About The Orchard Pig A Pig's Tale

A Pig's Tale by Andrew Quinlan and Neil Macdonald

We are friends who share a passion (and addiction) for great food and rare breed pigs. We developed this interest by keeping Old Spots (Orchard Pigs) in our traditional cider apple orchard in Somerset.

We were soon eating our first gourmet products, supplied by the pigs, with dry cured gammons (latterly cured in cider and molasses) and bacon, as well as salamis and air dried ham. Keen to provide our pigs with a natural environment to live in, we maintain the orchard very simply, pruning it ourselves and using sheep to keep the grass down.

We supply nesting boxes to encourage blue and great tits to claim a territory. These little birds assist in controlling insect numbers, thus helping to increase the apple crop. However, even the pigs could not eat all the apples we were producing, so it was a natural development to make cider and apple juice. Since then, we haven't looked back and our hazy experimental days have really paid off! We loved it, our friends and neighbours loved it, so we made more... and more.

Now based at nearby West Bradley Orchards, we have Orchard Pig fans in Somerset, Dorset, Kent, Devon, Wales, Gloucestershire, Shropshire and Scotland to mention a few. We invite you to try some to see what all the fuss is about!

Orchard Pig News Items

Westcountry Ground Force Ltd

Westcountry Ground Force was originally set up three years ago as a managed labour force for the agricultural, horticultural and residential land management industries. This included ground care, hedging, agricultural contracting, fencing, tree planting, tree surgery, orchard management and a wide range of tasks that required a number of manual labourers.

Westcountry Ground Force, now the sister company of The Orchard Pig, rapidly found itself focusing on orchard management with a huge demand for its services in the local area. This included pruning, harvesting, planting and general management. In 2005, it moved premises to West Bradley Orchards near Glastonbury. We now manage some 600 acres of orchards in Somerset, as well as continuing our ground-care activities for a further 200 acres of residential and public land.

Westcountry Ground Force looks after The Orchard Pig's award winning orchard at Coxbridge (pictured.)

If you have an orchard that you would like maintained, please give Neil a call on 01458 850154.