Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as (Pork Life)
(apologies to Blur)
We haven’t spent much time on the blog talking about pigs, but we should. They were the first animals to arrive on Achray Farm (apart from the cats that we brought with us) and have helped to set the scene for what we have thought about and planned since.
These are ‘Brave’ and ‘Red’ (or sometime ‘Napoleon’ and ‘Dynamite’, names that never really stuck). They are Oxford Sandy and Black, or OSB for short. An ancient line of British “rare breed” in all but official capacity (it’s complicated!). They were recommended for their temperament and hardiness and have fitted in perfectly and been a pleasure to keep.
The boys arrived in the middle of April, when a keen wind could still blow up from the Loch and spent their first week heading out to the fields in the morning after overnights bedding down in the straw in a stable. After a week their “ark” a heavy-duty recycled home arrived from Solway Recycling and they moved permanently outdoors where they have remained. It’s hard to imaging them now, the pair arriving together in one dog crate in the car — we’ve just invested in a small livestock trailer to move them next!
Running Achray Farm on permaculture principles means that everything has more than one purpose and each element works together. Pigs are enormously powerful diggers and rooters and their job was to clear, and overturn rush-infested fields and fertilise at the same time – ready for planting. That worked amazingly well in one paddock and we leaned that scaling the size of run to the animals is important to see results. In their three fields the pigs have made dens, wallows and can run at some speed when an errant crow bugs them. Below is Red enjoying a wallow they created whilst Scotland enjoyed a long dry, sunny May.
Pigs are also renowned escape artists and one evening, 24 hours before leaving the farm with sitters for a break, we came home at dusk to see a mislocated shape munching in the duck pen. All gates appeared secure and a frantic coaxing with the feed bucket in the dark brought Red back into his field. The next morning, a stockfence post was discovered loose from scratching and we worked out he had trotted through the polytunnel and veg garden without destroying anything on the long way round to snack on the duck feed. Very lucky!
We’ve loved our boys and leaned a lot – including how to weigh a pig who really won’t stay still! Now, in September, the story comes to another chapter. It is time for the beasts to go to market before they become too big for the abattoir. This is a difficult time, our first and we are feeling pretty conflicted. We know they have had a great outdoor life and we have shown that we can produce high quality welfare food for the local community visitors alike.
If you are local and are interested in our food supplies, you can find Achray Farm produce in fantastic local food establishments such as Nature’s Corner, Callander, or contact us directly via this website or the Facebook page.