'Why are they being sprayed?'
'To make sure the electricity does its job,' Trevor replies. At that moment, Ryan clamps the two prongs of the stun gun around the head of the pig which is now on the floor, its left back leg attached to the chain. He presses the button, pumping I.3 amps of electricity through its brain for just over three seconds. The pig squeals once, loudly, its back legs jerking up towards its stomach while its front legs stretch stiffly forwards. It is a horrible, gut-wrenching squeal and, as I watch, the other three rustle nervously round in circles. I wish that all the pigs had been electrocuted at once. Ryan then pulls down a lever on the wall and, with a grinding noise, the hoist cranks into action, swinging the pig up by its leg and moving it to the left, through a grimy plastic door. As it begins its last journey, Ryan reapplies the stun gun, although I'm sure that the first bolt has rendered it completely unconscious. Once it is in the air and over a low wall leading out of the small death chamber, he takes a blue-handled knife from the pouch attached by a metal chain to his waist and deftly and quickly slits the pig's throat. Blood gushes and pumps, pouring down into a concrete well where it is collected and taken to be recycled for biofuels in a factory in Barnstaple. I realise that I've been holding my breath and that my heart is pounding, and I reach out to hold on to Trevor's arm. We follow the twitching carcass, hanging from its chain attached to a circular railing, as it swings round the corner of the blood-collection vat, bumping up against other pigs waiting in line to be dropped into a bath of hot water.
'That's kept at 70 degrees,' Trevor shouts above the roar of the electric saws which are chopping through carcasses further down the production line. 'It loosens the hair.'
With a splash, our pig drops into the steaming metal tank. A slaughter man in the uniform white coat and blue hairnet turns the pale pink body in the grey, murky water. After a couple of minutes he heaves it out and pushes it on to an adjoining metal rack, which then starts moving quickly from side to side, tossing the pig up and down on its shifting paddles in the process, shaving off most of the now-softened bristly hairs. Even though it has been shocking to see a pig that we have fed and reared actually be killed, the process up to now has seemed both humane and somehow dignified, but the sight of our once-lively fat pig twisting and tossing on the bars is strangely affecting. It is as though he is dancing, his feet moving and his ears flapping, his blood-stained mouth opening and shutting as though he is trying to talk, to tell us something. It is almost as though he is still alive, performing the last desperate dance of his life.
From the rack, the pig is laid sideways on a slab and the remaining bristles are scraped off with a knife. From there, it is hooked back on to the overhead railing, and then a slaughter man wielding a chainsaw makes a neat, straight cut through the sternum and the stomach, opening up the inside of the pig as easily as opening a cupboard, displaying the intimacy of its heart, liver and lungs and the long, pouchy pale purple coils of its intestine which slither down towards the floor. The intestines are pulled out and consigned to a waste bin, the heart, lungs and liver hung up on hooks. All that remains inside the body cavity are the kidneys, nestled neatly against the backbone. Once the hair has been scraped off our pig, it completely ceases to resemble a living animal. Now he's just a carcass, ready to be hacked into chops and legs and loins or minced into sausages or sliced up for bacon, like something you'd see in a butcher's shop.
Every stage is carefully watched by one of the two meat inspectors who work at Snells. Like Jose the vet, they're a mandatory addition to any modern slaughterhouse, employed by the Meat Hygiene Service to monitor the process. The MHS charges Trevor about £2,000 a month, a fee that is based on the number of animals that pass through the abattoir every day. The inspectors are there to ensure that standards are upheld, but, Trevor tells me, if anything goes wrong, he's the one responsible.
It is breathtaking how quick the process is. One minute our pigs were rooting around on the floor of the holding tank; seven or eight minutes later, the meat inspector is slapping a purple stamp bearing the authorised Snells' number UK 8191 on to the carcass, thus ensuring that the meat can always be traced to its source.
