The Show this year is on Wednesday 23rd and Thursday 24th June and we will be selling traditional Lincolnshire Stuffed Chine rolls from our stand. This will be the first time we have done this in the Food Hall and we are hoping it will all go down well. For  the last five weeks we have been curing, maturing and stuffing more chines than you can ever imagine!! Now though they are all done and all that is left for us to do is to pray that the weather is going to be good!!

Hi All,

Once again this year we are going to be doing our Valentine’s meal packs! They were so popular last year with people who had decided to stay in for the evening that some people have already ordered for this year!

This year they are going to have the three courses again, complete with silk rose petals for table decoration! All you need is a bottle of wine and it’s done!

We shall have the whole menu drawn up very soon and definitely recommend ordering them well in advance this year though!

Keep an eye out for my update on the pack contents!!

Hi All,

Since all the Christmas decorations came down the shop window looked a bit bare, but not any more, I have found a whole load of photos of old butchers shops, so I have framed them up and put them in the front of the shop window! There are some really interesting ones and it just shows how things have changed! It has also made an interesting display that I hope people will enjoy before we put out the Spring decorations!!

Hi All,

We have two flying pigs who live outside the shop! They are called Primrose and Ivy, we have had them for just over a year now!

Ever since they arrived they have received post cards from around the world! It all started in 2009 when they received a Christmas card from their “cousins” !  Since then they have had cards from France,  Switzerland, Kenya, Australia, and many more!

All we know is that they come from their “cousins” and that they travel a lot! We always look forward to receiving one and so do the pigs! They are full of fabulous stories and tales of distant relatives!

We hope we never find out who sends them but that they continue to brighten our days!

Hi All,

Really excited today to find out that the Black Horse at Ludford, who we supply with meat has just won Best Pub at the Tastes of Lincolnshire Awards!!

We were so pleased when we found out,  it really is a fabulous little pub, where the food is excellent!! It is well worth a trip to, you will be very well looked after!

So, many congratulations to the Black Horse from all of us, and many thanks for your support too!

Hi All,

Pleased to say that the Horncastle Farmer’s Charity Ball went well, we supplied all the meat for the cold carvery again this year.  It was held in a most beautifully decorated marquee at the Petwood Hotel in Woodhall Spa. We were very pleased to hear so many good comments from people on the quality of the meat and were also very pleased to have all 380 people served in record time!

Many thanks to Eric and Beth who came along to help Odile and I carve .  It is the second year that we have done the ball and were very pleased to have been asked to do it again. This year the cold carvery consisted of Lincolnshire Stuffed Chine,  Roast ribs of beef,  Roast Sirloin of beef,  Roast turkey and poached Salmon.

We hope everyone who attended had a lovely evening, it was a pleasure to serve you.

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.