Author: Kitty Hamilton

We are now offering a free local delivery service on a Thursday afternoon between 4pm and 6pm, for orders over £15 within a 5 mile radius. Please order online before midnight on a Wednesday and select ‘free local delivery’ at the check out. If you are not going to be in please leave a cool box for your delivery and let us know where it will be in the ‘order notes’ box at checkout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also provide a click and collect service from the Well Vale Shop and the Bilsby and Ulceby Spar shops. We deliver to these stores on a Tuesday and a Thursday – please order the day before. Or you can collect from our shop – we now have parking at the rear of the shop. Again please order the day before.

If anything is not in stock we will substitute for something of similar or greater value.  If you do not wish to accept substitutions please state this in the order notes.

WELL VALE CHRISTMAS PRICE LIST 2018

There has been lots going on with the shop. We have had a much busier spring this year than last and then we have all enjoyed this amazing barbeque summer, even if it has meant making a gazillion burgers! We have also supplied food for a lot more private events this year and it is great to be developing a reputation as a go to company when you want something a little more bespoke. We’ll always try to help and I personally really enjoy the variety that working with a client to produce something tailored exactly to their requirements gives.

We decided to try and broaden out our brand and have been delighted to take on one of the premier coastal hotels as a customer, and they have given us some great feedback. We have also joined Select Lincolnshire to try and start building our brand away from Alford – look out for us in the Autumn edition of the Good Taste magazine.

After a slightly torrid experience getting planning permission for the buildings at Well, a curve ball was thrown when the last remaining butchers shop in Alford was put on the market.

To start from the start, my planning application for change of use on some farm buildings here at Well was submitted and all seemed to be proceeding smoothly. Then I was invited to speak about the proposal at the local Parish Meeting. I went along and spoke and was aware of some hostility from a very few people. After answering some questions I was banished from the room for the discussion and vote. Afterwards I heard the vote had gone against me, but was still not unduly worried. However a couple of days later a 13 page letter of objection was sent to the local planning department suggesting I was going to build a 24/7 food factory which would destroy the village. I spent a couple of frantic weeks building evidence to refute all the ‘harms’ that it was claimed my project would cause. Instead of my application being decided by the planning officers it was sent to committee and heard at a meet where other applications included a new supermarket and a 350 house development. I spoke for my project while the Parish Clerk and District Councillor spoke against, but the planning committee were unanimous in their support. Result!

I began putting together what I needed to do next when one Saturday morning my husband got a text from a friend asking if he knew that the Alford Butchers had come on the market. We had a look online and the price seemed steep, but we thought we would take a look. We duly viewed the premises and saw that whilst it had lots of potential it also needed quite a lot of work. I’d also done some research on what butchers shops were selling for and decided that this one wasn’t worth the asking price to us, and the owners were understandably not keen to take a low offer when they had just put the premises on the market. Ross persuaded me that we should have a look at some other shops on the market in Alford and I fell in love with one of them. We have had an offer agreed and I am very, very excited. More soon!

I had a bit of an unexpected trial run over the last few weeks. We had a heifer that was being weighed prior to being sent to slaughter fall over in our new state-of-the-art handling system. It was clear that she was injured, but she did manage to get back to her feet. She was obviously not well enough to be sent on a wagon to be slaughtered the next day, and the following day she could not get up unaided and she appeared to be in significant pain, so it was arranged that she would be home killed by the local knackerman, and then hung in a local farmers chiller.

I had ace Butchery Consultant Rich Summers coming up the following week, so it was arranged that he would help me butcher the first 5/6ths, and we would further age the undamaged hind quarter, and I would have a solo go at that. We set up the old farm office as a makeshift cutting room and had a long but really good day with Rich.

He powered through the ‘proper’ butchery and I steaked and diced behind him before an all hands on deck session to get the meat bagged and labeled before we handed it out to all the staff on the farm. Home killed meat can not be sold, but it was a great opportunity to see what one of our animals looked like on the hook, and what it tasted like, as well as to get some hands on butchery practice! The poor girl had a broken femur when we butchered her, so euthanasia was definitely the correct course of action.

Ten days later the undamaged hindquarter was collected and I had my first go at butchering solo! The initial breakdown was quite physical and some of the big muscles that form the topside, silverside and thick flank look a bit similar to an amateur which was a bit scary, but I was generally happy with how it went.

 

 

 

Again the meat was bagged up and split between all of us working on the farm.

 

 

 

 

 

It looked really good – a lovely colour, a nice fat level, and well set with having been hung a bit longer.

