As happy as a piglet in merde de cochon

IT’S DINNER time at the pig farm in the Pyrénées. And after weeks of scorching south of France sunshine, the heavens have opened and turned the pig pens into mud baths.

Which is lots of fun for the black Gascon pigs who are squelching about in their element, and not so much fun for moi — their waitress for the evening.

No, I’m not having much fun at all and I couldn’t be any further from my element. I’m straddling a slippery mountain bank just above the pigs’ mud-caked snouts, trying my level best to hold onto my balance, two full-to-overflowing buckets of pig-feed, and a fast-disappearing sense of oneness with nature. It’s July 2011, I’m four days deep into my French farming adventure, and for about the fifth time that hour wondering how on earth I was going to get myself on the next flight out of there.