Anna Longthorp-Oates claims her pigs are happy because they spend their entire lives out in the field. Sue Mason meets the East Riding farmer and, as well as learning about Anna's Happy Trotters, she samples one too . . .

Anna with her Happy Trotter pigs

It was quite probably the finest bacon sandwich I’ve ever eaten. Instead of that horrid, pale, soggy stuff you find on some supermarket shelves, the bacon was tasty, crisp and good looking. Mind you, it had travelled only a couple of miles from the field to my plate.

Not only did the bacon come from pigs reared by 26-year-old Anna Longthorp-Oates, but it was also cooked by her, under the grill in her home just outside Howden.

Tall and blonde and with rosy cheeks that give her a definite outdoorsy look, Beverly-born Anna grew up within a couple of miles from where she now lives with her fireman husband Matthew.

“Our farm was pure arable until I was about eight, when my mum bought eight sows and we went into pigs,” says Anna.

“The farm was set up by my grandad, who was in the Merchant Navy. My grandma’s dad said he was away too much and it was a condition of him marrying grandma that he had to be at home more!” She tells me the farm is at Kilpin, half a mile away, and points in that direction.

Pigs have always been Anna’s thing, she says. “My brother has always been into the arable, but that bores me. I don’t understand how he could enjoy driving up and down a field all day and he can’t understand me wanting to be around pigs all day.

“He says he likes crops because you put them in the field and they stay there . . .”

Anna’s pigs are in the field too, on land close to her home that she rents. They are very unusual in that they are free range, as opposed to outdoor reared (and, of course, indoor reared). She explains the difference:

“Outdoor reared pigs are born and bred outside but once they are weaned at four weeks they are taken inside,” she explains. By contrast, Anna’s pigs continue to be free to roam in their field at North Duffield or shelter in huge, open gazebos, with plenty of straw to make beds.

“They are happier and they are slower-grown because they have more room to roam, they play outside and they burn more energy,” says Anna. “There are welfare issues too, but from a taste point of view, it’s better meat.”

She markets her meat under the name of Anna’s Happy Trotters”. The pigs are a carefully-selected mix of old and new breeds that combine to produce great-tasting meat. The Landrace and Duroc-cross sows produce pigs with low levels of back fat and meat that is marbled to enhance the flavour and succulence, while the Maximus boar is a very muscular breed that gives lean meat and lovely big chops.

“This breed is very good for outdoors. They have thick skin so they keep warm and they don’t get sunburnt. I know Gloucester Old Spot is very popular but it has a lot of fat in it. In ours, the fat is more marbled through the pork chops.

“We’ve done a lot of work into what produces perfect meat,” says Anna, who, with other pig farmers, recorded a song about the British pig industry called Stand By Your Ham. “We wanted to raise awareness of the pig industry and welfare issues,” says Anna. “It didn’t get into the charts but it’s still on YouYube.”

After working on the farm in all her school holidays, Anna spent her gap year in Australia. When university didn’t work out, she went back to Australia for a few more years. “Then I came back to the farm to work before doing tennis coaching,” explains Anna, who played tennis for the county when she was younger. “Then I found myself back on the farm again. I thought, I keep coming back to the farm so there must be a reason for it.

“My dad had always pushed me away from the farm just to make sure that was what I really wanted to do. He encouraged us to do other things.”

Anna mucking in with her pigs

Seeing the pig industry in the doldrums encouraged Anna to concentrate on locally-produced free range pork, which she sells direct to two local butchers, Rob Featherstone in Howden and Gary Alden in Hessle, as well as to the renowned Joffco’s restaurant at Holme-upon-Spalding Moor. She also sells her free range pork at Hull Farmers Market in Hull city centre every Saturday and a range of pork hampers is available on her website. There’s a maxi hamper, a midi hamper, a roasters pack and a survival pack.

“I’ve learned since doing this that people don’t really buy pork any more but they buy processed meat, so I’ve done a survival pack of various sausages, bacon and burgers,” says Anna. “But pork is a very good meat to buy, especially when the economy is in the state it is at the moment. Pork is around £6 per kilo, compared with lamb at £13 or £14 per kilo and beef at £17 per kilo.”

Although one of her aims is to produce pork for people to whom keeping down food miles is important, her meat does find its way into butchers’ shops in Harrogate and to Tesco stores in London.

“When supermarkets were dictating the prices and weren’t passing on increases to farmers, I got sick of it,” says Anna, whose favourite cut is belly pork and who has given cookery demonstrations at both Howden Show and York Food Festival.

Given that there’s an uproar every time an animal is seen being slaughtered on a TV cookery programme, you would think most people didn’t realise pigs, cows, sheep or chickens have to be killed before they can make their way to our dinner tables. Anna is very up-front about what happens to her pigs and even has a section on her website devoted to their slaughter.

“I’ve decided to be honest because I want people to know what sort of a life my pigs have had,” she says. “It’s a lot better than some. They don’t have high standards of welfare abroad, even in the EC.

“The main difference is that in some countries, once the pig is in sow, she is a cage for three months, three weeks and three days and doesn’t move for that time. The only time sows get to move around is after weaning and before the process begins again.

“They have lower welfare standards so the meat can be produced more cheaply but it doesn’t taste good. It’s tasteless and a lot of water comes out when it’s cooked because they inject it with water. I don’t think it tastes of anything.”

Anna’s pigs are slaughtered at Bubwith, 1.4 miles from their field, on a Tuesday, then she takes them to the butchers on a Wednesday. She claims the short journey to the slaughter house makes the meat taste better because the pigs haven’t endured a long journey and are less stressed.

“I help (Howden butcher) Rob Featherstone make the sausages on a Thursday and I do the bacon myself,” she says. “I get a loin of pork and do a salt cure and then it’s bacon. I usually do that on a Thursday too, when I get back from Rob’s.”

The pigs are about five-and-a-half months old when they are slaughtered. “We select around 100 each week,” she says. “The butchers want a dead weight of 60kg and we select by sight those that fit the bill.

“I enjoy just being on the farm. I like doing the hands-on stuff. You don’t have to think about it. We use a spin feeder which goes on the back of the tractor and it’s quite tightly-controlled. Some you have to bucket feed if they’ve just had babies.

“There’s bedding up to do most days once they’ve had their piglets. You have to make sure you don’t put too much in so the piglets might get buried and squashed, but they have to be warm.

“If they are in pig they go into farrowing huts with runs a few days before they are due, but they are free to come and go as they like and they have plenty of space to play – I’ve made a DVD showing the pigs playing around.”

Anna is a member of Ladies in Pigs, a group of ladies who work on pig farms or are the wives of pig farmers. The group goes around the country giving talks and promoting British pork. “You have to look for the red and blue ribbon, which is the quality standard mark,” she says. “It’s the only way to tell the pork was produced in this country.”

During her time in Australia, Anna lived on a farm one-and-a-half hours from Sydney. “They had a couple of pigs but it was a tourist attraction. My main jobs were taking people out horse riding, teaching kids to ride and teaching Australians to crack whips and throw boomerangs,” says Anna, adding that her two dogs are Australian Kelpies.

I ask her if she can give me a boomerang demonstration before I go. “No, I haven’t got a boomerang here,” she says.