Free-range pork
pastured slow grown pigs raised on organic vegetable farm
Hi. I’m Kunekune.
That’s my breed. I love vegetables, apples, tree leaves and sweet grass shoots.
I love where I live – we are on old organic vegetable and fruit farm in Canterbury. I have so much space to run and play and root around!
My life
Our farmer Jeremy moves us every few days into a fresh area of land. We get to see every corner of the farm over the whole season.
In the spring, we enjoy the young grass that comes out in pastures that we share with couple of dairy cows. We also love all the worms and beetles that we come across in the soil.
Summertime is just overflowing with grass and herbs, fallen apples and tree branches. When it’s hot and the sun strong, our farmer Jeremy lets us in the shade of the forest or the orchard.
When autumn comes, it’s the best time. We visit the harvested vegetable gardens. We pick up all veggies left behind. It’s so much fun sniffing them out. We need to dig out some (like potatoes and carrots) and others we just need to find (young pumpkins).
I love winter because it’s so much fun. We help our vegetable farmer with his farming. Since we love rooting, we make his new beds. Or we root around in woodchips that he needs to spread under the fruit trees. We happily dig and weed any ground he needs prepared. And since there is so much wet sticky mud about – we wallow and play all winter.
After a long day’s work digging up the orchard and preparing it for new plantings of raspberries.
Sniffing out beetles – I know they are hiding somewhere in there!
After the strong summer sun eased off, it’s time to get some food.
What we get supplemented with
Our farmer Jeremy also supplements us with things like linseed and wheat so we are never hungry. I think he is a great fellow – he creates games for us by hiding the pellets in all sorts of places like piles of woodchips or straw. But what a fun finding them!
Jeremy makes a big fuss about what pellets he gives us. He believes that we do better not eating soya, since it doesn’t grow in this country and is causing all sorts of environmental trouble in countries where it does grow, like Brazil, Argentina or US. I think he is a bit of a fool as soya is much cheaper to buy and is the standard feed for pigs. But he knows best.