An Awfully Pig Adventure
...or two go mad in Devon

Good food is never far from my mind. In pursuit of this goal, I was ambling through the River Cottage forum at the back end of last year when I stumbled across a thread extolling the virtues of properly reared and hung pork. One of the posts was from someone called Debbie, who farms in Devon. There was a link to her website, where I discovered that she ran a scheme called 'rear a pig'. Debbie raises Berkshire pigs on the lip of Exmoor, and will rear a piglet in happy organic idyll until it reaches baconer weight...at which time it goes quietly off to slaughter and the customer turns up to butcher and process the meat, paying a set price per kilo. I was intrigued. I kept reading the website until my curiosity got the better of me: a few emails to Debbie later and the price was settled. Debbie told me that a monthly update on my piglet was part of the deal: I was committed to the life and death of a living creature.

The gremlin in his early youth

I love meat and I love animals: the only way I can reconcile this is to ensure that the meat I buy has been raised ethically - which for me, means organically. Pricier? Yes, but I only eat meat twice a week. And if I'm going to eat meat, then I have to take responsibility for how that meat lands on my plate. Buying a piglet from Debbie took that one step further. Some people at work were horrified: how could I contemplate getting that close to something I was going to eat? How could I bear to look at pictures of something that I knew was going to die?  But for me, that's the whole point. Debbie told me that her pigs are weaned slowly; raised slowly (unlike supermarket pork); slaughtered at a local abattoir where the journey is short and the dispatch quick; and hung properly to develop the flavour and pay proper respect to the rare breed meat. 

I sent an email to like-minded friends and five of us formed the pig club, subscribing £5 a month. For this, everyone would get lots of sausages, chops, joints, bacon, and crubeens and ears for those who wanted them.

Debbie's OH, Simon, grasps the Gremlin

All through 2007, Debbie sent me monthly updates and pictures of how the piglet was thriving. Early on, she'd said that the piglets looked like gremlins; hence his nickname was born. By September, he was at the right weight, and Debbie, Josie (fellow pig club member and smallholding wannerbe) and I were planning the Great Weekend. Debbie recommended a nearby inn for us to stay in, and one dark October morning in London, Josie scooped me up from a railway carpark to begin our journey to north Devon.

We found the Staghunters Inn without problem, and marvelled at the beauty of the place. Over a cup of coffee, we wondered what Debbie and Simon would be like...so far, all our dealings had been done on trust...was this too good to be true? A pink haired woman wandered through the bar...yikes! Was that Debbie? No, as it turned out: Debbie and Simon were the smiling, friendly couple who turned up in their land rover to drive us the couple of miles via hairpin bends and hair-raising hills to Hidden Valley Farm, a magical place. We felt we'd fallen among friends - even more so when we arrived at Debbie and Simon's 22 acres of England. Dex the one-eyed border collie raced over to greet us, and the chickens and ducks waddled over. The gremlin's siblings were grunting happily in their paddock along with Rambo the ram, and Debbie led us over to meet Kylie, head mum; the General, Geraldine the she-boar, and assorted pigs and piglets. Debbie let me hug a piglet who squealed indignantly.

Then it was up to the house where we met the lovely great dane Darcy, and Debbie cheerfully told us to come up with a cutting plan. Josie and I eyed each other warily. We'd didn't have the first idea where to start. But with Debbie's help and a chart showing the different cuts of pork, we came up with a plan to take to Chris the butcher in the afternoon. First though, came lunch: a fantastic pumpkin baked with gruyere, Devon cream and Debbie's home cured pancetta, served with freshly baked bread.

Darcy at home

Lynmouth next stop, where Chris was waiting for us outside his shop. Chris is great - a brilliant teacher and very patient with us townies. Sadly, he's about to sell his shop. He told us that people either buy their meat in the supermarket (the vast majority) or go to a farmers' market. Small, independent butchers like Chris get squeezed out of the middle. 

Josie gets to grips with chop chopping

Our pig was now in two sides: Chris guided us through the cutting and we took it in turns to follow his instructions. Josie reigns as chop queen.

