Thornhill House: Pig share day

Here on our little homesteading, we don't have the acreage to accomodate anything much bigger than poultry or waterfowl or...next Spring...bees.

We are, however, keen to eat meat that has been farmed and looked after well. When we found the opportunity to join a pig share scheme we jumped at the chance and have joined with some of our bestest of pals to go halves on a pig.

The pig, a Gloucestershire Old Spot is being raised on several acres of open farmland in Somerset, so today myself and the kids went down to Cats Drove Farm in Somerset to meet the piglets and the mum and to start our journey.
The Gloucestershire Old Spot is a very old and rarer breed so the double whammy is that you're also helping to keep this breed going by buying their meat. It might sound a bit of an oxymoron, but if you want a breed to continue, there needs to be demand. Apparently, once you've tasted GOS, you'll never eat a regular pig again - I can't say I can vouch for this in pork, I only know that our farm shop's lamb far out ranks anything we have ever eaten, and they're a rare breed - so fingers crossed.

We also want our children to know how food gets on their plates and to have an interest in what they put in their mouths rather than just thinking that food comes in pre-packed polystyrene from the supermarket.
Obviously they know that from the eggs, preserves and veg, so the next logical step was for meat.

We felt that pork was our best starting point as we do eat it in a huge variety of forms and for children, particularly, knowing where sausages come from or bacon is, in my mind, the best meat to begin with.

So, enough about that, here are a few photos of our day which was lots of fun despite the crazy drive there and back in a day.

The farmer will send us updates through the next six months and we'll receive photos too, we will visit again when we go down to Somerset in the summer and then just before the pigs go to slaughter we'll receive a leaflet with information about cutting and we can state how we want it butchered. We then go back in September to pick up the butchered meat for our freezers.