We have just been to see Spiderpig. He is our three-month-old Tamworth piglet - the name owes more to The Simpsons Movie than it does to his actual physique, which is already that of a bouncy, well-nourished human two-year-old.

The children named him, though I asked that we rechristen him Curly Bacon Spiderpig. It seemed wise to give some hint of his ultimate fate.

But I needn't have worried. When we arrived at the farm, complete with our kitchen scraps and a bag of jelly beans that my three-year-old daughter thought “Spidey” might like, Chris Walton, the farmer with whom he lodges, asked her what she thought was going to happen to him when he grew up. She replied briskly: “We're going to eat him. But not his nose.” So that was all right...

The idea of remote pig ownership was born when it was decided that we could not keep one in our garden. I didn't see why not: I thought an urban pig would charm the neighbours, and do away with any need for gardening. The pig would make a big hole in the kitchen scrap that we generate each week, an ever-growing mountain far beyond the capacities of the worm-driven composting device that sits and stinks at the bottom of the garden. (What are you supposed to do with all that liquid fertiliser made from worm poo, once you've killed the house plants with it? Ideas, please.)

But I was overruled. So, if we couldn't keep a pig at home, we'd have to keep it at boarding school. That's where Chris and Denise Walton came in. They run Peelham Farm, an organic mixed farm in Berwickshire where they rear veal and lamb, grow barley and beans and fantastic Tamworth pigs. This is the breed said to be closest to wild boars - with their tusks and long, truffling snouts, you can see the ancestry. They are clever and cheeky, and their hair is the surprising russet of the tam-o'-shanter wigs that Scotland football fans wear.

I met Chris at a Slow Food event last winter. A group of Edinburgh foodies, chefs and farmers had gathered - in some fear of the health and safety police - to watch three butchers from Friuli break one of his Tamworths down into the jewels of northern Italian sausage-making: salami, salsicce, cotechino, zampone and so on. Chris and Denise have since sent one of their staff to train in Italy in ham-curing and sausage-making. They are building a butchery behind the farmhouse to do it. As a failed parma ham curer myself (I've tried the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall formula twice, and it doesn't bloody work), this was inspiring. So was the Peelham home-made pancetta bacon - so tasty we ate slices of it uncooked with toast.

So we bought the piglet from the Waltons' March fallowing, and fixed a charge for his board. Since then, every few weekends, we've visited with a bucket of our swill. This is vegetarian only, because of the animal health rules, and organic, to preserve the Peelham Farm certification. The bucket is a good, guilt-free home for all those unwanted roots and leaves from our veggie box: we watched Spiderpig and his mates chow down on them with far more gusto than my own family does. We gave them strawberries and melon peel too. The only thing Spidey wasn't allowed was the jelly beans - they contain animal-derived gelatine. Next time we will bring Green & Black's chocolate.

Spiderpig is a member of the most efficient food-processing species on the planet - he can turn waste into fat and meat and increase his weight by 5,000 per cent in six months. But he'll live off our scraps - and the Waltons' barley and beans - until late next winter, when he should reach 120kg (265lb). Then we'll go to work. I'm still wondering whether the children should attend the butchering. In the car on the way home the three-year-old was thoughtful. “We can't eat Spiderpig's legs,” she said. “Because if we do, he won't be able to run.” There is some work to be done on her education as a carnivore yet.

Peelham Farm sells pork, lamb and veal direct from its website.

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