The Battle to Save My Town's Bacon ; in the Second Dispatch From Her Newly-Acquired West Country Smallholding, Rosie Boycott Proudly Takes Her First Pigs to the Abattoir and Rages Against Tesco's Imminent Destruction of Her Community's Whole Way of Life

Daily Mail › April 29, 2006

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Summary

ONE WEEK before Easter, our Gloucester Old Spot, Bluebell, gave birth to six piglets. They're now 6in tall, with neat little ears, squashed in snouts and vivid blue eyes and they squeak and make barking noises as they tumble over each other to get closer to Bluebell's teats.

From the other side of the fence, the rest of the Gloucesters watched the new arrivals with keen curiosity; four are pregnant and they seemed to be studying the newborns' antics with special interest. There is something very human about pigs: Churchill was a pig fan who once memorably-said that dogs look up to you, cats looks down on you, but pigs look you straight in the eye.

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The Battle to Save My Town's Bacon ; in the Second Dispatch From Her Newly-Acquired West Country Smallholding, Rosie Boycott Proudly Takes Her First Pigs to the Abattoir and Rages Against Tesco's Imminent Destruction of Her Community's Whole Way of Life

Bluebell has thick sandy eyelashes. Her eyes are the same shape as ours and she stares at you directly, offering both a greeting and a challenge.

But perhaps it is the pink nakedness of pigs that make them seem so very human. The pregnant sows contemplating the piglets could have been a gathering of fat aunts having a jolly holiday in a nudist camp.

Our farm is now one year and four months old: we have 300 chickens, six ducks, eight geese and one turkey called George. We did have a lady turkey called Mildred, but she fell in the duck pond and died of pneumonia. She had laid six eggs in the week before she died and they're now in...

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