Celebrating 12 months on the farm

It’s been a year since we backed a rent-a-truck up to the garage, unloaded our furniture, and lit the first fire in our woodheater.

And it’s a year since we drove a horse-float of sows up the driveway, and walked our boar Domino down the lane, past a pig-rooting miniature horse we inherited with the property.

(Sandy, 28, had an inbuilt hatred of pigs, apparently common in horses. He now lives with Eliza’s mum, for fear of a heart attack the pigs might provoke).

We thought it would be good to take this chance to look out the window and reflect on what we’ve done over the past 12 months - instead of just looking out and making a list of what we still need to do.

We’ve built our breeding herd from 10 to 20 sows and have been producing pig meat each week for the past seven months. It is amazing to think that with our small herd we are now the largest free range pig farmers in Tasmania, and we believe we have the second largest herd of Wessex Saddleback sows in the world.

With so many pigs breeding, we’re now seeing some of the genetic traits that we thought were lost coming back. Large litters are appearing on a regular basis. Phantom, our star sow, has got 13 piglets at the moment, and last litter she had 12. But while about half of our sows are having these big litters, we’ve still got ones producing only six or seven, so there’s still improvement to be made.

Thousands of metres of wire and hundreds of posts have been set up to keep in the growing number of pigs. The neighbours say we could keep in rhinos.

About 600 native trees have been planted in shelter belts to buffer us and the pigs against the amazing winds that come from the west and to increase the habitat for native birds. Why wasn’t there wind on the day when we came with the real estate agent? It blew constantly for six months after settlement.

Guy squeezed 40 fruit trees into the orchard, with Eliza telling him that if he was going to put them in that close together it’d be interesting to see what his pruning skills were like when they grew a bit.

The veggie garden is providing all our vegetables. Guy has agreed to leave Eliza to it, and not make comment about the ‘artistic’ layout or her extreme water efficiency.

The pigs are still digging up the future berry patch...

We’ve survived our first couple of Business Activity Statements. Just. A good hot meal, beer, and plenty of ham seems to encourage our accountant to wade through our lounge floor filing system.

And we think we’re making a bit of progress on the big goal – bringing back the Wessex Saddleback and teaching people about rare breeds, real food, and ethical meat production.

It’s rare for a weekend to go by without a chef or a family dropping in to watch the piglets run around and scratch a grunting sow.

We’d like to thank everyone who’s helped us on the farm, bought our pork, and heartily promoted what we’re doing. One of the main highlights of the past year has been meeting like-minded, passionate people.

While we’re proud of our first 12 months on the farm, we’re quite aware that this is still just the beginning of the journey.