On Friday we picked up some of the Berkshire Pig pork from the Old Weston Garden Farm small-holding, located only a few miles away from our village. We’d seen the pigs (they also have some Gloucester Old Spots which I’m writing more about now) the weekend before, trudging through the glutinous mud bath that was the current state of their fields and placed an order then, as they’d told us that the next male was off to the the local butcher (Hellett & Sons) at Kimbolton to be slaughtered during the coming week.
A comparatively new venture, run by Sylvia and John (and helped by a couple of part-time local assistants), they have a few acres on which they’re producing vegetables, chickens (and great multi-coloured eggs), turkeys for Christmas and, of course a little pork. This isn’t a big business, is incredibly hard work — they live in a caravan, are pretty much off-grid, having only solar panels for a small amount of electricity — and is one that we love to encourage and continue to buy from.
Vegetable sales start again later in the year (after the waters soak away and they can actually be seen and harvested!) from their millimetre-precisely laid out Kitchen Garden, designed in the French ‘Pottager’ style, mixing vegetables, flowers, fruit and herbs and they’re also halfway through building a metal barn from which they’ll be able to sell & to cook and prepare their food products inc. a great runner bean chutney.
Val is drawing the pigs & the chickens soon, so keep an eye on Pencil and Leaf.
Like Brian and Sylvia at Rectory Reserve, OWGF rightly make much of the healthy nature of the fat made from their pigs. Their own leaflet says it all:
