I’d never seen a pig quite like Gloria. Black and hairy, with floppy ears the size of dinner plates, she almost knocked me over when she nuzzled me with her snout. As a Large Black, Gloria is a rare breed – once common throughout South West England, today there are only around 300 breeding sows of her kind in the UK.
This is a shame. “Pigs like Gloria are a vital part of a healthy ecosystem,” said her owner Merlin Hanbury-Tenison. He pointed to a muddy puddle in the field, unremarkable to the untrained eye. “She turns the soil and creates wet patches. That wouldn’t be there otherwise. And that creates micro-habitats that insects can find a home in, where seeds can start to break through, where trees can start to grow.” More common white pigs, which are not native to this area, don’t have the heft – Large Black sows weigh around 300kg – to rootle like a Large Black.
Then he gestured to the rolling hills in the distance. The patchwork of fields, their clipped grass neatly divided by hedgerows, looked like the vision of quintessential English beauty.
“That’s a green desert,” he said. “There’s nothing living in it. We really need the chaos, the mosaic, the messiness that a pig like Gloria can bring to the natural world.”
His view of the surrounding countryside might be tinged with hyperbole. But he has a point: centuries of farming in Britain has transformed the landscape, not always for the better. Along with his wife Lizzie, Merlin is on a mission to bring that “messiness”, and biodiversity, back – starting with his home, Cabilla.
A 300-acre farm set in the rugged, granite-hewn landscape of Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor, Cabilla has been in Merlin’s family since his father bought it in 1960. When Merlin and Lizzie took over in 2018, they wanted to shift Cabilla in a more sustainable direction. To them, Cabilla is more than a farm. It is an intricate network of ecosystems made up of fields, river and an ancient woodland that is one of the last remaining temperate rainforests in Europe. Their aim is to restore the land, create jobs – and even help people become healthier.