In her later years, Perdita became arthritic. The vet called regularly but could never answer any questions about her life expectancy because he, like other vets and pig-keepers, had never known a pig who had died of old age. Perdita died just before her tenth birthday. By then she found walking quite difficult, and she usually limped out of her house to eat her breakfast on her patio, where she'd sunbathe for the rest of the day. On this particular morning she wasn't there when Julia went out with her food. In the night she had somehow staggered about twenty yards to the far end of pig paradise and lain down under a tree. She refused all food, even bowls of milk and water and she turned her head resolutely outwards, away from the house and her home. In the evening, she was dead.
Not long before she died, a policewoman and an RSPCA inspector turned up saying that some passer-by had reported the Wheen household for neglecting their animals, specifically Perdita, aged nine, and Julia's old horse, Easter, who was then thirty-six. The policewoman said these animals clearly weren't in perfect condition and therefore should be put down. Francis retaliated by saying that they were just very old, like the Queen Mother. By the time she reached her hundredth birthday, would they like to see her put down too?
'We told the policewoman that if the animals became distressed, then obviously we would consider it, but that they were actually jolly happy and regularly visited by the vet.' As if on cue, Perdita started making her happy snuffling sounds and Easter whickered and nuzzled the WPC's ear. The following day, their vet rang up both the WPC and the man from the RSPCA to say that if they tried this again, he would sue them for slandering his professional integrity. Two years on, Francis and Julia still miss Perdita, with her expressive face and intelligent eyes which met you on the level, just as Winston Churchill said.
Three more pigs go off to Snells in early July. Charlie and I wait anxiously for the verdict from Rowley Leigh, who has received his pig via the fish lorry from Bristol. Three days later, he emails to say:
Just cooked part of pig. Extremely good flavour, rich in taste and almost gamey. Skin and fat still a little thin for my taste. Any fat is too much for most butchers so never listen to Mr Bonner on this score.
Beetroot and runners are excellent. Not mad about the courgettes. Turnips good and I haven't tasted the spuds yet, I'm afraid.
What we want is fat - because it makes the meat so much tastier and lubricates it, you can cook it for four hours and it comes out like butter.
Mr Bonner describes it as a 'cracking pig' and, the day after the carcass is delivered, our name goes up on the noticeboard: 'Pork - Dillington Park Nurseries.'
We have four litters of piglets in less than two months from Bramble and Bluebell, and the two saddlebacks. Collette produces eight little piglets, all healthy and well, wonderfully attractive with their black and white markings. Her sister Cordelia, though, is a rotten mum. Late one Saturday afternoon Charlie comes running back from the farm to tell me that she's just given birth to nine piglets. It happened quickly, before there was a chance to move Cordelia out of the big wood, so she's given birth in the communal pig arc, surrounded by laurels and overhung by a big yew tree. I make my way across the rough ground towards the shelter. There is no sign of Cordelia: the nine babies are lying on top of each other in a pile, smooth black and white fur, eyes bright and open. I look around: the fat pig is on the far side of the wood, her head deep in a muddy hole, rootling for food. That night, the smallest piglet dies. The following day we move the newborns and their mum into the maternity shed, but Cordelia just isn't cut out for motherhood. She hardly ever stays in the shed, preferring to hang out near the drinking trough which she shares with the other female pigs, planting her two front legs in the water and making great efforts to heave her considerable bulk right into the stone trough, all the while keeping up a grunting conversation with her girlfriends in the next paddock.
The mewling piglets follow her outside into the baking sunlight. Two more die, of heatstroke we think. In the office there is a bottle of Nivea Factor 35 sunscreen which David rubs all over Josh, so we rub that on to the white parts of the little pigs. It does the trick and there are no more fatalities. As they grow bolder, the piglets discover that they can squeeze under the gate to visit their dad, Robinson, who, unlike Cordelia, greets them civilly and doesn't object when they climb into his feeding trough, pushing his huge snout to one side to get at his rations. The Empress and Earl also give birth: a litter of nine, although one dies after two days. Unlike Cordelia, the Empress proves to be an exemplary mum, herding the piglets outside the hut for a feed if it is sunny, even washing them briskly with her tongue till they squeal for mercy.
