Community Keeping

Chris Graham spends an enjoyable afternoon in deepest Suffolk, with enthusiastic members of the successful, Debenham Pig Club

There’s something deeply appealing about groups of local, like-minded people working together to a common end. It harks back to a time when society was friendlier, community spirit was stronger and, in many respects, life was simpler and more satisfying.

Community pig clubs can exemplify these desirable aspects, and act as a wonderful catalyst for drawing people out of their everyday, computer-dominated working lives. They offer the chance to re-connect with life at a more fundamental level; an experience which many find extremely rewarding, in so many different ways.

The Debenham Pig Club is a perfect example of just how effectively community effort can be harnessed to create an operation that’s fundamentally benecfiial to its members, to the individual pigs being kept, and to the environment.

Chance encounter

The club came into being thanks to the initial efforts of Jane Baldwin who, four years ago, set the wheels in motion after attending an ‘Introduction to pigs’ day at a local farm.

“Everything started in 2013, thanks to a £500 grant we were awarded from Community Action Suffolk,” she explained to me. “This is an organisation that provides support, advice and services to the community and voluntary sector, and I’d been in touch about some funding for an allotment project I was involved with. Then, completely by chance and because I was at a loose end one day, I attended an ‘Introduction to pigs’ course at a community farm, near Ipswich.”