The meals are being prepared with the help and support of Manchester based restaurants including Higher Ground, Where The Light Gets In and Erst. They are each taking a cut of meat and together they are using the whole pig to create meals for families in need.
The meals are being distributed by The Bread and Butter Thing, a charity that makes life more affordable for people on a low income. Their mission is to create a fair solution for people in poverty.
Throughout the winter months artist and farmer Kat Wood raised two Gloucestershire old spots on a hill farm in the Peak District National Park.
The pigs were fattened entirely on locally sourced by-products including Track Brewery’s spent grains, waste vegetables from Manchester food banks, bruised apples from local orchards, carrots that didn’t make the supermarket grade and a surplus of winter sprouts.
The pigs have been kept on a site that was overgrown with nettles and roots and through the course of the winter they have cleared the way for a wildflower meadow and crops to be planted come spring.
Wood’s idea behind this project was a nod to the notion of back to basics; until the 1930s, it was commonplace for rural households to have a pig or two. They were valued for their ability to convert inedible food into meat, and were often fed on a diet of household food waste.
Once they had grown to the correct weight, the slaughtering was a moment of community and celebration.
The project addresses the relationship between the rural and the urban and Wood’s fascination with the location of the land that pigs were being raised on, previously the route of the Kinder Mass Trespass. This was an event that took place in 1932 when around 500 walkers, mostly from Manchester, trespassed en masse and walked from Hayfield to Kinder Scout to secure access rights to open country for all to enjoy forever.
The idea grew, that with access to only a small patch of land and community spirit, over 120 families in need within Greater Manchester could be fed.
