[MAK]

So we have threads that "show off our pigs", talk of their homes, their quality of feed ( and what NOT to feed them), general well being and how well we care for them. We even share the best choice of abbatoir and details details of best butchers and how to honour our pigs with great receipes.


Anyone got any examples of just how far we go that extra bit to look after them and ensure they live well and are a great prduct?

I ask because today we braved the cold wind and driving rain to collect their chestnuts. We kept to the lanes becuase it's hunting day here in France. We collected nearly 2 buckets of chestnuts becuase they love them.
We got wet ( no big deal), collected a few scrathes, slipped down banks ( sh-t happens) and nearly got shot at !! Well someone let loose a couple of shots not that far from us - enough for us to cough loudly and make for home.  ALL BECUASE THE LADIES LOVETHEIR CHESTNUTS
 

[Mrs Snoodles]

Lucky lucky ladies!  Good for you, it is lovely to spoil them.  I've got a dodgy back at the moment but I am spending the next few days, getting sugar beet odds and ends and digging celery.....theyre worth it  

[MAK]

Have you tried them on cooked beetroot - ours drink and drink the purple water and eat the beetroot before their nuts.

[Beewyched]

Cor, wot lucky piggies you got MAK - not much in the way of hedgerow foraging around here now - managed to get about 2.5 kg of rowan berries (all used for jam), 3.5 kgs of crab apples (used 2 kilos for jelly) & 6kg of rosehips (used half for jelly).
Waited for blackberries to ripen    got home one afternoon & the landlord's been around with the tractor hedge trimmer - took the sapling elderberry tree with it too 
No oak nor hazel trees about here    we even went around the planted woodland a few miles away, but both me & the pigs will be long gone before they'll produce anything 
 

[MAK]

That is a lot of picking Beewyched - particularly all those little rosehips.
We just got back with 2 buckets of chestnuts and we found an apple tree with some fruit on ( none on our side of the lake at all this year).
Our elderley neighbours plant and harvest by the book ( moon really) so we have to wait untill the 1st November for the Kiwi fruit harvest - hope the pigs like them. 
It's mushroom season of course but despite reference books we can not distinguish between edible and toxic fungi - best not try them on our pigs.

[SteveHants]

I used to keep my nipper entertained for hours collecting buckets of acorns for the pigs they had at one of the farms where I kept sheep. Beats going to the park any day.