Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (36 page)

By the beginning of July the garden is an anarchy of rampant growth. The once neat rows of small seedlings have grown into
dense jungles of leaves, spilling over each other, fighting for their share of light and soil. In the polytunnels the fat
ripe tomatoes hang like scarlet jewels from the vines. The squashes, their leaves as big as pizzas, sprawl across their beds,
an exotic tangle worthy of a Rousseau painting. The rows of pepper plants in the tunnels are heavy with huge green, orange,
red and purple fruit. On some plants there are as many as ten large peppers, barely visible under the lush, luxuriant foliage.
The slugs are eating the lettuce leaves, but the lettuce leaves are winning. Up on their straw bales, the strawberries flourish.
High on their trellis network, the runner bean plants make shiny little red flowers and fat juicy beans hang from the stalks
in bundles of three or four. The plants are going about their business, doing what they know how to do and doing it well,
reaching for the sun, fighting for space in the soil, ripening their fruit so that the seeds will guarantee them life in the
future. The order of the garden and the choice of what we grow may be David's doing but at the same time it is not; another
force has taken over here, something that springs eternal, that carries on through wind and rain, roots questing down into
the earth to find the right combination of nutrients to create the beans, the carrots, the onions, the garlic - a lush, fecund
world. We might not think that plants move, but they do; they're as alive as the pigs, just growing at a different pace.

Our potatoes, in rows along the west wall of the nursery, bear their white, star-shaped flowers with the purple and yellow
flecks in the centre. When you reach down into the earth and run your fingers round the cold moist spuds, or accidentally
slice through one and let the smell of all that richness, that earthiness, float upwards, there is something primitive in
the moment. We plant them, but they do the awesome business of growing; they're domesticated but they're wild as well. That's
what the smell says.

Out in the fields around the nursery, it's a different story. Ewen Cameron grows industrial quantities of potatoes, and their
process from seed potatoes to supermarket shelf is a tale of high-tech automation worthy of a factory manufacturing ball-bearings.
I ask Chris Wilson who runs the farm to take me through the annual cycle. He gives me a print-out entitled 'Field Applications
from 04/0412006 to 14/0912006' which sets out exactly what is applied to his crop of Main Field Estima potatoes throughout
their growing season. Spraying begins before the potatoes are planted, on 4 April, with an overall dose of Nitram Fertiliser.
Six days later, two more fertilisers - 2.8.28 + 30s03 and Amm N 34.5 - are sprayed on to the earth. On the day of planting,
18 April, the first fungicide of the season, Amistar, is deployed. Amistar protects against black dot, a disease that causes
black splodges on the spud. Its damage is purely cosmetic. Amistar goes into the ground along with the seed, Estima Se2, and
on top they spray Mocap, the only chemical Chris describes as nasty. It is an organophosphate and it kills the wire worms
which might eat holes in the potatoes which supermarkets would immediately reject, again on cosmetic grounds.

Then there's a breathing space until 16 May, when the first of the weedkillers are applied after the potatoes have germinated
but before their leaves have emerged above ground. Linuron inhibits germination of any invading plant life and Pdq, a contact
killer, makes sure that anything that has germinated and started to grow is stopped in its tracks.

On 3 June, just before the rows close - when the leaves of one row of plants meet those of the next - Chris begins spraying
for blight. Blight is the disease which wiped out the Irish potato crop, turning the plants and spuds into black sticky goo.
It is a fungus and its spores travel so quickly that a ten-acre field can be completely destroyed inside of five days. Blight
germinates only when the weather is sufficiently humid and warm, and on a small hill outside Chris's office there's a weather
station which records temperature, humidity, wind speed and the dew point. The device is paid for by Branston, the UK's largest
potato packer and one of Tesco's biggest suppliers. The information from the station is relayed to climatologists in Holland
who in turn feed it back to Chris via a forecasting software system he subscribes to for £600 a year. He shows me how it works.
On his computer screen a series of brightly coloured graphs with red jagged blocks indicate the potential for high humidity
and a purple and yellow series of graphs monitor how much of the leaf area has been successfully sprayed with an anti-fungal
agent and when it will need spraying again.

Thus, in the year 2006, anti-blight sprays were applied to the crops eight times between 3 June and 18 August. The fungicides
used were Shirlan, Fubol Gold, Option, Rhapsody and Ranman Twinpack. Farmers without this sophisticated forecasting system
tend to spray every week. With the monitoring device, Chris not only cuts down the number of times he has to spray; it also
allows him to use the most appropriate spray for the current conditions. The crops get some more positive help too: on 9 June
they apply a trace element called Maghos, which Chris describes as a tonic for the soil, and on 28 June and again on 7 July
they apply a trace element called Root 66. Root 66 consists of magnesium, phosphorus and nitrogen, which the overworked soil
runs out of - an appropriate name for the one relatively healthy part of the process.

On 8 July, a slug-killer called Omex Sluggo is applied to the crop. It is mixed with Adjuvant Oil, which makes the slug-killer
easier to adminster. Then, when Chris judges that the potatoes are the right size, the crop is 'finished'. On 18 August a
herbicide called Spotlight is sprayed over the plants. Finishing is farming speak for killing, stopping the natural growth
of the potatoes when they are at the optimum size for sale to the supermarkets and thus to our plates. Neat, round, not too
big, not too small, smooth, blemish-free, very much like the factory product they almost are. A mechanical strimmer takes
off the leaves while Spotlight knocks off the stalks.

Two or three weeks later the skins on the dormant potatoes will have hardened to a point where they can be harvested by a
huge machine which can collect up to twenty-five tonnes in an hour. Then they're transported on to a conveyor belt, which
sorts out the sizes and shakes off the mud. The majority of the potatoes are then stored in one of three huge barns, lined
with a dull yellow insulation material. Over roughly three weeks the temperature is reduced to less than 2°C, the point at
which the potatoes become virtually dormant. Left at room temperature, they would continue to grow, sprouting leaves and smaller
tubers.

