Banging on about black pigs in Bardi

There's one thing that's really confronted me in Europe - not the languages, or the right-hand driving, or the complicated shower fittings - but simply the empty paddocks.

At home I look out the window and see pigs, cattle, sheep, ducks, the neighbours' horses, goats and alpacas. At night you can spy wallabies, possums, rabbits, and the occasional owl or devil.

After a few days in Italy I got pretty desperate to see some black pigs, but they were hard to track  down.

The black pig that's native to the Parma area has a similar story to the Wessex Saddleback - it lost popularity when agriculture became more intensified, but has had a come-back in the last decade or so.

However, finding a market for the meat hasn't been easy, and many farmers have given up on their black pigs.

So I was thrilled when we made contact with some free range black pig farmers who were very willing to spend time talking pigs with us.

Thank you to Yoli Meneghetti and Giacomo Belli from Agriturismo Ca del Fuoco. Film production by Bronwyn Purvis.

Pig farmer visits a shepherd

Pecora Cornigliese, a set on Flickr.

While we were staying at Agriturismo Casanuova, in the Province of Parma, we heard about a rare breed of sheep that was making a comeback in the area.

The Pecora Cornigliese is an old breed native to the mountains near Parma. It's useful for milk, meat, and wool.

The breed has become rare because of a shortage of shepherds. In the village I visited, Rigoso, there used to be about 20 shepherds. Now there are less than a handful - including the one I met, Onorato.

The shepherds receive support from the EU (15 Euros per animal, per year), but there doesn't seem to be support to help them get their products to the markets.

Italians don't actually eat much lamb, so the future of this breed may be determined by how well it is marketed.

A special breed

X4 and her calf at Mount Gnomon                       Photo: Eliza Wood

It’s been more than two years since our first Traditional Dairy Shorthorn cattle stepped off a truck onto Mount Gnomon Farm at Penguin, in Tasmania’s north-west.

When Warrick and Betty Holmes sold their girls, we were very fortunate to be given the opportunity to buy a portion of the herd.

Since then, the numbers have slowly grown, and we now have almost 20 females on the property.

We have sourced additional heifers from local dairy farmer Symon Jones, who lives just over the mountain from us.

The dairy shorthorns give us so much pleasure – they are stunning to look at, and they are friendly and easy to handle.

You also never know what you’re going to get at calving time. Often the roan cows produce white calves, and the white cows surprise us with roan calves.

Our goal has always been to direct-market their meat and engage consumers in the dairy shorthorn story.

As the first steer grew closer to size, we crossed our fingers that his meat would fulfill our expectations.

We remember that first piece of porterhouse so well. It was buttery, beautifully marbled and had a texture like none of the other breeds we had processed.

The feedback from the customers across the markets in Tasmania was incredibly positive, and that confirmed in our minds that this was the meat breed we wanted to keep.

Supply has been the biggest issue, and we have sourced young steers from Victoria to fatten on our farm to supplement our own production. It means we can provide customers with dairy shorthorn meat more frequently, and continue to promote the breed while our own numbers increase.

The dairy shorthorn in listed on the Ark of Taste – an international list of flavours at risk of extinction. Our meat was a feature of Slow Food Hobart’s Christmas dinner, which Guy attended (for quality control, of course!).

Our future plans include increasing our production of dairy shorthorn meat; milking a handful to supplement our weaned Wessex saddleback pigs; and promoting the dairy shorthorn as a perfect cow for the smallholder.

Next year we will open a rare breeds interpretation centre on the farm, at which we will hold courses on keeping house cows, making cheese and yoghurt, and numerous animal-related topics. The possibilities are endless!

Shopping for Shrops

“I don’t eat anything unless it’s got a black nose,” says Neil Neilson, third generation Shropshire sheep breeder from Victoria.

Neil’s in his mid-80s and still farming the unforgiving soil at Baringhup, to the north of Ballarat.

“When we have visitors and we have a roast they all say, ‘oh that’s the best roast we’ve ever had - it’s so sweet’, but it is.”

Neil’s family has had Shropshires since around 1860, when his grandfather bought 20 of the first ewes introduced to Australia from England.

Once in Australia, Shropshires took off, particularly in Tasmania. In the 1890s three ‘elite’ Shropshire breeders immigrated to Tasmania with their flocks.

The Shropshires had a big impact on the sheep meat industry. Before 1900 about 20,000 lamb carcasses left Australia each year. Ten years later there were several millions, and 70 per cent of them were sired by Shropshires.

The boom in popularity was unfortunately followed by a sharp drop after the First World War. It seems European housewives wanted smaller joints as they balanced their budgets, and the Shropshire was too big. Neil Neilson says he can also remember the Shropshire hides being unpopular because they had black skin around the head and legs.

There are now only about 10 registered flocks in Australia, and after many months of planning we have bought a little flock and reintroduced them to Tasmania.

We bought 27 ewes from the Neilsons, and we sourced a ram and another ewe from Fiona and Nicholas Chambers of Daylesford, Victoria. We carted the ram and single ewe home on our ute on the boat, and had so much pleasure telling the other passengers about our special cargo. A couple of months later a transport company brought over the rest of the flock.

Neil has been reminding us how important it is to keep the sheep pure, and cull the ones that aren’t up to standard.

“My dad always used to say to us, ‘if you want to keep something pure you’ve got a big job. You’ve only got to make one mistake and introduce one ram that’s not as good as it should be, and you start back to scratch again’.

“We’ve all been very careful with the Shrops and we’re proud of that.”

He says it’s hard to find pure flocks in Australia, and many have been crossed with other breeds. It will be a challenge for us to source rams of good type.

We feel a deep sense of responsibility now we’ve got the Shropshires. It’s raining at the moment, and the sheep are out in the paddock sheltering their young lambs. There are a couple of ewes still with bulging, low tummies waiting to give birth.

We have a responsibility both to the breed and the Neilsons. This is the first time they’ve sold a group of their ewes as a flock. It’s such a credit to them that they have kept their stud going for so long.

“They seem to have a better constitution than most sheep, and that’s really why we’ve stuck to them,” Neil says.

“They seem to be able to turn their tucker into fat and meat quicker than anything else.”

Listen to Neil tell the story of when he almost lost all his Shrops, and see the photos of our new lambs.