Recreating The Good Life - Pigs and barter


Rodney
Rodney, a Gloucester Old Spot boar

I’m carrying on my look at self-sufficiency in the 21st century, looking back at The Good Life sitcom from the 1970s (in the first article I looked at food waste and chickens).

Today’s topics come from episodes 3 and 4 (‘The Weaker Sex’ and ‘Pig’s Lib’). The beginning of episode 3 is lovely if you’re a gardener – the Goods are out in their front garden, taking photos of their almost invisible pea seedlings, so proud of producing new life and having their first crops underway. A visit by the rag and bone man allows Tom to swap some of their unwanted gadgets for something much more useful – a range that they can cook on when the electricity is shut off.

There aren’t many rag and bone men still inoperation today, I shouldn’t think, but there has been a resurgence in recycling and in reusing things that in recent years would have been thrown away. The digital age has given us Freecycle, which allows us to give away unwanted items to people from our community who can make use of them, and receive their unwanted items in return. It’s a great way to turn trash into treasure. A range might be a tall order, but you never know! Some local action groups run swap shops, so keep an eye out for those; and, of course, charity shops and jumble sales retain their appeal.

The subject of barter comes up in episode 4, as Tom exchanges fresh eggs for his copy of a pig keeping magazine. Urban pig keeping was popular during the war, when streets clubbed together to feed their kitchen waste to a pig that then provided them with a share of its meat when it was sent to slaughter. Something similar was shown on River Cottage when a group of families in Bristol took on a communal smallholding, complete with a pair of piggies.

Urban pigkeeping may be a step too far for many of us, who simply don’t have the space, but apparently it is becoming more popular – with at least one DIY chain stocking pigsties. But there’s a lot of paperwork involved these days, and you can’t find your pigs (or other livestock) on kitchen scraps since the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak (see the DEFRA website for more information).

Articles in the ‘Recreating the Good Life series’:
Recreating the Good Life: Cash Crops
Recreating the Good Life: Energy
Recreating the Good Life: Food Waste and Chickens
Recreating the Good Life: Pigs and Barter
Recreating the Good Life: Press


Resources: websites
River Cottage is a great resource for people interested in food issues, including keeping livestock and making the most of your ingredients. They publish handbooks and run courses on many aspects of self-sufficiency, including foraging and preserving.
Self-Sufficientish is a website for people who would like to be self-sufficient but don’t have the space to do it all.
The Accidental Smallholder has a nice introduction to keeping pigs, and there’s a lot more into on The Pig Site.
LETS is an upgrade on barter that uses a local currency to facilitiate the exchange of goods and services; local currencies are also springing up as part of the Transition Towns movement towards relocalization.

Feel free to leave other useful links in the Comments.

Posted 9 November 2009, 11:47.
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