Your Thoughts

Your Thoughts From Donna Newman

A Dream Borne from the Love of Bacon

Our pig keeping journey began in 2019 when Justin was sat looking out the kitchen window in to any empty field and suddenly said “I like Bacon” well I knew he liked bacon and wondered if he was hinting on what to have for tea, but he quickly followed up with “lets get some pigs” I agreed but the thought of it filled me with dread. I was scared of all farm animals, I even struggled with the chickens we already had, but being the supportive wife I went along with another one of Justin's crazy ideas thinking he would soon forget about it.

We visited other local pig farmers to see how they do it, what breeds they kept and the produce they had, most of them kept their pigs in sheds for faster growth and turn around, every farmer was full of advice and help, it also confirmed for us that we didn’t want pigs in sheds, we wanted them to have a natural outdoor life.

By August that year we had two cross breed pigs, I struggled in the beginning but soon got over my fear and actually started to enjoy these little characters, we wanted to see if we could go through the whole process of bringing these pigs on, taking them to slaughter and then enjoying the produce.

The meat we got back tasted like no other pork we had before and we were surprised that it was not a white-grey in colour like all the pork we had eaten before, we shared it with family and friends and soon news got around to others about our delicious pork.

We were now pigless and it felt strange, we had enjoyed the first experience and missed the day-to-day pig routine that we became so fond of. So Justin, again, set about finding more weaners and by Christmas we had another six which included Nugget and Dotty and that's where the real story began for us.

We fell in love with these two gilts and so they stayed, Nugget and Dotty are OSB x Tamworth. Their mother Sandy an OSB gave us our first experience of farrowing she also gave us our first real experience of farrowing she also gave us our first real experience of the hardship that can come with keeping livestock and shortly after weaning she had an accident , we tried to help her but there was no hope, little help from the vets and the knackerman was called upon. In all honesty it was the hardest thing we had dealt with, we hadn't had Sandy that long and seeing her go that way was heart wrenching and then you question if you are really cut out for it.

No longer do we need to rush, thinking and wondering if a landowner turns around and wants it back, we now take the time to do things how we want and when we want and to get it right with no pressure from anybody other than ourselves.

Justin is always looking to learn new things, he spent a lot of time finding the best grazing solutions for pigs which is working well, we have started using the pig rooting mix. We do not have electric at the Piggy Bank, so we have to find a reliable source for our electric fencing. Justin has installed a solar power system to power the electric fencing and to power a pump after installing a bore hole. Things he didn't really know about before but he enjoys the challenge of working out something new, so far these systems are working great and Justin is now teaching me how to understand it all, that's a challenge in itself.

So what of Happy Wallow, with all this time being spent at the Piggy Bank and Justin running a company surely there's little time for anything else, well that's where we share the load. I take care of the day-to-day running of Happy Wallow, our in-pig sows, farrowing and nursing mothers are here in our original field, we also have use of another field where we keep our meat weaners. I manage the meat sales, our produce has become very popular with new and returning customers. At the start of Happy Wallow, we were told by so many people to do just sausages as nobody wants joints or chops. I refused to listen as I wanted to provide the full variety of pork. We have found that sausages are popular because no others comparison, our joints, chops, belly and bacon sell out before its even picked up from the butcher, to the point now that I reduce my advertising until it is picked up and sorted into the freezer where it doesn't stay for long. We have a busy few weeks ahead with six pigs going off for our Christmas produce, I'm even going to try and hang on to some chops for ourselves this time before it all flies out the door!

It’s not been all plain sailing, last year we had some of the hardest times, things that made us question whether we could actually carrying on with what we were doing. We lost our beautiful Springer Pippa she had left the biggest hole in our hearts and then straight after Justin's favourite sow, Nugget farrowed, it was a difficult farrowing, nugget became ill and over the following weeks we lost every single piglet. Thankfully Nugget pulled through, we had changed vets since our first experience and the care they gave Nugget was faultless, we felt like everything was going wrong, there was so much loss of life that didn't even get a chance. How could we possibly carry on but at the same time how could we just give up on what we had left, we had hit a wall only we could break through and yes things have tried to break us but together we got through it and came through the other side fighting that much harder to get to where we wanted to be today.

I never thought back in 2019 that we would be where we are now, I thought it would be just those first two pigs and that would be it, but here we are growing, following a dream achieving things I didn't think possible!

From Justin deciding he liked bacon we started on a journey that has made us both realise what we want out of this life, it opened up a dream that one day we would have our own piece of this earth, we would live a simple yet good life, one that is a lot of hard work but one that we enjoy because we are building for our retirement and we are doing it now so when the time comes we can sit back, relax and enjoy the life we are creating because we have already put in the hard graft.

Donna & Justin Newman Happy Wallow

07977249386

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