We’ve really enjoyed the bits we’ve eaten so far, and it has been good to be able to get a feel for how the meat aged. The whole process has been a great learning curve, so know I feel I understand much better how one of our beast will look broken up and what the body balance of the carcass is. Next I need to perfect some meat pie recipes to add some extra value to the diced meat!

Today was spent sorting 850 pigs in the pouring rain. We took the pigs out of their large mixed sex groups and sorted them by gender before putting them back in smaller groups of 85 pigs, with the girls in the block of pens at the back of the yard, and all the boys in the middle block.  Before I went to work this morning I realised that after childcare and tax I would be earning about £5/hour for being out all day on one of the most miserable days of the year.  By about 1pm we were saying how much more pleasant it was as the rain had slackened off a little bit and it was much warmer – when I got back into my car it had reached the balmy heights of 5C. I actually quite enjoyed my day, and although I was wet through my waterproofs by the end I had only really got cold once when I had wrongly decided that no gloves were better than wet gloves.  I also realise that in terms of people who work with livestock I am one of the lucky ones.  I earn more than most and it is unusual for me to be out all day on a day like today.  Our farm is big enough that we don’t have to scrimp on welfare and the guys I work with genuinely like the animals they look after, and take a real pride in looking after them well.  A day like today does make you appreciate the extrodinary human effort and commitment that goes into rearing meat, and how poorly rewarded the dedication that those looking after livestock show is, both in pay and in recognition.

 

This weekend I had a very enjoyable evening at a NFU (National Farmers Union) dinner dance.  It was held at a local hotel and whilst the craic was great the same couldn’t be said for the food.  The main course was a carvery, with a choice of pork, beef or turkey.  I went for the beef, which was dreadful.  It was dry, tough and tasteless and the closest thing to any marbling in the meat was the odd seam of gristle.  There were roast potatoes which were unlike any I had ever eaten before – hard but not crispy on the outside and floury in the middle.  The vegetables consisted of boiled carrots and grey Kenya beans. Pudding consisted of a cheesecake with a bizarre texture and minimal resemblance to any kind of cheese or a chocolate fudge cake that I am pretty sure also came from a catering wholesaler via a freezer…

Whilst it is clearly a shame that a hotel is turning out such poor food what really struck me was what a missed opportunity the meal was.  Present were local cattle, pig, potato and vegetable farmers.  Surely the NFU could have chosen a venue with a local sourcing policy?  Better still to have sourced from the members invited to the event.  It seemed such a shame to get a group of people together who spend there lives trying to produce good quality local food and then to serve them food which has been sourced against one criteria – cost.  We could have been showcasing to other NFU members and their guests what a great job we were doing.  We have some fabulous producers within the area, but you would have not known it from what was on our plates.

I was sat next to a friend who, along with her husband, became vegetarian just under two years ago.  I chatted to her about their decision, which they made on primarily ethical grounds, with the impact on their health also a factor.  As a producer of British Farm Assured pork and beef I am reasonably comfortable with the ethical standards of meat production from my farm, and I only buy British meat which I feel confident has been reared to at least those standards.  What I realised talking to my friend was how little confidence a lot of people like her, who have done some research into what we eat, have in the food industry.  People feel that they cannot trust packaging and they cannot trust what retailers tell them about the food they are eating.  It is perceived that many animals reared for consumption are produced in unethical conditions and are likely to have been fed antibiotics. It is known that foreign meat which may have been reared in conditions that are illegal in the UK and fed food that would be illegal here, for example growth hormones, can still be packaged as UK meat if it is processed in some way in this country.  We have food scandal after food scandal – BSE, horse meat and rampant food poisoning in chicken to name a few.  We all know that supermarkets buy on price and are generally believed to value cheapness over ongoing, mutually sustainable relationships with suppliers, as shown in the latest expose over Tesco’s buying practices.

In light of this, and the poor excuse for a bit of cow on my plate, my friend’s decision seemed entirely sensible.  If I only had meat to eat like that, in which I had no confidence in the skill of the farmer, slaughterman, butcher, cook or the quality of life and death of the animal I think I would make the same decision. My decision is very different, but based on entirely the same concerns.  I want to know my animal has the right genetics, rearing method, length of life and humane slaughter to eat really well.  Then the carcass needs to be aged and cut by someone who respects and understands what they are working with.  ‘Processed’ products such as sausages should be made of ingredients from the kitchen and good quality meat, not with ingredients from an industrial chemical factory and mechanically removed ‘meat sludge’ mixed with bone meal.  Finally the meat needs to be sold to consumers who are informed about what they are buying and how they can get the best out of it.  At that point they are getting something that offers real value for money, because the environmental and animal welfare costs have been correctly covered, and a real alternative to vegetarianism for the food industry savvy, two things that cheap meat never can do.