Norfolk is well known for its pigs - the landscape is dotted with large fields in which pigs roam freely. Given that pigs are known for their sensitivity and intelligence, it seems cruel to pen them in, battery-style. Here is an entirely typical scene I took a while ago:
... and, ninthly ...The fondness of East Anglians for pigs is so great that there is a covenant (local by-law) on my house specifically forbidding the keeping of pigs in the back garden. We have, naturally, found a way round this proscription:
We've been here before, of course. When bird flu was all the rage, quite a lot of attention was directed at the large intensive poultry installations run by Bernard Matthews, one of the region's biggest employers. We have our backyard poultry, too.We started with two Pekin bantams,
housed in an eglu, manufactured by omlet, which is a kind of spaceship for chickens.
We added a pair of Polish bantams
and then a couple of wyandottes
so that the eglu is now full. Now it's spring, the chickens are laying eggs with great abandon. Trouble is, there is only one nesting space in the eglu, and the rows, tantrums and arguments as the chooks jostle for space is like teenagers queueing for the bathroom.
Happily the solution is at hand. We've ordered an upgrade, the eglu cube,
Which can hold up to ten full-sized chooks, three of which can be laying simultaneously...
The temptation would be to get another couple of bantams, but we're already overflowing with eggs. Just about anyone who comes to the Maison Des Girrafes these days goes away with a boxful. Roll up, roll up.
What of the old eglu? We could sell it - these things hold their value - but it so happens that omlet manufactures a conversion kit allowing you to remodel your eglu for rabbits or guinea pigs, replacing the roosting bars with a flat base, feed bowl and so on. As chance would have it, we have eleven g-pigs, and are keen to move some into the eglu. As g-pigs are almost as filthy as the larger, non-guinea variety, we're keener to have them in the moulded plastic, easy-to-clean eglu than in their collection of wooden hutches, which is beginning to look like some kind of barrio. So everyone will be happy. And most of us will be thoroughly spoiled.
Thanks for the link. I hope to start a small farm myself one day and it's wonderful to see more and more people seeing the value of locally raised food.
ReplyDeleteThanks Eric. Me and Mrs Cromercrox dream of having a smallholding. I'd have a fruit orchard with chooks underneath (being jungle fowl, chooks enjoy living beneath trees and shrubs), and an enormous poly-tunnel in which I'd grow vegetables.
ReplyDeleteMrs Cromercrox wants to keep a pig, but hasn't grasped the idea that the whole point of a pig is not to be a pet but an efficient way of turning food scraps into meat, slaughtering them after a year or so to make into bacon, sausages, hams and so on. The great thing about pigs is that you really can use everything but the 'oink'. One pig can keep a family in meat for a year.
A problem you hint at in your blog is that intensive farms wouldn't be necessary if we had a more old-fashioned attitude to meat - something that was special, consumed mainly on special occasions, rather than something we expect to be served up every day. If we cultivated that attitude we'd probably be a lot healthier and so would our livestock.
but Henry, pigs aren't filthy. They are actually very clean animals. In their pen they have one place to sleep and one other place to poop and then they roll in mud to keep the skin ok (and protect against mosquitos).
ReplyDeleteyes, i like piggys :)
I'm sorry but not surprised to hear that the hog manufacturers have simply taken their operations to Mexico. Hog confinement politics is a big thing here, and there's well-organized statewide opposition to gigantic stinking leaking confinements. I think at this point if you want more than 2000 hogs, you have to mount a hell of a campaign, and even if you want to cozy up to that cutoff point you're going to have fierce problems from the neighbors and local legislators. Apparently Smithfield and its competitors have an easier time down south.
ReplyDeleteWell, most of the meat has to be destined for the US (and no, I don't particularly want to think about where the slaughterhouses are or what conditions the meat's stored in from slaughter through arrival at grocery stores). Looks to me like Upton Sinclair 2.0 for the postnational age -- people here will be so totally grossed out by the meat revelations that, you know, forget the people who work in those confinements or the condition of the animals themselves -- we don't want any o' that muck in our McMuffins. Have a Virus McMuffin, mmmm.
The price rise in pork products might be enough to turn the South Republican again.
chall, we've got small organicky hog farms here, and I bike past them as seldom as possible because the reek is unbelievable. And that's "unbelievable" on a scale of "we live with weeks' worth of 'honey wagon' odor drifting over town each year, and kind of get used to it" unbelievable. Enough to turn most people with noses into vegetarians. I'd actually gotten over my early training far enough to start eating pork chops -- Iowa is, after all, a fine place for it -- but now I can't anymore. I just smell that smell. I believe they're clean, I believe they're smart, and I"m also willing to believe that the stench from pig shit is a defense mechanism evolved to keep other creatures from eating them.
You know, the first case of the Swine Flue appeared in a wee city in my home state of Nebraska about a week ago.
ReplyDeleteNorfolk, Nebraska.
Hmm.
Amy - the pigs here in Norfolk don't appear to be too stinky - maybe because they tend to be fairly free-range. I can't help thinking they'd prefer it, though, in dense woodland, rather than in the open air.
ReplyDeleteShelly - that's just too weird to be a coincidence. No cases of swine flu in Norfolk (the real Norfolk, Norfolk) as far as I know, despite the large number of pigs.