Today when checking my e-mails there in the inbox someone had sent me a clip all about Boston, (the town I was born in) and how the war changed it. I must say it is a fantastic film, it shows some views of the market and rearing livestock for meat. There are a few names in it you may recognize and some firms still in operation today! I do always think that yes we have moved forward in huge leaps and bounds but I cant help but feel that we have lost so much in the process, I know that I may have a different view if I had been there but things do seem much more civilised and people still had respect for one another.

I know when you look at my trade “The Butcher” yes our butchering skills have developed further and we have all sorts of wonderful machinery now but we have also lost so much! Once upon a time it was the norm for the butcher to have dealt with the live animal through to his customers, he was in control of every part,he know provenance of his stock, he very often slaughtered it himself, and he knew all his customers. Now it is the very small minority the can say that even on of these apply, and in the age of food miles and local this local that I cant help but think we need to look back and see what we have lost. My personal feeling is that one of our biggest losses is being able to do ones own slaughtering. When it used to be done in house the butcher was in control, his stock travel very small distance to slaughter, it would b dispatched on arrival and no one was stressed least of all the animal, which is the most important thing. Further more the problems with thing like E-coli for instance were much more containable, now if a slip up happens at the abattoir this may affect 30-40 shops who purchase from them then in turn hundreds and thousands of their customers are potentially exposed. But back in the day if a shop had a slip up with slaughtering the potentially it is only there customers and risk, reducing the magnitudede. I know that in an ideal world there would never be a slip up but things do happen and lets face it “you cant beat doing a job yourself!” At least when you deal with your customers and there complaints, weather that may be tough beef, poor quality meat, or stomach upsets there is no better incentive to do a job right! Believe me they judge you much harsher than any government inspector ever will!!

Sit back watch the film and enjoy it!

Click here to watch the film!!

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.

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.