Our journey into keeping pigs in the woods began as a lockdown project in 2020. Whilst others baked sourdough, we built an ark which would fondly become known as Porkingham Palace.
Porkingham palace became home to three Large Black pigs, Pumba, Kevin and Sausage!
The desire to keep our own pigs came about when we tried to source free range pork for our own freezer. We couldn’t find anywhere local where we could get a regular supply and it became obvious that if we wanted it, we were going to have to grow it ourselves!
Our first ‘trial’ pigs lounged around in a paddock by our house for far too long. We didn’t realise that a pig could get quite so over-fat, and our first joints and chops had about a three inch layer of crackling on top! But we thoroughly enjoyed having them and knew we wanted do it again.
The following year we took an entire litter of Saddleback pigs with the hope to offer the pork to our customers, but now we needed more space! We are fortunate to have a large acreage of woodland which had become wild and overgrown over many years. We also have a large area of woodland by our lake which had become impassable due to invasive bamboo! Plenty of work for our growing pigs to do.
Our woodland pigs worked their way effortlessly through the wood which they cleared beautifully. The following Spring we had bluebells in the wood!
There were two pigs that remained at home with us that summer, Dolly & Rosie! The girls were to become our breeding sows. Big, friendly and fearless, our lovely ladies spent the summer breaking into our garden, visiting us in the house and regularly sunbathing on our patio. They even joined us (uninvited) on the bouncy castle at a third birthday party! At a year old they went to the woods to join Winston, our boar that we had bought in as a weaner and been rearing for the occasion. Several months later we welcomed our first ever piglets (twenty in total) to Butterbox Farm!
So what began as the story of three little pigs very quickly became the story of nearly 30 pigs roaming our woodland, with more litters to follow every 6 months.
The pigs have been an exciting learning curve for us. They are strong willed, immovable when they choose to be, and will gladly whip a bucket of food from your hand and have you over in the mud if you aren’t fast enough! But we couldn’t imagine our farm without them now, they have certainly bought that quiet woodland to life.
And the pork, it is exceptional!
There were two pigs that remained at home with us that summer, Dolly & Rosie! The girls were to become our breeding sows. Big, friendly and fearless, our lovely ladies spent the summer breaking into our garden, visiting us in the house and regularly sunbathing on our patio. They even joined us (uninvited) on the bouncy castle at a third birthday party! At a year old they went to the woods to join Winston, our boar that we had bought in as a weaner and been rearing for the occasion. Several months later we welcomed our first ever piglets (twenty in total) to Butterbox Farm!
So what began as the story of three little pigs very quickly became the story of nearly 30 pigs roaming our woodland, with more litters to follow every 6 months.
The pigs have been an exciting learning curve for us. They are strong willed, immovable when they choose to be, and will gladly whip a bucket of food from your hand and have you over in the mud if you aren’t fast enough! But we couldn’t imagine our farm without them now, they have certainly bought that quiet woodland to life.
And the pork, it is exceptional!
Our free range pork is available weekly from our farm in Scaynes Hill, West Sussex
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