We are very passionate about our animals and our main priority is giving them a good quality of life. All our pigs are kept outdoors, the sows are allowed to farrow in theIr own arks. The piglets usually start to come out of the arks within the first 24 hours, our view is not to interfere unless it is absolutely necessary. Even our 2 boars Nigel and Ralph are in outdoor pens.
We have been fortunate enough to keep our pigs on our neighbours farm since 2000. The Tobutt family produce seasonal apples, pears and seasonal soft fruits. The pigs are fed all the fallen fruit from the farm which we feel adds to the superb taste of our meat.
Our main breeding sows are pedigree Saddlebacks and Oxford Sandy and Blacks, Nigel the boar is a Saddleback.
To update you about what has been happening in 2011, the pigs have featured in 3 television programmes the first being with Matt and Allegra's Big Farm Adventure on the Good Food Channel, they then appeared on Channel 4 on the Drop Down Menu and lastly 2012 we are looking forward to seeing them on the Hungry Sailors ITV at 4.00pm on the 10th of February. Fantastic programme we have been enjoying Dick and James adventures.
The pigs also feature in Andrew Webbs book titled Food Britannia!!! Worth reading.
Also Dick and James Strawbridge cooked our ham and bacon on This Morninig and our son David went on the Alan Titchmarsh show to talk about pig farming.
2009 Andrew Webb a Channel 4 food journalist, he came and spent an afternoon with us feeding the pigs and has put a write up about the farm on the Channel 4 Food Map, if you would like to read what he has to say just go on our link page and click on Channel 4 Food Map.
We went to the Earls Court Food Festival and one of the House and Garden jounalist tasted our sweet cured gammon and give us a free advert in the magazine.
Vine magazine came down and visited us for an afternoon and wrote a lovely article about our pigs.
We also have been in the Kent Life Magazine and Martina Cole who is one of our customers mentioned us in the Food Monthly Magazine, which is great for us.
One of the Daily Mail journalists bought a whole pig from us, he did a field to fork write up which was interesting to read. He didn't enjoy eating the ears, but said if he was going to eat a whole pig it had to be a well looked after pig!!!
BBC Radio Kent has visited us 3 times now interviewing Chris and our son David on different aspects of pig farming. They talked about the difference of free range pig farming to intensive, the cost of pig food which we all know has risen dramatically and an academy for pig farmers.
We would like to thank everybody that supports us and believes in what we are doing. THANK YOU!!
