Hog Roast anyone?

What is it about pigs that make people either imagine them with an apple in their mouth on the dining room table, or as the cute, talking pig in Babe.....for those animal lovers out there we are the first option.

We had discussed getting a pig, to rear , fatten up and eat, now some people think that we are mad, and to those people I can't believe it has taken you this long to work that out. As with everything here in the mad house, there was much discussion, and very little planning involved. we asked around about piglets, and how you go about rearing them to ensure that they are healthy and of course fat! (hog roast!)

Google again became my friend, and I read pages and pages about the best way to keep  our new addition to ensure that they were happy and healthy. I soon gathered that keeping a pig really is not that difficult, feed it everything, give it plenty of water, shade, and a huge mud pit, and hey presto your pig will be as happy as a pig in s**t.

We knew that purchasing a pig would be our largest expense to date, therefore, we wanted to ensure that it would be worth it, and needed to assess how much pork our new friend would provide. Now we all like pork, and there is plenty to do with it, however, we soon estimated that our fat little friend would produce over 65kg of meat...now that's a lot of bacon!

Undeterred and ready with the cookbook in hand I went in search of a pig, again not a huge amount of thought went into how I was getting this pig home if I found one. I always reason where there is a will there is a way! Alas, I could find no pigs, not even a whiff of bacon anywhere, oh well there would be no hog roast for us.

We decided to call into the garden centre on the way home, to purchase some herbs, well part of the pork supper could still be grown...I would like to point out that our local garden centre is nothing like anything you would have ever seen. It is more like an overgrown back garden, where an old Spanish man waves his hands and tells you to find it yourself!

Whilst wandering through the overgrown plants and trees, a small movement caught my eye, as there at the back past the forest, through the wardrobe (oh no that's a different story) there were pigs!! actually there were pigs, sheep, goats, horses and dogs. There was a miniature zoo, and I had my eye on the hog roast again!

After much negotiation, and discussion on who was actually going to "do the deed" when my new addition needed to be butchered, we were in ownership of our very own piglet. As the Spanish guy carried her back to my car, it suddenly dawned on me "how the hell was I getting this pig home" before I could question this fact, the guy had flung her in the boot, shut it, and told me not to open until I was at home.

I felt this was sound advice, and leapt in the car ready for an interesting journey home, on the way home, names were discussed and Peppa was chosen. I felt confident, happy and ready to fatten Christmas Dinner, until the moment one of my children turned to me and said " You have told Daddy that you have bought a pig, haven't you?" OH crap, I knew there was something I was supposed to do!....