It always amazes me how quickly this time of year comes round, and preparations have to be started for the big day. The Christmas poultry is all ordered ready, the beef is hanging and the bacon and hams are curing, so I’m feeling quite organised this year, but despite our preparations I still have the feeling that I have forgotten something!

Christmas for us is a very busy time of year and it is very nerve racking making sure everything is prepared and ready. Three weeks ago I went out to John Laughton’s farm at North Cockerington to look at the cattle he had been rearing for us ready for Christmas, and some fine beasts they were to! Along with some prime Longhorns from Dads that’s the beef all sorted!

So then it was onto the pork, and with some lovely Gloucester Old Spots from Kieth Wright near Woodhall Spa things are looking good. The pork from rare breed pigs really do make the most fabulous sausages.

With that all sorted all I have to do is check how the turkeys are doing, and get the bacon curing underway.

We try to get all the bacon into cure as soon as we can as with dry curing the sooner we get it underway the better it will be. Once the pork has been trimmed it’s ready to be rubbed with the curing salt which has been infusing with juniper berries. Then it is left to cure in large tubs for 10 to 12 days before we hang it up to dry until we need it. In much the same way the gammons are put into cure, the only difference is instead of a dry cure they go into a brine cure, there they will stay for 3 weeks before hanging up to mature.

So with the beef all hanging the bacon curing, and a quick phone call today to see how the turkeys at  Copas  are doing everything seems to be in order! All that remains is for the orders to flowing in and, oh I need to get my tree up!

Well here we are again the start of another year! I cant believe how time flies! We have just about recovered from another busy Christmas, and are now turning our attentions to the Horncastle Farmers Ball which takes place on Friday 14th January.

Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to keep my blogs as up to date as I should last year but it is my New Years resolution so here goes!!

Last year lots happened, and I will attempt to remember! In November Odile and I when up to Scotland again to the annual Scotch Premier Christmas Carcase Show 2010 which was great fun as every1 The Scots are so welcoming and we always look forward to it. The show saw our first purchase from the prize winning stock with the First Prize Light Heifer and First Prize Light Lambs arriving at the shop just in time for Christmas! The whole trip was made very eventful due to very heavy snow while we were up there!

Luckily we were home in time to start preparations for Christmas. It is our busiest time of the year, and we start to prepare around the beginning of November. We start with provisional turkey orders, curing bacon, taking orders and sourcing the beef for Christmas. All of our beef is hung for 21 days minimum so the beef for Christmas has to be slaughtered at the beginning of December at the latest. For many people looking in from the outside butchers make lots of money at Christmas, and if only this were true! The truth of the matter is we have to make hay while the sun shines and in order to survive January and February when things are always quiet in our trade, not only have people spent up at Christmas but they diet too!! On the plus side though it does give us much needed time for maintenance, all the jobs that you never get done the rest of the year!

So this year on of our first jobs is to start work on the flat above the shop. Last year we acquired the flat and following approval for change of you we are now able to start to expand our preparation area. We are hoping to be able to increase our mail order department’s through put.

Happy new year to you all,

That’s Christmas all done and finished for another year!  “Thank goodness” I can here Simon and Tim saying, or words to that affect! Everything went fairly smoothly, we ran scarily low on pork and had several late nights but it all worked out in the end.

Simon made just over half a ton of Best Lincolnshire Sausages alone! We cut up beef from 16 hind quarters and diced quarter of a ton of stewing beef! Tim made in excess of 500 pork pies not counting all the speciality ones, and to top it all we were all traveling in by sleigh thanks to the weather! Well not quite but we were having to take it steady!

Now that we are into 2010 we have all been thinking about the year that has just gone with all the exiting things that have happened from commencing with our cooked meats and supplying Horncastle Farmers Ball last January and ”Britain’s Best Steak” in the early spring to winning BBC Young Butcher of the Year and the Countryside Alliance, Best Traditional Business East of England Region in the autumn! Then what may the year ahead have in store for us, already I have high hopes for expanding the premises later in the year and am looking forward to starting my Master Butcher Diploma in the spring. I think Simon is hoping, if his list to Santa is anything to go by, for an automatic sausage machine!

