Meet Freddie Rachel’s new pet!!!!

Freddie the friendly pig

Unbelievable as it is Rachel’s new pet is a French wild pig, or Sanglier, called Freddie. It all started about 3 months ago when the little pig and his sister Ginger began to steal the cats’ food. (Rachel feeds 10 wild cats on the mountain so she puts bowls of food outside the back door). Panicked that the pigs might be cannibalising by eating cat food containing unknown meat products Rachel started feeding Fred and Ginger with corn. Mostly just to get them away from the cat bowl long enough to rescue it and put it somewhere out of reach. Now, 3 months later, Freddie answers to a call and follows Rachel around hoping for any scrap of food. He turns up every evening squeaking with excitement and runs up and down outside the house. This has caused some friction in our household, pigs and cats being my least favourite creatures because they are the two worst offenders in my kitchen garden. It is bad enough with all these cats but pigs are just a step too far.

Freddie eating corn

Since August pigs have been getting into the kitchen gardens almost nightly, really wrecking walls, beds even the polytunnel. I’ve lost loads of plants, seed plants too, and harvests for months to come. The most frustrating thing has been that we just could not see how the pigs were getting into the garden. The fencing around the perimeter was intact with no damage or holes in it. We reinforced areas that seemed weak, added height in places but the pigs still kept getting in. It was driving me mad and, needless to say, I started pointing the finger at Freddie and counting the days until his number would be up. But Rachel was convinced of his innocence but had to prove it to save Freddie’s bacon – excuse the pun.

Rachel decided to demonstrate that it was not Freddie doing the evil deeds in my garden. One evening as Freddie came around she went into the potager, shut the gate behind her and stood in the middle calling Freddie and shaking a dish of food. Freddie went crazy running round and round the outside of the garden up and down the fences, walls and gates but could not find a way of getting it in. The damage in the kitchen gardens is pretty bad but it looks like Freddie is not the culprit and at least he has helped confirm non of the fencing is accessible. A tame pig may have its uses after all!