Back in the office, I take off my hairnet and white coat, which, to my surprise, is spattered with blood, even though I haven't touched anything, keeping my arms by my side and steering clear of the walls. I presented our DEFRA form entitled 'Report of a Pig Movement Made under the General Licence for the Movement of Pigs'. David had filled in our DEFRA identification number, the date of transport, our address, the destination address, the time of arrival and departure, and the number of Dennis's car. I ask for two whole pigs to be delivered to Mr Bonner's, one whole pig to be left for us to collect (destined for the kitchen at Kensington Place) and the remaining pig to be butchered into a 'farmer's cut', which means joints, loins, chops and sliced belly. Do I want the belly sliced thinly or not? Thinly, I reply, though I haven't a clue. At the office counter, a ten-year-old girl in pigtails is efficiently carrying out the business on behalf of her dad, the owner of a single Gloucester Old Spot, who is now washing down his trailer with the high-pressure hose which Snells charge their customers IOp for using. 'That one's got her head screwed on well,' says Trevor as she bounds out of the office. He signs off my form and hands me a brightly coloured leaflet entitled 'Sausage and Smashing Recipes', produced by the British Meat Organisation. I'm still too caught up in having just killed a pig to want to learn how to cook pork and Stilton sausages with onion mash and an apple and plum spicy relish, so I thank him and leave, my first voyage into the sharp end of pig-rearing successfully completed.
Dennis and I drive home through the village of Windwhistle, where there's a pretty golf course with wonderful views to the north, across the Levels towards Glastonbury, then on down a winding lane with high verges leading towards Ilminster. I can't get the image of the pig dancing on the rack out of mind. The lane takes us through the tiny village of Cricket Malherbie, where Lord Beaverbrook, press baron, political force and brilliant proprietor of the Daily Express, once maintained his country estate.
'I used to work here,' Dennis says, as we passed the high gates leading towards Beaverbrook's old house. 'I was head cowman for twenty-six years.'
As we drive on, leaving the farmyard with its high red-brick walls and archways behind us, Dennis tells me about his job. His working day would start at 4.30 a.m., winter or summer, when he'd bring the pedigree Ayrshire herd in from the fields for milking. There were eight separate herds on the estate, each consisting of forty cows. One cowman was exclusively in charge of each herd, working six days a week. A relief cowman filled in on his one day off. Nothing was automated: Dennis's first task was to wash the mud off the cows' tails so that no impurities could get in the milk. It took him one and a half hours to milk the herd, then he'd pour the milk into churns in the dairy, where it was cooled and bottled. When he'd finished that task, he'd lead the cows back to the field for the day, where they fattened themselves up on the rich pastures. In the evening he'd go through the same procedure all over again. Dennis met Beaverbrook only twice: wearing a heavy overcoat and black hat, he came to inspect his herd and congratulate Dennis on doing a good job. The herd became famous in the cattle world, frequently taking home the top prizes at the Bath and West annual show.
I find it very strange to listen to Dennis's story. The Express has played a consistent role in my life, and not just because I became the paper's first female editor at the end of the 1990's. Now I'm learning that our partner, David Bellew, was born while his father worked for the paper's proprietor. But a long time before David's birth in 1968, another life that has closely touched mine had been largely determined by the newspaper. My first husband and the father of my daughter Daisy, David Leitch, was given away as a baby in the advertisement columns of the Daily Express in early November 1937. His parents, John and Truda Chester, had decided, with what always seemed to me to be a breathtaking degree of callousness, that they couldn't cope
with their newly born son, so they'd offered him for adoption to the Middle England readers of Britain's then greatest newspaper. In the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury on a cold Sunday afternoon, John and Truda had handed the eight-day-old baby over to the care of David and Ivy Leitch. Truda never expected to see her son again, but she bargained without his skills and the awesome powers of the media. In 1970, David, then an award-winning reporter and war correspondent for the Sunday Times, published a book called God Stand Up for Bastards, in which he outlined what he knew of his murky beginnings. He laid down a challenge to Truda to emerge from the shadows where she was lurking, 'as crafty as a trout'. And she did, after being confronted by the sight of her long-lost son talking about his mother on a TV show. David's been dead for over a year now, but I think of him as we negotiate the narrow, winding country lanes, and I know how much he would have loved this strange twist in the tale: he was never a great believer in the randomness of coincidence.
