PASTURE-REARED LAYING HENS & PIGS, DEVON: Amy farms alongside her parents on their mixed family farm in mid-Devon, near the Somerset border. It covers 150 acres (61 hectares) plus another 100 acres (40 hectares) which are rented. Amy’s parents have pasture-fed cattle and sheep as well as broiler chickens, while Amy keeps 350 pasture-reared laying hens and 200 pigs.

Farming runs in Amy’s blood and she’s never wanted to do anything else. When, after leaving college, she was told the farm wasn’t big enough to support her, she did an internship on the Hertfordshire farm which hosts Groundswell, the regenerative farming conference/festival. She returned home just before Covid hit and, stuck at home, she rented a small field from her parents and bought some pigs.

The pigs, which Amy adores for their intelligence and personalities, are a mix of Gloucestershire Old Spot, Saddleback, Large Black, Tamworth and Duroc breeds. “This genetic diversity helps us to produce pigs who can grow well on a mainly foraged diet,” she says.

Unlike the farm’s cattle and sheep, the pigs, being omnivores, cannot extract all the nutrients they need from pasture alone. While they get some nutrients from slugs, insects and worms, and in autumn, waste apples and potatoes and foraged acorns and nuts, they need some protein-rich grains on top. Unlike most UK pig farmers, Amy feeds them UK-grown grains, beans and peas instead of imported soya. Around 95 percent of this is grown within 15 miles of the farm.

Amy calls her style of farming ‘regenerative’. Animals are rotationally grazed so that they can find fresh food and the pasture can regrow behind them.

She also puts the pigs to work by harnessing their natural behaviours to improve the farm’s pasture. She uses them to sow herbal leys which they bury under a thin layer of soil using their snouts, reducing the need for machinery. In winter, they are used to turn cow dung in the barn, starting the composting process so that nutrient-rich composts can later be spread on the fields. In summer they clear weedy areas in fields grazed by cattle and sheep. “The pigs never get bored and always have new things to investigate, says Amy.

Her sows are kept outside all year round and are given space to make their own nests to farrow (give birth), as they would in the wild. They produce two litters each year, which are kept with their mothers for up to ten weeks, to give them time to adjust from their milk-based diet to a forage-based diet.

Thanks to their natural diet, the pigs are slower growing. They are kept until they are eight to 14 months old. “Their diet and slow-grown life creates a better quality meat, which is both tasty and nutritionally dense,” says Amy. “It’s a very different product from the water-injected rashers you find in a supermarket.”

Amy produces around 200 pigs a year, which she sells online to local customers and through local farmers markets and farmshops. The farm also sells its soya-free pork and chicken through the online shop of the Knepp Estate in West Sussex, famous for its rewilding project.