With all the new planting and the resulting squeeze on space we’ve decided to let friends in Dorset have our two sows. In return we’ll get a couple of weaners each Spring and only have to find ground enough to keep them through til end of Autumn. The perfect solution perhaps. Today our last two went to the slaughterhouse so for the first time in four years we are without pigs, and I’m not sure I like it. Four years not only of eating our own meat, making our own (okayish) bacon, our own (magnificent) sausages, our own (poor to outstanding) salami, but four years of daily feeding and care after the previous 15 not eating meat
After a couple of days of enjoying getting stuck into whatever straight away and not having to go out to feed them first thing the place now feels a bit lacking, and without movement and punctuation to the farm day. And after all that time as a vegetarian I thought I’d totally adjusted to the end of the cycle, perhaps even relaxed about it – but as I drove off from the slaughterhouse today I realised that it’s only then that I put the car stereo on