At the beginning of August, David proudly hands us a sheet of paper on which he had itemised the cash flow for July:
Wages: Anne - £342
Dennis - £192
Adrian - £392
David - £1,000
Total: £1,926
Owing to David:
£416 - pipe work
£4.80 - stamps
£28.93 - mite spray
£66.56 - jam jars
£79.24 - wire posts for the turkeys we are planning
to fatten for the Christmas market
£20 - diesel for Transit
£30 - diesel for red van
Total: £645.53
Money owed:
Dillington House: £1,350
Rowley: £1,207
Table: £110
Montacute market: £197
Total: £2,864
We had made a profit of £292.47. I look back at the original monthly forecast, drafted in optimism when we first had produce to sell in July 2005: £1,500 from Dillington House, £320 from eggs, pigs £600 from May 2006, vegetable boxes £600, rare breeds £200. Clearly, we had been over-optimistic. We sell less to Dillington House and, to date, not a single vegetable box has left the nursery. The rare breeds have also been a failure and we will have to sell off all the birds except for the Orpingtons in the autumn market sales. Our investment in fencing for small groups of birds and the two incubators is, largely, a write-off. Our pig-breeding has been successful but, in terms of having pigs to sell regularly, we are five months behind our original forecast. Boris, our chubby, spotted boar has had so many courses of antibiotics in his short, unhealthy life that he's probably infertile and will soon be turned into sausages. One of his brothers has stepped into his place, claiming his name in the process.
On the plus side, we didn't factor in selling vegetables to Rowley, nor did we think that we would be able to produce double the amount of eggs on a good day. Farmers' markets and the honesty table more than cover the projected income from the boxes and, this autumn, we're hoping to start taking orders for them as well. Our capital costs have hugely exceeded our original plan, but our daily running costs have been more or less consistent. Back in the spring of 2005, we estimated that our plant stock would build up to about £5,000 in 2006. We've exceeded that and we've been selling plants steadily, if not in great quantity, since April this year. It would be naive to think that Charlie and I might start getting a return on our investment any time in the next few years, but I don't think we're going to go broke and that feels like a real achievement.
In the middle of August, while Charlie and I are away on holiday, a fox breaks into the chicken coop. The first time it happens, the electric fence is down because the pigs crashed through the wire and shorted the system. That night, the fox kills over fifty birds, biting the heads off four of them and killing the rest for the hell of it, chewing their necks or bodies. Some are still alive the following morning, weak with shock. David has to shoot them and burn the carcasses. Two nights later, the fox, no doubt egged on by his successful raid, digs a two-foot hole under the fence, approaching the chicken coop from the shelter of the wood. This time he destroys sixty birds, eating none of them and again leaving several half alive. In the nearby fields, the maize is shoulder height and the foxes are using the dense crop as cover. But David a
nd Rodney, the estate gamekeeper, search through the maize and in the nearby woods and shoot twelve foxes over the following three days. The remaining chickens take almost three weeks to recover: they huddle in sad, frightened groups, staying near the chicken house and laying less than half their normal number of eggs. Our egg income, from a high of £160 a week, drops to less than £50. When Chris Wilson hears about the attack he says we are lucky to lose only chickens. His brother, who farms pigs in the south-east of England, has had newborn piglets stolen by foxes. Evidently they watch the mother giving birth and strike as the baby pig slithers bloodily to the ground.
