Everlong Farm’s pig experience days bring home the bacon for tractor fund
A pair of farmers have thanked people after a ‘pig experience’ venture has exploded in popularity and is helping them buy a new tractor..
Stacey and Phil Eve, who have run Everlong Farm in Weybread for the last five years, opened their site up for the first time this month and, since then, people have come in all weathers to meet their pigs and piglets.
Mrs Eve said the idea came about by chance after the farm was hit with terrible weather.
The 46-year-old said: “We had so much flooding here, so our pigs had to come in for the winter. In doing so, we ended up with four litters of piglets within eight weeks of each other.
“When the weather started to dry out, we were left with two mothers with their piglets in our barn. A couple of people said they would love to visit and it has grew from there.”
The experiences on the 10-acre farm, which also sells quails eggs from its 1,000 laying birds, offers pre-booked 90-minute sessions for groups of up to six people.
Visitors can choose to walk around the farm and see all of its animals, meet the pigs and piglets and even walk them around the site, learning more about the farm.
“We are a working farm and it has been great to welcome so many people in all sorts of weather down here and show then what we do,” said Mrs Eve.
The experiences are helping the pair, who moved from Stradbroke to the farm six months before the first lockdown, to buy a new tractor after they had to sell their last one.
“A couple of years ago, there was avian flu about 3km from our farm,” said Mrs Eve. “We did not get it but it meant we could not sell our eggs, so to survive, we had to sell our tractor.
“The popularity of the pig experiences is really helping us to get a new one and been a bit of a saviour.”
“We cannot thank everyone enough for coming, and word of mouth has helped this idea take-off. Every experience helps us, every booking counts and we hope to have another set of piglets in August.”
To find out more, go to the Everlong Farm Facebook page.