Wealden Times | WT179 | January 2017 | Health & Beauty supplement inside

Jane Howard’s
Fables from the Farm
Jane takes a look behind the scenes at Stonegate Cheese Dairy
Oh blimey, another New Year
to contend with and a host
of resolutions to conjure up.
I’ve long since realised the futility of the
lose weight / drink less / exercise more
school of personal resolutions but hold
out far more hope of delivering on those
that involve improvements on the farm.
And this year I’m determined to make
a few changes in the pig department.
Resolution No 1 – be a little more
aware of the promiscuity of teenage pigs.
At the moment we keep our sows –
Sybil the Saddleback, Alison
the Oxford Sandy & Black
and Joan the Tamworth
in a separate wood. Each
will be pregnant for four
months, at different times,
to ensure a constant flow
of piglets (though that,
too, is another area for
improvement). They keep their piglets
for about eight weeks and shortly after
weaning come back into season. Douglas
the Duroc boar then visits and, hey
presto, it all starts again. Very organised.
Sadly what follows next is less so.
On leaving Mum, the weaners get
released into a 20 acre wood where
they grow on with all the others until
they are ready to go ‘up the road’ (a
less brutal explanation of the journey
to become sausages) at about seven
months. Technically the girls shouldn’t
The pigs absolutely
love the whey...
they submerge
their heads in
the trough
come into season before then, but
there’s always one and with 20 acres
to play in, all sorts of shenanigans
go on with inevitable results! So this
year I’m going to be a killjoy and
have a girls’ wood and a boys’ wood.
That should put an end to that!
Resolution No 2 – don’t get soaked
every morning. I wrote last year how
the Stonegate Cheese Dairy had decided
that the only way to guarantee the
welfare of the cows supplying their milk
was to buy their own herd – and so they
did. Now, every other day
Guy the farmer delivers
2,000 litres of whole milk
for them to turn into
their wonderful cheeses.
What I hadn’t
appreciated is that cheese
is made from the curd,
which is only about
25% of the volume of the milk and the
rest, the whey, is a waste product that
has to be taken away at quite a cost.
Traditionally this was always fed to pigs
and, as a zealous waste-not want-not
campaigner, I eagerly agreed to collect
some of the whey for Sybil, Alison,
Joan and their growing offspring.
All well and good, but the logistics are
quite daunting. How to transport 500
litres of liquid, three times a week, one
mile from Stonegate Cheese Dairy to
Coopers Farm and then across two fields
to the pig wood? Hmmm. The obvious
solution would have been a bowser but
locally eBay was not forthcoming and
I wasn’t going to drive to Pontefract
and back just for a bowser. Instead I
picked up a batch of 20-litre plastic
containers for nothing, shoved them in
the back of the Land Rover and set off.
It all works well, apart from the final
stage which involves actually pouring
the stuff into the troughs in the wood.
The pigs absolutely love the whey
and, not content with just slurping it
up, they submerge their heads in the
trough and then, coming up for air,
give an almighty shake which showers
me – still emptying the containers.
They do reckon it’s very good for the
skin but you can see why Miss Muppet
here thinks there might be room for
improvements in 2017.
Happy New Year.
Follow Jane Howard – and the farm
– on Instagram @coopersfarm
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