One day in early September, Charlie and I are digging up weeds from a bed of leek seedlings. It is a warm day and in the polytunnel we're getting sweaty and hot. As we work we suddenly become aware of two black noses peering round the doorway. Two small saddleback piglets trot in and start munching on the lettuces. We shoo them out and they run off towards the feed shed. David shouts at them to get out. 'Those two,' he says, as he hustles them back into the yard, 'it's always those two. They're smart. They've decided to move in with the Empress and suckle from her along with her piglets.' Fat-Boy, who has been regarding the piglets with a bemused look on his face, joins in, helping to herd them along the path till they reach their own gateway. Later in the day, I spot the two of them hunkering down in the fresh soft straw that has been put out for the Empress and her babies, chewing contentedly on some beetroot leaves that were intended for the nursing sow. Later still, I see them lying on their sides, fast asleep and facing each other, their front hooves touching as though they are holding hands. One of the Empress's small black piglets has scrambled into the cosy space between their two stomachs and, lying flat on his belly, is sound asleep, too.
From trees lining the walls of the nursery we've picked peaches, apricots, nectarines and small plums. They've been juicy and delicious and as sweet as fruit grown in the Mediterranean sun. Next year there'll be enough to sell and, as the fruit is so good, this winter we're going to plant more trees. As the days draw in towards autumn and the hedgerows blossom with nature's own harvest of blackberries and sloes, and the squirrels give up their summertime thievery in favour of walnuts and beech nuts, we start making plans for next year.
Financially, we should be on a firmer footing: we'll have enough pigs to be able to sell at least one every week and we're talking to more pubs and hotels in the area about vegetable supplies. Once most of the rare-breed chickens have been sold, their runs can be turned over to more egg-laying birds. David wants to add beef cattle to our smallholding, rearing them in a two-acre field up by a tumbledown farm that we've got our eyes on. Bramble and Bluebell are pregnant again and we plan to buy one more breeding Berkshire, so Earl can look after a harem of two.
Ilminster went to the polls in the last days of July to elect two new councillors to the seats vacated by two previous mayors, Norman Campbell and Dave Gooding. 1,763 votes were cast, representing 21 percent of the electorate - not bad for a town which in the last six years has been so apathetic about its future that new members have had to be co-opted on to the council as no one was prepared to stand for office. One of the new councillors, Mark Davis, is a governor of Greenfylde First School, where two of his three children are pupils. The other is Ewen's wife Caroline, who watched the developments keenly and decided it was time to involve herself in what was happening in the town.
In the first week of September, she takes her seat at the council table for a meeting to discuss plans for the road alterations. The meeting is being held in the hall at Swanmead Community School and I am surprised to see that well over a hundred people have turned up. We are all there to listen to Gerry Waller, managing director of the engineering firm that has been contracted by Tesco to build the store. Gerry is genial-looking, with a big smile on his flat face that reveals extensive, and expensive-looking, dental work. In order to change the slides on the carousel he has to keep walking in front of the white fold-down screen, and the coloured maps and diagrams make flickering patterns on his shiny blue suit.
'First we're going to build the new car park, then we're going to start work on the one-way system,' he begins with a brilliant smile. The audience starts to fidget. It soon becomes apparent that the agreement made between the council and the town at the Dillington House meeting no longer exists. The car park will be built by Christmas, but from January to Easter Ditton Street, the small street which connects the north and south of the town and currently a two-way thoroughfare, will be closed while Gerry's mob widen the pavements and change the traffic flow to one-way. The road will re-open at Easter, when work on the store itself will begin, but even though the store will not be open until the end of 2007, Ditton Street will be one-way from January onwards. There is a further act of treachery. While work is going on in Ditton Street, access from the new car park to the town is planned to run through Frog Lane, a small steep path that leads upwards to the east end of the town. Mr B's shop is the furthest away and this proposed 'access solution' is the worst possible result for him.
Gerry's bulky body keeps bobbing backwards and forwards in front of the screen. A woman in front of me mutters to her husband, 'Why doesn't he have anyone who can change the slides for him?' Gerry is at pains to say that anyone affected will be visited in due course by representatives from Tesco. He keeps on smiling.
