Hey Duggee

Bonus benefits from having the Modus back in action at this time is that a forest drive this morning brought with it a ride in a car considerably warmer than a cold sitting room, and

a hot meal in the warm Hockey’s Farm Café, where the tables were all decorated with pots of têtes-à-têtes.

The bacon on my plate had not come from rescued pigs penned in separate enclosures side by side in the grounds of the farm.

A notice fronting these animals explains how they arrived there. It should be possible to read this explanation by enlarging Jackie’s photograph by clicking on it.

Her photographs show the boars that had been found roaming – one drinking and scratching, the other more sedate.

After our brunch, having realised that their separation was probably a necessity,

I made a few more images of the pigs.

This very restless one stalked backwards and forwards along the barrier fences, apparently desperate to reach his erstwhile companion.

The appearance of these creatures led us to wonder whether they may be a hybrid from the farm-kept wild boar introduced by an enterprising farmer a few years ago.

Wild Boar
In 1686, it was stated that there were no wild boars left in England, and there was speculation that ‘it may be supposed that heretofore we had, and did not think it convenient to preserve that Game’.[5] The wild boar was considered a worthy adversary for huntsmen, and the aristocracy used boar hunting as a form of war games where they could practice the martial skills that would be needed on the battlefield. They believed that a wild boar who ‘when he seeth unavoidable death, he singleth out one of the Huntsmen and will run upon him with the greatest rage imaginable, not to be affrighted with swords or sticks’.[6] The boar was considered to have the strength of a lion and given the opportunity ‘will not only throw the Huntsman down, but if he hath no help will kill him’.[7] Charles I had tried to reintroduce wild boar to the New Forest in the early seventeenth century where, it was said, ‘they increased and became terrible to travellers’.[8] These animals were all killed during the English Civil Wars but, according to legend, not before they had bred with the domestic Forest sows and ‘tainted all the breeds of pigges in the neighbouring partes, which are of their colour; and kind of soot colour’.[9]  It is doubtful if any of the progeny from these pairings have survived. Nowadays the only wild boar on the New Forest are farmed-kept and were introduced by an enterprising farmer only a few years ago.” (http://newforestcommoner.co.uk/2016/09/25/new-forest-pannage-pigs-and-wild-boar/)

Back home Ellie was swathed in Jackie’s jerkin while watching Hey Duggee on TV.

The Culinary Queen produced an especially tasty chicken and veg stewp for tonight’s dinner with which she drank Hoegaarden and I forgot.

“You Wanted Pigs”

This morning Jackie drove me to the north of the forest where we knew we would be most likely to find pigs loosed for pannage.

A skip hire truck forced Jackie to reverse our Modus when faced head on with the vehicle and its obscured convoy along the narrow, winding, Gorley Lane.

It was along Ringwood Road, South Gorley, that we were first rewarded by the sight of a variety of young pigs gleefully trotting about the tarmac, the verges, a woman, and her dog, while rapidly scampering in search of acorns and other mast which are poisonous to ponies.

No way was I able to keep up with these gambolling, rollicking young snorting porkers as they careered into Newtown Lane to join the rest of their snuffling sounder. Jackie drove on ahead and cried out of her window “Well, you wanted pigs”.

Vehicles needed not only to avoid the scuttling swine, but also the sawn logs placed on the verges to deter parking that had been nudged aside by the eager eaters seeking whatever might be beneath them.

While the younger grunting guzzlers gourmandised in light and shade,

one somnolent mature matriarch appeared to be sleeping off her feast in subdued lighting.

By association all this porcine activity had prompted our peckishness,

so we brunched at Hockey’s Farm Shop, where

I felt slightly guilty about what was on my plate.

This afternoon I brought https://derrickjknight.com/2021/09/06/a-knights-tale-28-three-monarchs-in-quick-succession/ up to date by incorporating the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II and the accession of King Charles III

This evening we dined on left-overs from yesterday’s Chinese meal with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Monte Polgar. The young couple ate later.