I’d been in love with the idea of raising pigs for a long time.

I wanted to be able to feed them as babies, to pick them up and pull their ears, to tickle their tummies and tug their tails. I wanted to watch them grow and keep them happy. Then I wanted to be able to cut them up and eat them.

During 25 years of cooking professionally I’ve killed hundreds of lobsters and drowned thousands of mussels in cream. I’ve grown, worried about and protected vegetables from seed to plate (I’ve an uncommonly close relationship with my 16 varieties of tomatoes).

I have huge respect for ingredients, I hate waste, I love planning meals to get the best from everything and I love using up leftovers. Getting my own pigs felt like the only achievable way of getting closer to my food.

Would it feel like keeping a pet so that I could eat it a year later? I wanted to be in charge of what they ate so that I could be in charge of their taste.

I wanted to discover what it’s like to have the responsibility as well as the glory, I wouldn’t kill the pigs myself but I would give the order to kill them. If their death was in my hands I wanted to make sure that they’d have a good life.

This wasn’t a game and the pigs don’t live in my garden. My friend Colin Ring is an experienced farmer who has sheep pastures nearby and we made the pigs a joint project. We began over two years ago with, Fry-up, a Gloucester Old Spot and Crispy, A Duroc, both boys. Last year we got two Oxford Sandy and Blacks, Mince and Meatball (my names), sisters from Mark and Jane Cooper’s wonderful farm in Dorchester.

Colin made a straw filled house that they’d curl up in together.

This was set in an enclosure overhung with wild apples and surrounded by plenty of space to root for whatever it is they root for. With their snouts, they can dig up a huge area of grass in a tiny amount of time, leaving it like a plough has passed. This made for so much mud in winter that we had to cover part of it with paving stones, a patio for pigs if you like.

It’s often said that pigs are intelligent creatures but at feeding time they lose all sense of reason.

In their frenzy they’ll spill everything, stand in their trough, tip it over, one bit me on the ankle on its way to an apple and another tackled me when I was trying to feed him, I fell backwards into the electric wire, got a shock, leapt forward, toppled over the other pig and went face first into the mud.

They just rooted around me like I was a log, picking up the food I’d dropped until I got up. My laughter came later.

The many sheep would watch jealously as the pigs were fed twice daily. Then we let the pigs out into the field this summer. Pigs and sheep grazed happily together until I fed the pigs their nuts in the field. The much smaller sheep overwhelmed them like a woolly swarm, pushed the pigs aside and ate their food.

After this we fed the pigs in secret spots. I could see these spots from the road as I cycled to feed them, so I’d slow down, call “piiiiiiigiiies” and they’d sprint, parallel to me, on the other side of the fence, to meet me at the gate. It wasn’t for the love of me, they just followed the food. I fed them as they would one day feed me. As much as I enjoyed tickling their tummies, as emotional as I was when Fry-up was the first to go to the abattoir, I’ve been carefully conscious that we were growing rather than raising them. My boys, five and eight, accepted this from the start and it’s been wonderful for them to see where their meat comes from. “Are we eating Crispy?” They demand, when we’re having a roast, or “Is this Fry-up?” They’ve asked long after he’s left the freezer. I’ve been educated at the same time as my kids and I’m delighted that they know so early in life that animals should be respected and cared for before they are eaten.

This Monday, a friend and I butchered Mince. We worked like jewellers, removing the gems of flesh with the greatest of care. We found the joints with our fingers and cut through them cleanly and we caressed the meat away from the bones. We boned out the heads and feet to prepare great classic recipes.

Every scrap of meat, fat and sinew will be used, even the bone dust that stuck to my saw will go into stock. Each morsel of Mince will get the same respect now as that beautiful Oxford Sandy and Black beast did when she was alive.

Alex Mackay is an Oxfordshire based, award-winning cookery teacher and writer, author of Alex Mackay’s Cookbook for Everybody Everyday and Cooking in Provence. www.alexmackay.com http://www.coopersoxfordpork.com/