Return of the Hairy Pigs

The Big Day finally arrived!

Heckington is Britain's largest village show; last year's 22,500 visitors smashed all previous records and made it bigger than some of the County shows. All the usual attractions are there, (pig racing! jousting! sheep-shearing, shire horses, Grade A showjumpers, masses of shopping and eating opportunities etc etc) as well as some unique features like the annual Lincolnshire Longwool auction and, of course, this year for the first time in over 3 decades - the return of the Hairy Pigs. Good job Wurzel and Pepper were totally unaware of their celebrity or we'd never have managed to keep them so quiet all day. And what a day it was. But I'll backtrack a little way first....

We transferred Wurzel and Pepper from their outdoor pen to the Old Stalls on Friday so they would be clean-ish, dry and ready for 'polishing' and preening on Saturday. All that was duly achieved with minimal fuss - in fact, though Pepper didn't really appreciate the brushing, the rest of the preparation was most acceptable! We went off on Saturday afternoon to 'suss' out the show and location of our pen and loading/unloading facilities; also we took Gunner along to give him a foretaste of what to expect the following day. So many new sights and sounds for a little pup. He was quite overawed and kept stopping dead in his tracks to stare at yet another novelty! So it took quite a while to perambulate around the showground and get our bearings. Eventually, though, we managed to locate and organise things to our satisfaction and felt reasonably confident that we could manage to get sorted on Sunday. Since neither we, nor the piggies, had done anything like this before it was all just a little bit nerve wracking......

Sunday morning dawned fine and dry - and we were up by 5.30 a.m. to sort the rest of the Rectoryreserve inhabitants before loading and leaving home at 7.30 - accompanied by quite a few snorts and grunts about "Bit early" and "Hang on, where's breakfast?" and "How's a chap supposed to travel on an empty stomach?". Unloading at the show an hour later was no problem thanks to the assistance of a large number of sheep hurdles with which we built a 'runway' from the trailer to the pen.... Wurzel and Pepper let their curiosity lead them along till they reached the pen - where, Joy of Joys, they found plenty of food and fresh water and - best of all - fresh grass and earth to dig up! They couldn't have been happier. The visitors who came along in the first hour were greeted by the sight of pigs doing what they love best. After that, exhausted and content, they spent most of the day sleeping, snoring and grunting (pigs, not visitors ... though perhaps some of those did too...) - largely with their backs turned to their numerous admirers - apart from the occasional flurry of activity digging up the late arriving straw in order to return to rootling in the grass! And what a lot of admirers they had. Not only were they the ONLY pigs at the show but their attendance had been much heralded in the local media, so people had travelled from far and wide to see them. "40 years since I last seen one of them hairy pigs here" said one well-worn farmer. The day sped by on a host of tales and stories told of the 'old' days of the Lincolnshire Curly coat. Apparently the catalogue for the 1911 Lincolnshire Show had pages and pages of entries for the Curly Coat classes. Lots of photos were taken and if we'd collected a £ for each time somebody said "Oh Look - pigs" we'd have left the showground with very heavy pockets indeed! All in all, a very worthwhile - and slightly overawing - event.... As for Gunner; well, he attracted almost as much attention as the pigs for his looks and his manners - we probably could have sold him a hundred times over. He certainly came away well experienced in dealing with sheep and cattle - especially Very Large Bulls (one just along the line from us was fully 5' tall and must have weighed nearly 2 tonnes!). He couldn't wait to tell Lancer and Pilot all about his adventures when he got home. Were they Impressed? Not a bit. In fact you could almost hear them muttering to themselves... "Another shaggy dog tale..."