Newsletter-Spring 2007

Bacon Battles

 

The pig is the internal combustion engine of the small mixed farm; expressions like “on the pig’s back”; “bring home the bacon”; “make a pig’s ear of it” and the ever present china piggy bank on every mantelpiece remind us of the huge importanceof the pig in our diet, our finances and our folklore.

Our pigs are a great delight to look after. They are housed in a rickety hut on a deep bed of straw with a half inch of plywood between them and the cold night air.

They are fed in troughs with 4-5 lbs of barley meal per pig per day mixed with whey if we can get it. They have clean water delivered from an automatic drinker day and night. In addition to the diet of barley we feed them bucketfuls of vegetable tops, stalks, damaged carrots, and potatoes that don’t make the grade - all in all a mixed diet with the additional daily ‘rootle’ in the dark stony soil to top up with any trace elements that are going.

We started off by buying weaners from Rob Shepherd, our local, professional and very experienced pig farmer. Weaners, you may remember, are 8 week old piglets which have been weaned off their mothers and are made ready for the next part of their lives which in the case of Futurefarms, is a riotous outdoor existence in the company of chickens, sheep and spiraling skylarks. Now, we have become more adventurous, and we buy weaners

from different farms in order to try and find the perfect breed to suit Martin. We have had Wessex Saddlebacks from Kingston Maurward College of Agriculture in Dorset; we have bought Berkshires from Homington Farm; at the moment we have 5 British Blacks from Bill Parker, Tarant Gunville and, next, we are hoping to buy 5 Tamworths from Nick Ings in Tidpit Quarry - they are very tasty and have orange hair! Out of all of this work we shall decide on a breed of pig that is robustly ‘outdoor’; suited to Martin soil; with good mothering habits and with not too much ‘back fat’ for our hungry villagers, then perhaps - when all these ducks are lined up in a row – we can start breeding our own piglets.

The pigs are under our care from 8 weeks old until they reach an age of between 21 and 25 weeks. At this point the pigs weigh about 70-100 kilos. We carefully load them into Ashley Brown’s freshly washed and strawed trailer. Ashley then drives them, two at a time, to the Sturminster Newton abattoir on a Monday to be killed. The carcasses hang in a cold room for 3 days for the meat to ‘set'. They are then transported to Price the butcher in Fordingbridge on Thursday and butchered for us according to instructions written out by Jane. She collects the joints and sausages packed and labelled and she delivers them to the village hall on Friday. All the items are weighed and logged and stacked in the display fridge for the Saturday market. The meat is sold fresh on a Saturday and any leftover is frozen.

Here is a quote from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “The River Cottage Cook Book” (Harper Collins) page 141:

“The best way to ensure the pork you eat comes from contented, well fed, properly cared-for stock is to buy and rear the pigs yourself. This is not such a wildly impractical option as most people might think--------“

Well - he’s right - we can all be assured of these principles at Futurefarms and we can all have the satisfaction of joint ownership of our pigs and of the way they are raised.

THE GAUGE

The springs are up in every corner of the valley. Fresh water bubbling out of every fissure in the chalk and every manhole in the road. Martin High Street would have been impassable at this time of year until the 1 metre diameter drain was installed under the road in 1936. Reg Butcher worked on the gang that laid it. Anyway it’s good to see all that rainfall coming back to the surface. I forecast a drier than average February since the dykes are already FULL (fill-dyke February). Keep squeezing the seaweed.

November Rainfall on Martin

Year

Depth (mm)

2000

1171.0

2001

943.0

2002

1180.0

2003

825.0

2004

931.0

2005

703.0

2006

107.5

Best Wishes - The ‘Gauge’

VEG NOTES

Have you seen how good the sprouts are this season? How does Janet manage to get sprouts from October until February? There is such a fabulous selection of onions and potatoes, leeks and carrots and fresh spicy Chinese leaves from the polytunnel all on sale; and mini-carrots and feathery kale and stunted mushrooms because they have had no heat just to see what would happen -oh- and three sorts of potatoes and beetroot.

Can we have some rhubarb soon? Alison has got parsley in her garden as if it were May time. The Gauge is just back from the climate conference in Paris - he is very gloomy.

Futurefarms Recipe for Spring

WELSH SAVOURY (serves 2)

Ingredients:

1lb (450g) Desiree or Wilja potatoes
one medium onion, sliced
1/2 oz (15g) plain flour
1/2 oz (15g) butter
1/4 pint (150ml) milk
2oz (60g) grated cheese
2 slices bacon, chopped (optional)

In a greased ovenproof dish, arrange a layer of potatoes and onions, sprinkle with all of the flour, season with salt and pepper, dot with some of the butter and sprinkle with some of the cheese and the bacon (if used). Add further layers of potatoes, onions, cheese, butter and seasoning. Finish with a layer of potatoes. Sprinkle with a little cheese and dot with butter. Pour over the milk and cover the dish with foil. Bake in the oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit (190 degrees Centigrade) for 50-60 minutes. Remove foil after 30 minutes to allow the top to brown.

Serve as a main course with a green vegetable or salad.

Don’t forget, all the main ingredients can be purchased from Futurefarms.

AGM Caption Competition

At the recent Futurefarms AGM, attendees were invited to suggest a caption for this picture taken when BBC Radio 4 visited the Saturday Market.

The winner of the caption competition was :-

Helen Baynes,of Coombe Bissett, Salisbury, with the following :-

“Other way up it’ll make you a nice halo”

                          NEW MOTHER HEN

We have decided to brood the day old chicks in the outdoor huts. Up to now they have been kept in coops at Folliots Farmyard under infra-red lights and moved up to the open field at 6 weeks old. On the day they arrive we put them in the centre of the insulated hut within a temporary circle of hardboard like a giant loo roll measuring 60mm to the top (and no Heidi, they do not have any windows to look out of!). The quill drinker is suspended above the chicks and the new calor gas brooder has its hood lowered to the optimum height to give 35 degrees Celsius at the point - of chick. It throws a lovely rounded heat and the new arrivals soon forget about the journey, unpack and settle in.

As the chicks grow we can reduce the temperature by one degree Celsius per day until we reach 17 degrees Celsius. By this time they are feathered-up and we can switch off the heat. As they grow we increase the floor area of the ‘loo roll’ and introduce straw over the wood shavings. The great advantage over brooding somewhere else is the solid health factor: they grow up with one set of parasites; they suffer no stress from being moved up to the Huts (in crates) at 6 weeks old; they feather up faster under the new conditions in the well insulated, well ventilated huts; and the gas brooder throws a broader heat than the infrared “sun beds”.

It has been a lesson slowly learnt.

It is thoroughly satisfying for us all to have made a difference; a small adjustment and our birds are happier and healthier.

Futurefarms Diary. Forthcoming events

Onion Planting – 24th March to include Cream Tea.

Leek Planting – 30th June to include Cream Tea.

Contact Nick Snelgar if you are going to attend. (Tel. No. 07811 726934)

FIND YOUR FOOD IN A FIELD NEAR YOU.

NEXT TIME: Discussion on Veg; Food Labelling; Living on the Chalk (versus living on the clay)