting round to it this year, partly because it proved just as hard finding a boar in the vicinity much as it had when we tried to re-stock our herd the previous year with rare breed weaners.

We eventually found a boar in not too far away Burford and I cycled over there one day to meet up with Alphie (short for Alpha Male) and his owners.  I felt like a classic old style farmer, meeting up with prospective business partners and checking them out along with their livestock. I needn't have worried, the couple who had the pig were lovely and things worked out very well.  We quickly came to an arrangement and Paul and I drove over one morning to usher Alphie into the horse box and take him away for his special summer holiday.

Now, being novices at breeding we had expected it would take a long time for Alphie to come up with the goods, but no sooner had we left him to get acquainted with our young ladies than he was spotted doing the business.  Despite this we ended up needing to get Richard Pearson from The George Veterinary Group to confirm whether they were pregnant or not and he was very kind and patient with us and all our questions, offering great advice with a lovely manner. 

See Alphie and the ladies in action here http://youtu.be/jtX9Rqdvqmc

Going back a while

Bacon Tasting

We have come a long way in the three years we have been keeping pigs.

I'm still not quite sure how it happened, but on dark February Saturday morning three of us ended up at one of the legendary Tony York Pigs Paradise "Pig Keeping in a day".  It was fascinating and he made it all sound so do-able.  

We spent a good few weeks pondering about how to go about it, planning things quite seriously as we knew it would be a major undertaking but so far, it has been hard work but brilliant fun on so many levels.  We have learnt so much about working the land, working with animals, understanding how to handle and cook meat.

One of the best experiences we have had so far was our very first Bacon tasting, pictured above.  We had managed to take our second batch of pigs to bacon and when we got the meat back I spent most of a blissful weekend eating bacon at every single meal.  We then organized a Bacon Testing Evening with our co-raisers, Alison and Paul Beadle and a couple of our close friends.  

We bought three different bacon rashers from a very well known local butcher, one from a local Lidl and had two of our own bacons.  I knocked up a little questionnaire / feedback form and cooked all the bacon the same.  In short, everybody spotted the least tasty bacon, placed the others according to individual taste, but the outstanding bacon of the night was our Smoked Berkshire.  It was a fantastic result and a GREAT evening.  

Right now as I write this my mouth is watering thinking about how good the meat was, especially after months of wading through waves of mud looking after our animals.  We will try to capture the ethos of how we go about things over our next few entries to try to capture the fun and enjoyment we get from doing this.