escape

Went on the River Cottage "pig in a day" butchery course last week,
which was most informative and instructive, learning to use every part
of the carcass - as they say, the only part you can't eat is the
squeal. With the help of master butcher Ray Smith, we made sausages,
hams, salamis, chorizo, roasts, pancetta, bacon, stuffed tenderloins,
liver pate, faggots, brawn et al and still got home in time for tea.
However, this did mean that I started viewing our pigs in an entirely
different light, measuring them up for the different cuts and feeling
them all over to make sure they're laying down a good store of fat...

Perhaps sensing the possible threat, two of the pigs made a bid for
freedom. They had evidently formed an escape committee during the
night and tunnelled under the wire. Having made it to the field,
though, the sight of all that lush green grass evidently made them
abandon their plan and when I arrived in the morning with Poppy they
were busy ploughing it up with their snouts. A couple of slices of
ginger cake was enough to coax them back into their pen.

I brought a rather nice sticky toffee pudding for them, made in the
best Sharrow Bay manner by slicing it in half after baking and filling
with treacle sauce before allowing to go cold and then reheating with
yet more sauce over the top. The pigs thought it was good, too.
Poppy, of course, was green with envy and stole a Hobb's House crusty
baguette out of the box, slinking off to a corner of the field to
nurse it undisturbed.

For the smaller pigs I had brought some rather nice lemon sponge
puddings (no suet, of course, Heaven forbid!), which had fallen off
the end of the menu and needed hasty consuming - the piglets obliged,
naturally, by consuming them hastily, before tucking into the fruit
box. I also sneaked an almond croissant to Polly when the others
weren't looking and she very generously shared it with her sister.
Poppy, as usual, was green with envy and made a complete nuisance of
herself, trying to get at the food first, snapping at the piglets and
being thoroughly beastly. She even chased them into their pen when
time was up, which actually made my job a lot easier as they're not
the easiest animals to round up.

cake

For some reason we seem to have been discarding a lot of cake
recently, the main beneficiaries, of course, being the pigs. Mother
pig came out to greet me as usual and was particularly grateful when I
gave her a considerable piece of chocolate fudge cake, courtesy of a
celebration cake Grace had made which involved a lot of hollowing out
- see picture

Polly and her sister enjoy an almond croissant

mangoes

Now that the thaw has set in, the pigs' living space has reverted to
its normal state - ie knee-and in places thigh-deep in thick glutinous
mud. The piglets are ok with this, but mother pig rarely ventures off
the concrete area where her ark is sited, because if she does, she
sinks up to her udders in seconds and might well disappear without
trace like the floundering villain in "Hound of the Baskervilles".

Still, it's nice to visit them and see them basking in spring sunshine
- their snouts taste the air the moment I appear to see what I might
have for them today - less than there might have been as the bloody
freegans have raided the veg box I was saving for the pigs, taking all
the apples. Luckily the best stuff was hidden under a layer of slimy
lettuce which they declined to move, Clifton's freegans being of the
more sensitive variety and not liking to get their hands dirty.

Anyway, I gave the pigs curly kale and cavolo nero, but they ignored
it, rightly suspecting there was better to come. They tried an very
soft avocado with some garlic, a kind of deconstructed guacamole, in
best Michelin-starred restaurant style; then they had a few dried
apricots but when I produced some large Ecuadorean mangoes which had
"gone over" they went into raptures and devoured them with little
piggy squeals and grunts of pleasure - so fast that not even Poppy the
greedy labrador who currently holds the world record for speed-eating
could have matched the rate at which these disappeared. As mangoes,
they went. Very fast indeed

The pigs are again under a fresh blanket of snow. I struggled up the
hill with a huge basket of fruit and plonked it down for them, gasping
for air. There were apples, bananas, plums and grapes - it felt like a
hospital visit to a huge family of porcine invalids. There were also
teacakes and - dare I admit - Rhodda's Cornish clotted cream (a kilo
of it...)I did think twice before bringing this last item and not
because it was two days out of date, though still good. Then I
remembered that Parma ham is made from pigs that have been fattened on
the whey from parmesan production, and very tasty it is too. And as
for the old adage that a moment on the lips... well, a lifetime on the
hips is exactly what the pigs need and I don't see why they should be
any less spoilt than their Italian counterparts.

I did hear somewhere that Gordon Ramsay complained Sarah Boyle has a
face like a pig - how insulting, my daughter said, coming from someone
with a face like crackling...

snowed-in pigs

It's been impossible to drive up to the farm and see the pigs for
nearly a week now. They live at the top of a very long, narrow winding
lane which the snow and ice has rendered virtually impassable to
vehicles. Not that this has prevented plenty of people from trying,
though. Each day I've walked up there I've encountered someone
valiantly (or stupidly) trying to negotiate the hill. You can see by
the frantic skid-marks who's got the furthest - maybe someone should
install marker posts and award points... They usually get so far up,
lose traction and then their car begins to slide gracefully but
inexorably, like the rock of Sysiphus, back down the slope. We stopped
to help the first few, but we've become inured to the sight now and
just trudge past on our way to the farm, laden with treats.

Mother pig, I have decided, is a true epicurean if you strip away the
hairy wrapping. She waits in crocodile sleep whilst I attend to her
offspring in the other pens, the twitching of her tail the only
giveaway to her alertness. Only as I approach her pen does she come up
to greet me, a porcine Clement Freud, snuffling at my bag to see what
might be inside. Today, when I spread out the contents, she inspected
them all before deciding on a crust of Hobbs House 100% organic rye
sourdough, closely followed by a slice of our own home-made soda
bread. She moved on to a pile of apple cores - the remnants of a spicy
apple and currant chutney we made yesterday - and finished with a
generous chunk of ginger cake which I'd found lurking in the bottom of
the freezer. After she'd chomped her way through that she cast around
for remnants and then her eyes lit on me asking was there any more?
When I said there wasn't she turned mournfully away and went back to
her ark, having a last look on the way for perhaps that elusive post-
prandial truffle.

On the way back we came upon a place where the road was covered in a
sheet of ice, perhaps from a burst water main. I had great fun
throwing sticks for Poppy and watching her scrabble around like some
elephantine Bambi. I got my come-uppance though, when she came
charging towards me, lost her footing and then rolled into me, sending
me arse-over-tit down the hill.