We are four pigs down, but not for long. Back at the farm, Dennis as I pick up David and set off to Devon to collect two new Berkshires and eight saddleback weaners. Our first port of call is Dittisham Farm, set high on a hill above the River Dart. It is even colder when we climb out of the car into a muddy driveway. I can hear loud grunts coming from a parked trailer, and David and I look through the small slits to be faced with two huge, mottled snouts. There is a brief moment of panic - they are far too big to travel in our small trailer - but it turns out they are waiting for another prospective buyer, who is running behind schedule. We're early and the farm's owner, Sue Fielder, hasn't yet brought our pigs down from the field. I look around: it seems a lonely place, marooned on its hillside, just one woman, her black Rottweiler and maybe one hundred pigs of different ages. Sue explains that her husband suddenly died of a brain haemorrhage four weeks earlier and she is selling off half her stock. Two Berkshires have just gone to Japan, where the pigs are prized for their black skin and can fetch up to £700 each. The others are being sold when and where she can find buyers. Later that day, a sow with eleven four-day-old piglets is leaving; another nursing sow will be on her way tomorrow.
I watch her deftly lower the fork-lift bucket containing our new Empress and her husband Earl to the ground and shudder. In comparison to Sue's, my 'life as a farmer' is middle-class play-acting. It's not only that I can get up and leave it at any time. The reality is that I don't have to stand around in the mud and the freezing wind, selling off my pigs because that's the only source of income I have to support myself and my daughter. I was a single mother from the time Daisy was six and I remember my initial sense of panic as to whether we'd survive financially. I was working at Harpers & Queen when David and I split up and, even though my pay cheque arrived regularly every month and my father stepped in to help with the mortgage for the two years it took to sell our Little Venice apartment, my sense of financial insecurity was acute. Six months into single motherhood there was a change of editor and I was, for the duration of one long day and a night, unemployed, until Terry Mansfield, my boss at the National Magazine Company, offered me a job on the newly launched Esquire magazine. It turned out brilliantly for me: I joined as features' editor and became editor six months later; slowly, my financial fears began to fade.
In the year leading up to the breakdown of my marriage, my great friend and mentor, the war correspondent and writer Martha Gellhorn, had written to me frequently, a series of encouraging, hopeful letters in which she said, in many different ways, 'There are many things that are terrible in life and one of them is being stuck in a bad marriage. It is far more frightening than being alone with a child.' When I did leave, her words were a comfort, but that first year alone was tough and I'll never forget how scary it was suddenly to find myself the sole supporter of a child I loved so much.
Once the pigs are successfully loaded into our trailer, Sue invites us up to her bungalow for coffee. In her cosy kitchen, red, yellow and blue rosettes hang on the wall, symbols of porcine success at local shows. On the draining board, about a hundred newly laid eggs are waiting to be boxed up and sold. On a sideboard there are half a dozen jars of bright yellow honey, solid at the bottom, liquid at the top. A few bees' legs float around in the liquid and the jars are sticky to the touch. Dennis and I buy one each. Outside the wind whips through the trees and a small flurry of snow blows past the window. We pay Sue £180 for the Empress and £220 for Earl. Earl can be rented out for £50 a time for stud, making the financial rewards from a pedigree boar substantial over a five-year span. Sue fills out the transfer forms and draws us a diagram explaining the complex ear markings of the Berkshire breed. Notches on the outside of the right ear represent units, those on the inside, thousands. On the left side, the inside notches mean hundreds and the outside ones, tens. The pattern of this abacus-of-the-ears is particular to Berkshires and any breeder can immediately determine the origin of a pig from the cuts. Earl, whose pedigree name is NarmaAbel, is number 687 and the Empress, an excellent and chubby pig with a shortish nose who has show qualities, is the daughter of Ambassador and Excelsior. Her number is 59 I.
I ask Sue what farmers do about the boars' tusks. She looks at me sceptically. 'Do you really want to know?' she asks, clearly aware that I am not, in any true sense, a farmer. I nod.
'Well, boars' teeth don't come through till they're over a year, so sometime between twelve and fifteen months, some people put them in a head clamp, push a piece of wood between their teeth and then file off the four teeth with an angle drill.' She pauses. 'It takes about two minutes if they know what they're doing. Then they give them a whole bucket of food and the boars seem to forget it. They could,' she adds, hastily, 'get the vet to give them an anaesthetic, but some people don't want the expense.'
