Wealden Times | WT257 | October 2023 | Interiors & Bathrooms Supplement inside

Jane Howard explains why
her pigs enjoy a completely
free-range existance, just
lyke ye olden days
There is definitely a whiff of
autumn in the air – my favourite
time of year. Out come the
jumpers and wellies and an early morning
foray for mushrooms with mist in the hollows
and grass twinkling with dew is magical. But not
that early. Rather quaintly, since leaving London some
twenty five years ago, the time at which we get up really
fascinates our city friends. When we point out that
it’s really only dairy farmers who have to get up at an
unspeakably early hour, they seem rather crestfallen.
Along with the lack of a smock, a pitchfork in hand
and a straw hat, an 8am start doesn’t quite fit the
bucolic image. I think the cows would
be genuinely surprised to see me at
sunrise, although the pigs are ready and
standing by whatever time we arrive.
But any day soon they won’t be waiting
and then, for a couple of weeks, I’ll
not see them round the trough at all.
And I won’t be one bit surprised. Why?
Because the acorns will have dropped
and nothing is more delicious to the
average porker than a ripe acorn. With
about 20 acres of woodland to roam in,
they could be anywhere, and eventually
they turn up again – fat and happy.
But for the right reason. Rather
than breed our own we now buy in pigs to fatten
and they are (or rather were) all boys – an important
precaution for anyone keeping woodland pigs in these
parts. Apart from The Forest of Dean, the Kent/Sussex
borders have more wild boar than anywhere else in the
UK. They are shy, nocturnal creatures so rarely seen,
but having learnt the hard way I can assure you they
are about. And at this time of year solitary males are
wandering the High Weald looking for romance.
Before I knew better I used to keep sows, Gloria and
Rather than breed
our own we now buy
in pigs to fatten and
they are (or rather
were) all boys – an
important precaution
for anyone keeping
woodland pigs
in these parts
Iris, in the woods and by the time I saw the fleeting
back end of a wild boar – tusks, stripes, spots the lot, it
was too late. Some three months, three weeks and three
days later (pigs are very particular in that department)
Gloria delivered a whole host of stripy, spotty hoglets.
Fab, except that they were wild and
never came near me. Not even for food.
Catching and keeping them proved
impossible so now it’s strictly a Boys Only
policy for participation in the annual
Coopers autumn acorn extravaganza.
But what’s going on here is nothing
new. For hundreds of years peasant
farmers released their pigs into the woods
at this time of year to fatten on acorns in
a practice known as pannage. With the
exception of The New Forest, pannage
isn’t really practiced any more but way
back when The Weald was the stronghold.
The Domesday Book records in 1086 that
around 150,000 pigs were driven every autumn from the
Low Weald to the oak woods of the High Weald. Farmers
from a particular village returned with their pigs to the
same woodland pig pasture, called a den, year after year.
Over time the dens became settlements in their own
right – hence Horsmonden, Biddenden, Witherenden
– and the frequent passage of pigs being driven to
and from these dens formed sunken tracks known as
droves, which remain today as a pattern of roughly
north-south lanes. Quite handy for those boars!
Find out more about daily life at Coopers Farm by visiting coopersfarmstonegate.co.uk
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