But those spuds destined to become crisps - which we prefer to be a cheery golden colour - cannot be allowed to chill. Chilling
changes the chemical structure of the vegetable, and the resultant crisps would fry into a dull brown colour. So, to stop
them sprouting, crisp potatoes are stored in an insulated barn and sprayed with CIPC, a sprout suppressant. CIPC mimics a
hormone that makes the potatoes dormant. It's never used on potatoes destined for baby foods because it might have adverse
side effects, but, as yet, no one really knows for sure just what its possible side effects might be.

All this doesn't come cheap. The chemicals cost £600 an acre, irrigation £100, planting £45 and harvesting £70. Add to that
each acre's share of machinery which, bought new, comes to over £300,000. One-third of Chris's crop will be chucked away,
deemed too bumpy, blotchy, small, big or generally misshapen to grace a Tesco shelf. Some of that will go to animal feed,
but some of it will be literally left to rot. In Germany, he tells me, big potato growers now have plants on site which turn
the rejected spuds into bio-fuel. Every acre yields about seventeen tonnes and for every tonne of potatoes they actually sell
they receive £103. It sounds good; it's not. If a third of the spuds are rejects, that means each acre yields twelve tonnes.
At £103 per tonne, each acre earns £1,236. Direct costs add up to £815 per acre, without factoring in the capital costs of
the machinery, the storage sheds, fencing and so on. As ex-banker Andrew Moore, proprietor of the Somerset Wild Meat Company
and purveyor of salt marsh lamb in country markets said, 'When your margins are low, you have to sell one hell of a lot of
whatever it is to make any profit.' In 2006, Chris harvested 4,500 tonnes of potatoes, which made it a good year. Chris loves
to farm because, like any good farmer, he wants to grow good food. Although the list of chemicals is long, it is less than
many of his competitors, who add chemical fertilisers to the mix and spray for aphids every two weeks. Chris leaves nature
to take its course with aphids, relying on natural predators to deal with the insects.

At the door to the barn there's a big box of spuds which are there for anyone who works on the farm to help themselves. Even
though they all know that there is no difference, as far as taste is concerned, between smooth or lumpy potatoes, ones that
are blemish free or ones that have black splodges on them, Chris says that the misshapen ones are always left behind.

Bramble's piglets have discovered that, after they've squeezed out of their pens through the squares in the pig wire, they
can then squeeze themselves under the main wooden gate leading into the nursery. I find them there early one morning, their
tails wagging with pleasure as they hoover their way along a line of green French beans, emitting little grunts of pure delight
and pleasure. A game of chase ensues: through the celery, across the carrots, down to the bottom of the garden, round the
raspberry cage, until finally they are cornered in between the polytunnels where the strawberries stand in boxes on top of
bales of straw. They admit defeat without much of a fight, blinking in the morning sunshine, like a team of delinquent schoolboys
who've been caught smoking behind the potting shed. They are in varying degrees of dishevelment: a muddy nose here, a bent
ear there, an uneaten bean still protruding from the corner of one mouth. I walk towards them. They stand their ground for
a moment, then turn and scamper off towards the gate and back to the safety of Bramble's accommodating and ample stomach.

The following day, Bramble is moved back into the girls' run. Her piglets are almost ten weeks old and it's time for her to
have a break from motherhood before she goes back for another amorous encounter with Boris and his brothers. No one really
knows how old pigs get to be, as even breeding sows are generally slaughtered once their fertility wanes. The exception was
the pig of my friend Francis Wheen, the writer and broadcaster and one of the funniest men I know. In 1993, Francis and his
wife Julia acquired a pig. They received a call from Julia's ex-husband, a farmer who lives a few miles away from their Essex
home. He'd found a piglet running loose in the lane and no one knew anything about it. Would Francis and Julia like to give
it a home?

She was the size of a puppy and, despite her squealing and wriggling, the family took the piglet to their hearts. They bought
her a collar and lead and took her for walks down the lanes. But every few days, Francis recalls, he had to buy a new collar
as Perdita, as they'd called her, from the Latin for 'Lost Girl', grew and grew until, within weeks, she was the size of a
sofa. 'That's when we had to fence off much of the garden and designate it pig paradise. We built her a hut out of corrugated
iron and concreted over a patio for her.'

For the next nine years she lived a pretty idyllic existence, befriending the dogs and ponies and chickens, and lying under
the apple trees in the late summer waiting for windfalls to land in her mouth. She was fed a diet of pig nuts and boiled scraps:
potatoes, carrots, cabbages. But her favourite meal was leftover pasta, particularly spaghetti. Francis and Julia had frequent
discussions about whether they should look for a husband for Perdita, but they didn't know what they would do with the piglets.
Their sow lived the life of a maiden, adored by the children and admired by their friends. Perdita's special friend was Julia.
One freezing morning in the last winter of the sow's life, Francis woke up to find Julia gone. She'd got up early, found the
pig shivering and snuggled up beside her on the straw to warm her up.

In her later years, Perdita became arthritic. The vet called regularly but could never answer any questions about her life
expectancy because he, like other vets and pig-keepers, had never known a pig who had died of old age. Perdita died just before
her tenth birthday. By then she found walking quite difficult, and she usually limped out of her house to eat her breakfast
on her patio, where she'd sunbathe for the rest of the day. On this particular morning she wasn't there when Julia went out
with her food. In
the night she had somehow staggered about twenty yards to the far end of pig paradise and lain down under a tree. She refused
all food, even bowls of milk and water and she turned her head resolutely outwards, away from the house and her home. In
the evening, she was dead.