It is the (relatively!) quiet season at The Oak Tree, and Richard has been wanting to see the blue cock in Trafalgar Square for ages so The Pig Idea Feast today was the perfect excuse to go.
The Pig Idea is all about legalising feeding catering and kitchen waste to pigs, by boiling it up and serving it as “swill”. It is plain common sense, & what people have been doing for centuries, until 2001, when it was banned following the foot and mouth panic.
The Pig Idea are also campaiging to get more legal waste (bread, brewers mash, vegetable timmings etc…) into pigs’ bellies., which is music to my ears as our pigs eat little else, but it can be hard to persuade retailers that it really is a) legal, and b) ok to give us meat-free food from their bins for our pigs, ie they won’t get sued. And I fear that some of the big food retailers simply don’t want us to know much is wasted…
The Pig Idea is promoted by the sort of celebrities that I can identify with. I managed not to faint when I saw Hugh FW (River Cottage on the telly kept my dreams of running a smallholding alive in the depths of corporate career hell).
I had a message to transmit from our own Oak Tree Pigs. I am an old school campaigner (yes, I chanted “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out out out” in the late 80s!) so I made a placard to display…

See the fetching ribbons round my arms? They are holding on a copy of the next picture onto my back…
Many thanks to all who put so much work into a great day, and here is to keeping the pressure on to let common sense win the day!