Put some wellie in it, love! Chris keeps a beady eye on the knife

After an hour or so, we had a great if wonky set of primal cuts - some set aside for joints, a few for bacon, and into the mincer with the shoulders and the trimmings. This part of the adventure was a revelation: butchery is a real art. And our pig was a dark rich red, unlike the spongy pink supermarket specimens. We packed up and back at Debbie and Simon's, talked through the order of battle for the next day. We'd be making sausages, including chorizo, and starting the cure for the bacon. The conversation strayed into food in all its forms; my dream of keeping chickens; Josie's longing for a place in the country; how Debbie and Simon came to be in Devon (which you can read about on their website. All in all, it had been a fabulous day. And it was rounded off perfectly with the most delicious supper at the Staghunters. 

Debbie loads the Kenwood

Debbie surprised us the next morning by showing us how to make butter: we'd talked about it the day before and I'd been surprised to hear that it was a simple process. Sure enough, after loading the mixer with double cream and a few minutes beating, (Debbie advised us to cover the mixer towards the end of the process or the solidifying butter will coat the kitchen with expelled buttermilk) a buttercup yellow lump emerged. 

A quick squish under the tap to get rid of the last buttermilk and it's ready for patting into shape. Astonishing.

The finished product

This was one I was going to try as soon as I got home. Next came the main event of the day: sausage making. Debbie had natural casings soaking ready, and we decided on three flavours: a light white pepper mix; apple and cider; sage. Then Debbie said, 'How about some smoked with lemon and thyme?' Oh yes! And we'd do the chorizo at the end. Simon popped in and asked if we'd like some trout to smoke and take home - another idea we couldn't resist.

Josie makes the first mix

Debbie added some organic rusk to the minced meat, and started us off, showing us how to load the skins onto the nozzle of the sausage maker. They're slithery little  critters, but after a while I got the hang of it. The next thing to learn was how to get an even sausage as the meat emerges from the nozzle into the casing - my first lot were very lumpy. But after a while, Josie and I got into a rhythm, and we were very proud when our first long banger emerged.

The first lot of sausages. The casings are soaking in the bowl at the back

The conversation turned to different sausage flavours, and someone mentioned merguez sausages. Debbie dug out a recipe and said that next time she could get some lamb mince for us to experiment with.

By now, we had a smooth operation going, and it was time to make the lemon and thyme sausages. The thyme came from the garden and smelt heavenly. Simon loaded them into the smoker, along with the trout.

The smoker sits just outside the house

As we waited for the smoker to work its magic, Simon took me up to the top field to see the turkeys. They rushed out of the shed, gobbling like crazy and coming towards us to see if there was any food going.

Back at the house, the smoked sausages emerged and we just had to do a quality control test. I can honestly say it was the best sausage I've ever eaten. Next came the final challenge to our casing skills: the chorizos. We added red wine, back fat and paprika to the mince and loaded the sausage maker. A minute later and a magnificent semi-circle of porkiness was ours.

Proud parent

Truly home made

By now, we had a magnificent haul of sausages sitting alongside our joints.

The heaving kitchen table

The final task was to start the bacon off, and Debbie showed us how to make the cure. No salt petre, but that's only added to keep the bacon bright pink. We'd need to keep the bacon in the cure for a few days, pouring off the moisture.

Beginning bacon

And that was almost it. The two days had flown by and we'd had a fantastic time in brilliant company. We settled up and had no hesitation at all in putting down a deposit for Gremlin 2. I really do think that if you're going to eat pork, this is the most ethical way to do it. And the meat is the best I've ever had. 

We loaded up the car and headed back to the smoke. On the way home, we easily slipped into mulling over what we'd do next time...

- next time we'd email a cutting plan to Debbie so that we could spend more time processing the meat

- next time we wanted to make salami and thai sausages and we had the beginnings of the idea for a chilli-sun dried tomato mix

- next time, we wanted to learn how to pluck and gut a chicken

- next time we wanted to try cheese making

- next time - hadn't Debbie mentioned fishing for mackerel?

Gremlin 2