Festive food: This little piggy made Christmas special

Graham Taylor with a leg of ham from the pig farm he runs with his wife, Sally. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Christmas hams ought to rate as an investment - this year, an 8kg cooked ham on the bone carries a price tag from $71 (Woolworths) to $148 (upmarket delicatessens).

But as Richard Cornish wrote in the Melbourne newspaper The Age last year, to serve a whole leg of ham was in centuries gone by not only a pronouncement of wealth and generosity, but a statement that all present were kith and kin.

History traces hams back to the Celts in Burgundy, France. Remember the Asterix comics, in which the podgy Obelix seems to be perpetually scrunching a leg of smoked wild boar.

Fast forward to 2004, and that festive centrepiece might have started its life as a wriggly piglet at Graham and Sally Taylor's Ariel Farm at Paparoa, near Maungataroto in the Kaipara district.

The couple, who both started their working lives as school teachers, keep a 12ha farm housing 1800 to 2000 pigs. They have two full-time staff.

In agricultural terms, it's a "farrow to finish" operation - birth to slaughter.

The Taylors also have two butcheries, one at Paparoa, opened four years ago, and the other at Ruawai, opened 18 months ago.

The shops sell pork products, including Christmas hams, under the name Long Flat Bacon Company. Most of the Taylors' Christmas hams are sold through their website.

The New Zealand pork industry isn't large; in recent years, as much as 36 per cent of the pork we eat has been imported.

The economic equations have halved the number of pork farms between 1990 and 2002, says the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

New Zealand now has about 360, most in Waikato and Canterbury.

Pig breeding is a quick-turn-around industry. Wild sows are seasonal breeders, but their penned sisters breed all year long. Ariel's 200 sows produce an average of 23 piglets a year.

From birth to slaughter is 143 days, or 90-odd kilos. As they grow, pigs are penned together in covered sheds, allowing them to run around freely.

Ariel has six boars, all of the durox or a durox cross breed.

"They give very vigorous piglets," says Mr Taylor, "and very meaty ham."

The sows, the breed large white/landrace or a cross, are mated or artificially inseminated. An ultrasound machine like that used on humans confirms pregnancy.

Gestation is about 115 days - "three months, three weeks and three days", as Mr Taylor puts it.

The sows give birth in farrow crates - pens which allow them to move, stand and suckle their litter, but which separate mum and young with half-length downward-facing bars so she can't roll on them.

Sows weigh up to 200kg, says Mr Taylor, and don't feel it when they squash a 1.6kg piglet.

Piglet mortality is about 10 per cent, he says, but that would be much higher if the farrow crate didn't prevent smother love.

The crates have a heat lamp and heated pad well away from mum so the piglets can get warmth without risking death.

Sows, says Mr Taylor, "are great milkers", producing about 10 litres of milk a day.

The piglets double their weight in about seven days.

Between occupants, farrowing crates are steam-cleaned and disinfected. Disease prevention is crucial with so many animals at close quarters, and pigs are vaccinated against diseases.

After being weaned at about 28 days, the pigs - by this stage looking like the cute star of the movie Babe , and gratifyingly curious about visitors - are penned in groups and fed pellets designed to build lean meat.

The farm buys seven types of feed to cater for the pigs as they mature, and the herd goes through 2 1/2 tonnes a day.

Pigs are clean animals, refusing to mess anywhere near their living or eating areas.

There is little odour around a pig farm, and you can't hear squeals and grunts until right up close. The biggest hazard on such a farm appears to getting pig-pen sawdust blown in your eyes.

 

When they are 21 weeks old, the pigs are ready for despatch. Every Friday morning, about 80 pigs go by truck from the farm to Auckland Meat Processors in Otahuhu.

On Sunday nights, 10 chilled carcasses are returned to the Taylors' butcheries for processing.

The other carcasses go to the farmer-owned wholesaler Five Star Pork in Palmerston North, which supplies Progressive Enterprises' Countdown, Woolworths and Foodtown supermarkets.

Pigs are prepared for slaughter with an electrical stunner, which knocks out brain function.

They are then bled to death to stop the meat becoming too bloody.

Mr Taylor says the pigs are "insensible" when this happens.

So how does a uncooked leg of pork become a ham? Today's hams are wet-cured.

A brine of salt, sugar and nitrates is pumped into them. The nitrates react with pigments in the meat to keep looking fresh and pink - salty water would otherwise turn the meat an unappetising grey.

Then the hams spend about 24 hours in a soaking brine of similar ingredients, but different proportions, before going

to a smoke house, where manuka sawdust imparts flavour and colour.

The hams are simmered in water for up to six hours, or until testing reveals the deep muscle temperature has reached 68C. There is little demand for raw hams, say the Taylors.

And that's it. A Taylor-made ham has a dark brown sheen and will sell for $12.50 a kilo.

This year, they expect to sell 400 hams, up from the 100 they sold last Christmas.

The Taylors recommend that Christmas ham seekers look for a good-quality cooked New Zealand ham.

And Pork Industry Board chief executive Angus Davidson adds his advice - look for a sticker saying "100 per cent New Zealand pork"; that means the product was raised and processed in this country.

Pork product packaging does not have to list where the meat came from, he says, obscuring whether a ham is an import from Australia or the real local deal.

After you have peeled the rind off your ham, the Taylors suggest a glaze of honey, vinegar and mustard.

If you want the ham warmed, bake it in an oven preheated to 160C.

Keep the leftovers in the fridge in a calico ham bag, or covered with a clean linen tea towel that has been soaked in water to which a tablespoon of vinegar has been added.

Refresh the tea towel every three days and you'll have post-Christmas ham sandwiches for weeks.