For the mean time though our thoughts turn to the Horncastle Farmers Ball, which is coming up in the middle of the month where we supply and carve the cold meat selection. As I speak the ribs and sirloins of beef are maturing, the chines are curing and Simon is fishing for the Salmon on the river Lud!

Well we are nearly back to normality now, come Monday the opening times return to normal and in just over a month we shall be celebrating our second birthday at our Louth shop!

For now though I wish everyone well for the new year ahead.

Jim holding set of ribs in the shop window

Hi all,

Just found time to let you know how preparations for Christmas are going! We have been flat out now for the best part of a fortnight, curing bacon, butchering pigs, preparing beef, counting turkeys, making sausages, assembling pies and of course taking orders! It still seems like we have loads to do though, and to make things even more difficult we have snow everywhere! Never the less all the turkeys have arrived and been allocated, all the ribs have finished their four weeks maturing and Simon wouldn’t be too fussed if he never saw another sausage again!!

I am pleased to say that our order book is full and all our turkeys are sold and we are now ready for the onslaught of Christmas week 2009! I am also very pleased to say that we have just heard that we have won The Countryside Alliance’s Daily Telegraph Traditional Business Award for the East of England Region 2009! Which is a nice way to round off a very action packed year! The England Grand Final is at the House of Lords in London on 3rd February next year.

But for now it is back to the grind stone in readiness for Christmas!

Sex on Fire, Louth Fatstock Champion

Hi all,

I am very pleased to announce that we have bought the Louth Christmas Fatstock Champion for the second year running!

The Limousin cross, Sex on Fire, bred by Louise Todd of D T Todd Farming, East Torrington received the Champion prize at the 80th Annual Christmas Stock Show. The show held at Louth Livestock Market showcases some of the best livestock from around the county. 

Beef from the champion will be available from the shop at Louth from 21st December onwards.

Jim holding the champion, Sex on Fire

Scotch Premier Carcases

Hi all,

Just arrived back yesterday evening from the Scotch Premier Christmas Carcase Show. We purchase some of our beef, pork and lamb from Scotch Premier, they produce some excellent quality meat which has it own distinct flavour they take every care to make sure what they supply is the very best. Odile and I had a fabulous weekend up in Inverurie. We arrived up there last Saturday via sleeper train! Neil our sales rep picked us up from the station and took us to Inverurie to the abattoir and gave us a tour before treating us to breakfast and dropping us off at the hotel.

On Sunday we went to Drum Castle and then attended the Scotch Premier Dinner in the evening at the Thainston Exchange.

Odile and I on our way to the Scotch Premier Dinner Dance

Then on Monday we visited one of the farms that supply Scotch Premier and saw some cattle, it was a very smart and well managed farm, one thing that is really nice up there is the farms are still mixed,  so they grow their own barley for feed and straw and make their own silage, it’s like a self contained little unit. I believe this is one of the things that makes their meat so very good. Then we attended the carcase show at Scotch Premier’s plant in Inverurie, we saw some excellent carcases and watched them being auctioned. We then attended the Scotch Premier Christmas Carcase Dinner Dance in the evening.

To round things off we visited the Aberdeen Christmas Classic at Thainston Exchange on Tuesday before catching the sleeper train home again.

It was a fabulous weekend and we both would like to thank Scotch Premier very much, in particular Neil who taxied us around and took care of us.

"Long Boat of Lamb" - A slight revision to the one I made in the final of Young Butcher of the Year

Hi all,

Its the start of another week and its raining here. Just been playing about this morning and have done a new revised Long Boat! This time minus the cabbage leaf!

It has been a busy few days here but things are at least now getting back to normal, we have started this week to hang the beef and begin the mammoth task of bacon curing for Christmas! Not long now at all before it is here, and the orders are coming in thick and fast. I am especial pleased with the speed at which the Copas turkeys are selling, they are such a fabulous turkey, full of flavour and produced with traditional values.

Our chine night at The Newmarket Inn in Louth went really well, everyone enjoyed them selves and we have had some lovely reports back about the Stuffed Chine. Lincolnshire Stuffed Chine is a dish very traditional to Lincolnshire, it is often described as being like Marmite, you either love it or hate it. It comes from the shoulder of a pig, which is then cured in a brine for 3 weeks, it is then hung up to dry off for a week after which it is scored and stuffed with fresh parsley.