At the end of his presentation, there are questions. Yes, Gerry says, he is happy to clarify that there will be access through Ditton Street while work is going on, but it won't be user-friendly, as the street will be full of bulldozers and machinery. When he has an answer, it tends towards imprecision. Often he doesn't have one at all. He can't answer questions about car park charges because he doesn't actually work for Tesco. He can't help Brian Drury, whose shop, B.D. Garden and Pet Supplier, is right in the middle of Ditton Street and who takes his deliveries of half-hundred-weight sacks of dog food and potatoes through the front door. In due course, Gerry says genially, Brian too will be 'getting a visit' from Tesco. He can't help at all when it is pointed out to him that, just two months ago, it was agreed that the traffic flow in Ditton Street would remain two-way until Tesco actually opens, not altered irreversibly almost a year before.
There are currently 1,897 Tesco stores in Britain and in 2007 they plan to open another 153. Their expansion plans seem unstoppable, not just into the grocery business but into almost every area of life. Not content with 31 percent of the entire grocery spend in this country, they also sell sofas, bikes, MP3 players, stuffed toys, arts and crafts, baby baths, pushchairs, nappies, tents, golf clubs, luggage, table-tennis tables, sports watches, power tools, pet food, car accessories, security alarms, high-pressure washers, shower units, shower curtains, towels, sheets and duvets, saucepans, mixers, cutlery, lighting, brooms, carpet sweepers, mats and runners, shelving and wine storage units, beds, dressers, cupboards, dining-room tables and chairs, pillows, cookers, ironing boards, sat-nav systems, broadband internet access, TVs, vacuum cleaners, car insurance, pet insurance, travel and life insurance, credit cards and loans, mobile phones with access to the Tesco network, gas and electricity supplies, holidays and flights, contact lenses, legal kits for making wills, conveying property, fighting small claims and getting divorced, flowers by post, low-calorie food, and they offer a diet club . . . and for every transaction you make, you earn points on your Tesco reward card which can go towards Tesco petrol, holidays, yoghurt, biscuits or home insurance, whatever you might want. Tesco, like it or not, are in our lives from cradle to grave.
I fear for Ilminster: 90 percent of the money we spend in supermarkets leaves the local area. In 2000, the competition commission reported that if anyone retailer accounted for more than 8 percent of anyone sector, then this was liable to lead to an abuse of power. Their recommendations were ignored.
When Tony Blair swept to power in 1997, the government went overboard to prove that New Labour would be a friend to business. But by allowing the supermarkets to grow so fast,
New Labour has stifled the enterprise culture they claimed to support. They are a friend to big business, but not to business as a whole. In France, where supermarkets co-exist with thriving local economies, legislation limits growth. Even though the giant chain Carrefour fights for greater market share, the French government holds the line. No such measures currently exist in UK law and the presence of a massive supermarket in a small town not only jeopardises the businesses that exist but also stops other people from taking a chance. I know that John Rendell wants to sell his grocery shop, but I wonder who will be prepared to risk their capital on a vegetable shop knowing that Tesco is opening up five hundred yards away?
After the meeting ends, I walk up Ditton Street to the George in the Market Square with Henry Best, Clinton Bonner, Bryan Ferris and Aaron Driver from the wine shop. 'It's all done the Tesco way,' says Bryan, gloomily, as he and I negotiate the controversially small pavements. 'These aren't that small, are they?'
'The thing is,' Henry says, settling all six foot six of himself awkwardly on to a tiny chair by a small table in a corner of the public bar, 'if there were crested newts or dormice on the site we could hold it all up, possibly even stop it. Newts and dormice, they'll halt anything. Even the right kind of toad might do it.' He takes a long pull from his pint of Cottleigh, the local brew. Earlier that morning, in his endless quest for something to eat, Fat-Boy surprised a toad hiding behind the fifteen-kilo sack of dog food in the downstairs 100, but it wasn't the right kind. The right kind, from a conservation point of view, is the endangered natterjack, which has red spots on its back. Fat-Boy's small green discovery was just a common toad that probably started life in our garden pond. Still, it was exotic enough to give him a shock.
Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes Page 29