And this week his son Ean Pollard was in Sydney working alongside the prime minister’s wife Margie Abbott to continue that legacy.

These days their benevolence is also being extended locally, an idea initiated by local pig producer Dugald Walker and involves the Young Pork Producers - namely the Pollards, the Rowntrees and the Beveridges.

While this local effort first started as a donation to the annual Community Christmas Lunch - due to the overwhelming support of that event - the meat is now supplied periodically  throughout the year.

This year the donation will see about 800 kilos of meat - pork, sausages and chicken - donated to those in need in Cootamundra, Grenfell and Young.

Processed by Matt and Doug Housten and the Campbell family, who operate Hilltops Abattoir, the meat will be distributed to families by the Salvation Army.

This donation is usually observed by an official “hamover” - which this year took place at the Windridge Farms piggery “Wonga” on the Moppity Road and featured special guests NSW Primary Industries Minister and local Member for Burrinjuck Katrina Hodgkinson and Laurie Anderson from the Salvation Army.

“The Salvation Army locally is organised by Laurie Anderson and his wife Fiona - they do a good job and it is a pleasure to work with them,” pork producer Mr Walker said at the presentation last week.

“They have a daily handout of food to clients and with their own oven, deep freeze and facilities are able to store large quantities of food.”

Mr Walker said while Young is known as the nation’s cherry capital, the shire produces more pork than any other shire in NSW.

“Among the state’s pig farmers it is thought of as the pork capital,” he said.

“Every year about 6500 sows in the district produce close to 15,000 pigs that farm gate earn about $37 million, consume 45,000 tonnes of feed made of 25,000 tonnes of grain and about 15,000 tonnes of waste stream food that would otherwise be landfill.”

The local industy, according to Mr Walker, employs about 100 on-farm staff, plus contractors.

“The farms produce about 400 megawatts of electricity from manure - most used on farm and the rest sold onto the grid - we also get about four cente per kilowatt,” he said.

Mr Walker said it had been a mixed year for farmers - with many suffering a bobtail spring with reduced grain yields and soon will be feedling their livestock.

“On the whole it has been good for pigs,” he said.

He said he was grateful to Ms Hodgkinson for enacting new measures to better protect NSW farms from trespass and surveillance activity.

“That should make a realistic deterrant to the idealistic ratbags that break our quarantine procedures, frighten our animals and make something of a mockery of the police force - masked farm intruders have been allowed to get away with it.

Mr Walker concluded: “Laurie please take our thanks to your organisation for helping those less fortunate. We enjoy giving you a hand and to the Young pig industry my thanks for your continued support”.

In return Laurie Anderson was full of thanks to the generosity of the industry over the past two years.

“The cost of living has gone up and this goes a long way to ensuring we can help make ends meet for some families,” he said.