After being plucked, the birds are hung upside-down for a week, which allows the meat to mature.They are sold directly to customers A 12lb bird costs £23.88. “It’s quite slow, there’s more price resistance here than there is in Suffolk,” says Sarah, who makes about £3,000 to £4,000 profit a year. She also works part-time arranging training courses, and has a quota to rear 90 sheep.Sarah scans the birds, who are blissfully unaware that come December, they will be getting it, literally, in the neck. “You can’t get attached to them, not when it comes to Christmas.”HamAs the splendidly chubby Saddlebacks lollop up to the gate to greet us, ears at full flap, Roger Keen warns that there is one word that he doesn’t like being uttered in front of his pigs. It starts with a “B” (and tastes rather yummy at breakfast with a dollop of brown sauce).

One assumes Roger has the same sensibilities with the H word.The period leading up to Christmas can get rather fraught at Keen’s farm, Sandridge Farmhouse Bacon, in Bromham, Wiltshire, when orders peak for hams and bacon to wrap around turkeys “There are people who say Christmas is a blinking nuisance. It is a very good thing from a trade point of view, but it is quite a strain keeping everyone happy. Tempers get a bit frayed, especially some of the old butchers,” says Roger.The farm keeps Large White and Landrace (traditional bacon varieties because of their long backs), as well as six Gloucester Old Spots and four Saddlebacks – both of which are more suitable for pork, as they are fatter. The 340 sows and 14 boars produce eight to 10 piglets each, twice a year.”We will be slaughtering 200 pigs a week for four weeks leading up to Christmas, which is 1,600 gammons Normally it’s 150 a week It does get manic,” says Roger. To ensure there are enough gammons at Christmas, some of the pork is frozen in October before it is cured.The pigs are fed on grain grown on the farm (the pig manure goes back on the fields), mixed with organic yogurt and beer yeast from the local brewery. At six months they are slaughtered at an abattoir, then returned to the farm for curing.

Sandridge started curing its own meat commercially 15 years ago when two local processing factories closed down. When cured in the traditional Wiltshire way, the meat is hand-injected with brine (a mixture of salt, water and nitrite), which acts as a preservative and gives the bacon its colour, and is then soaked in the solution for several days. It is left for two weeks to mature.With dry curing, the pork is packed in salt, or pickled in a salt, molasses and spice mixture, and left for up to 56 days. The farm smokes its bacon over smouldering oak and beech sawdust for two to three days.Sandridge also produces six types of hams, including the Burham, which is cured with molasses and juniper for three months, and the Devyses, which is cured with beer. Some of the recipes have been handed down through the family. “The way we sell them is harder work but more satisfying,” says Roger They’re sold to butchers or through the farm shop. “At farmers’ markets it gives us a lift when people tell us they’re pleased to buy something they really enjoy and remember We provide an ingredient that’s often missing: time.

And although ours is a traditional method we don’t charge silly prices,” he says.Does Roger like his pigs? “They’re not bad They’re very intelligent We’ve got boars that know how to undo doors It’s farming I’m a bit disenchanted with at the moment. We get so much red tape and hassle coming through from Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] I’ve had nearly enough of it. Sod them, is how I feel about it.”Roger employs around 20 staff, and his wife and daughter also work on the farm. But he predicts that soon there won’t be many pig farmers left in Britain.