Our next port of call is a small farm at the bottom of a steep valley. Richard Fox's farmyard looks old and scruffy, with pigs living in sheds around the four walls. The little weaners we've come to buy are clustered together for warmth on a deep bed of straw inside a stable. We pick them up one by one, carrying them by their back legs to the trailer. We'd asked for eight, at £20 each, but Richard throws in the other four for an extra £20. After filling out the purchase forms and handing over the money, he shows us his prize boar, Little Richard, who stands about three feet six inches tall and eight feet long. 'That's what Robinson will look like in a few months' time,' David says cheerfully, stepping neatly out of the way as Little Richard lunges towards the open door. I wonder how on earth we're going to contain a pig that big on our farm.
I fall asleep in the back of Dennis's warm car on the drive home and when I wake up we are bumping down the track to the nursery. Even though it is still freezing and the sky is stony grey and bleak, our farm looks extraordinarily chipper. David is an incredibly tidy man. Our fences aren't falling down, our gates are neat, the pathways, even in winter, are level and dry. Even the recycled two-litre plastic milk bottles which hang from the wire fences, doubling as water troughs and feeders for the rare-breed chickens, look efficient and useful. We carry the little pigs down to the big shed which has been divided in half by a two-foot-high wooden wall. They're sharing the space with Robinson and one of the grown saddleback gilts, as well as Guinness. They settle in quickly on to deep, clean straw, noses immediately in the trough which had been filled with nuts. Earl and the Empress move into the pen vacated earlier that morning by the four now-deceased Gloucesters. Sue had told us that the Empress, while an excellent pig in every respect, has a funny habit of sticking her tongue out when she isn't actively engaged in eating or rootling. I watch her investigate her new home, looking inside the small house, checking out the water supply and, seemingly finding it all satisfactory, she again looks about, her little pink tongue protruding from her mouth, every inch a curious young woman who's quite pleased with life.
The following morning, Mildred falls into the duck pond and can't get out. When we find her she is perched precariously on a stone, wet, cold and miserable. George waddles around proprietoria
lly as David carries the bedraggled turkey into one of the chicken sheds where she settles down in the straw, next to a goose sitting on her eggs. David has seen an advert in a local free paper offering grown chickens for just 75P each. They are a year old and have been living as deep litter birds in a huge group of some six thousand squashed together in one enormous barn. Reared like this, chickens will produce almost one egg a day for the first year of their lives; then production tails off to about four or five a week, at which point most birds are converted into soup or stock or turned into filling for cheap pies. But 75P for a full-grown chicken, even one that doesn't lay to her full potential, is incredibly cheap and, since we lost some of our birds to the viral infection, David decides to buy one hundred.
They are a sorry bunch when they arrive: their feathers are falling out, their eyes runny and their combs floppy and dull. But they quickly improve, venturing further and further from their coop, setting off in groups of four or five to explore the rows of old vegetables at the bottom of their run, digging out a central dust bath in which they take turns to dig, scratching up the earth and sending it in showers over their feathers which keeps them both clean and healthy. Within ten days, they are laying sixty eggs a day, their feathers are fluffing out, and their eyes are distinctly brighter.
Twelve years ago, when Daisy and I had moved out of the home we'd shared with her father and into our own house, we'd gone to Battersea Dogs' Home to get a dog. We walked through the rows and rows of cages, assailed by barks and whines and pleading eyes, until Daisy suddenly decided on a small, thin, uninspiring white mutt with brown patches. I wasn't that keen, but she was determined, so we filled out the forms, paid our £50 and left with a little bitch we called Bingo. We were warned not to let her off the lead for at least two weeks, but our first stop was Hyde Park, the sun was out, and we decided to let Bingo have a good run. She never left our side and she's never left it since, turning from a shy little runt into an incredibly sweet and loyal dog, who has blossomed on a diet of cuddles and new-found security. Looking at our rescue hens, I am reminded of Bingo's inauspicious beginnings: she'd been abandoned on a south London street and had already been waiting in Battersea for over four months before she caught Daisy's eye. I always feel that Bingo somehow knows that she's been lucky and I wonder if the hens have a similar feeling.
Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes Page 14