Doherty - A farmers life for me: how to live sustainably, Jimmys way

I wasnt born in the country, but we moved to Saffron Walden when I was three. I grew up in what had once been a cricket pavilion, which my dad converted into a great little house surrounded by 2 acres of meadow. As a toddler I pottered around the great outdoors. I loved animals from the very beginning and used to keep scores of them like some Essex version of Gerald Durrell. I had spiders and insects and ferrets and rabbits I even converted the carport into an aviary.

The fields were even better, a never-ending source of interesting bugs and insects. My best friend had a smallholding I saw my first lamb being born when I was 13 and the memory has stayed with me to this day it was named Buttons! Later, I worked in a wildlife park in Widdinton, first as an assistant and then helping run the butterfly house. Attached to this was a working farm and it was that that kindled a real interest in farming.

But I buried that fascination for a while by heading off to do a zoology degree and then on to read for a doctorate in entomology. By the time I was in my mid-twenties I found myself teaching in Coventry and running the university insect lab. I was reasonably successful and broadly content, but something was missing.

What next?

It was 11 September 2001 that changed everything. I was staring down a microscope, counting flies, when the planes went into the Twin Towers. That event suddenly brought everything into perspective. I thought, what would happen if some calamity befell me? What if a car skidded off the road, if I was in a plane crash, or a scaffolding pipe fell onto me from a building as I was passing? What would my life mean? Would I just be a guy who one moment was counting flies and the next wasnt there any more? When people asked what Id done with my life, would friends say, Jim? Oh, he counted flies?

I had always had a deep-rooted respect for farmers. A lot of people just see a grumpy bloke in a flat cap complaining about the weather, but actually they are genuine wizards the real Harry Potters and Dumbledores of today. They take an empty patch of ground and a few months later theyve got the food we all rely on. You cant have a bank manager, computer programmer or politician without the farmer who produces the food we all need to survive. Theyve got rare skills, ones which we all rely on, and I cant bear the idea of losing this traditional knowledge.

A future in farming?

So when I was looking around for something to do with my life, it seemed natural to turn to food production. My problem and in some ways my great advantage was that I had no farming background. This meant there was no father to turn to for help and no tractor to borrow, but it also meant I wasnt loaded down with years of doing things in a particular way and selling through the age-old channels of livestock markets and wholesale butchers. Instead I was free to experiment and make mistakes and boy did I make some mistakes and I could come at things from a fresh angle.

I knew there was no point in producing food without a market. I had no interest in growing and rearing things just as a self-indulgent hobby. In the end the only way you know youre doing a good job is if other people are prepared to pay for what youve produced.Our farm is very small in East Anglian terms, so it was clear I had to develop something unique, something that wasnt already out there. For my dreams to work, I knew I had to have a market.

I started by going to a lot of farmers markets and then to Borough Market in London. All these are full of great producers with brilliant produce and really fantastic ideas. I looked at their stalls and I asked a lot of questions. To this day I am really grateful for the generous and incredibly helpful advice I got from countless producers who had much better things to do than answer my naive questions.

Pigs quickly struck me as ideal for what I wanted to do. They have large litters compared with sheep or cattle. In other words, each sow will produce at least eight piglets (we aim for ten in a litter), twice a year. A cow or sheep, on the other hand, will only manage one, or possibly two, young in the same period. Better still, you can keep them on very rough land, so it meant I didnt need a lot of expensive prime land. Pigs also mature quickly and are ready for slaughter at six months or so (its at least two years with a beef animal). But, most important of all, they produce a fantastic meat which has a ready market in Britain. We just love our pork, bacon, ham and of course sausages.

Picking the perfect spot

I then started to look around for a farm. From the outset I knew that location would be critical. Someone once told me that it is really important to count the chimney pots that are visible from the farm each one represents potential customers. I found the ideal location just south of Ipswich. It was an old farm in a poor state of repair with a few near-derelict barns, a stream or two and 100 acres of fairly rough pasture the perfect place to rear pigs.

From the outset my pigs were always going to be reared outdoors. They like it and its more natural for a start, but there are good practical reasons too. Theres very little mucking out and they graze much more than people realise. This means they find a fair amount of their own food. They are also good at turning over rough ground. Admittedly, this does encourage thistles and docks, but you can get round that by ploughing and planting with crops or reseeding with grass.

Getting going

Once I had signed the lease on the farm, I started knocking things into shape. I began by putting up some rough-and-ready electric fencing. My first arks (movable runs) were no more than rudimentary straw bales with a waterproof top.

It was tough at first, but at least I always knew that to make a living I would have to add value in every conceivable way I could. Even the biggest pig farmers live on a financial roller coaster. Unlike cattle or sheep, there are no subsidies for pigs and the industry goes through regular booms and busts. If the biggest farmers were regularly going bankrupt, I knew I had to do something more than just produce pork quality would be key. It was also vital to take control of as much of the journey from field to plate as possible. So while my first pigs were putting on weight in their paddock, I built a butchery out of old fridge panels inside one of the tractor sheds. It was crude, but the panels were virtually free and easy to wipe down and sterilise.

There is nothing wrong with modern commercial breeds of pigs after all, they produce 99 per cent of the pork and bacon we eat in Britain today but I wanted something extra special both in taste and texture.

It always strikes me as ironic that every major town has galleries and museums dedicated to preserving our artistic and cultural heritage, yet its left up to a handful of unpaid enthusiasts to save our traditional breeds. These animals are the living embodiment of our agricultural past, and if they die out, thats it: they take their unique qualities and genes with them.