
Our produce ⇓ Rare breeds Beef Pork & Bacon Lamb & Mutton Poultry & Game British rose veal Home made produce	Trade	Abattoir	Butchery masterclasses	Vouchers

Our values

So what are we about?
Simply put we are about great tasting meat. The ingredients of great tasting meat is a recipe in itself. Read on for the recipe...

Respect in all we do:

For the animals
The land
Our customers
Our farmers
Our staff

The best bred stock

We buy local rare breed stock. These traditional British Breeds are those breeds that we used to have on our farms centuries ago but through commercial farming requiring fast growing lean meat, have gone out of fashion with the masses. We buy for the more discerning customer who values the breadth and depth of flavours which these breeds can develop in the right circumstances.

Local

All our stock is sourced within a 25 mile radius. This cuts food miles to a minimum. We slaughter all our beef and lamb on the premises. Our pork is slaughtered in Wrexham in a small slaughterhouse with the same high standards as ourselves. Our chickens are slaughtered on the farm where they are bred. Travelling long distances can be stressful for animals so all our stock travel with their farmers whom they know for a maximum of 40 minutes. Stress is bad for the welfare of any animal and it is detrimental to the taste of the meat. We also believe that supporting our local communities is positive for the area. For all these reasons local is good.

Best kept stock

We are up there with the best because we care and we act responsibly towards the welfare of all our animals. All our livestock is free range and extensively farmed meaning that our farmers farm naturally adding the minimum of additions to land and feed and have large areas of land for a small number of animals.

The opposite of extensive farming is intensive farming where commercial farms practice high volume farming with high yields per hectare. This type of farming is usually associated with cheap mass produced food for the supermarkets. We inspect our farms regularly and we work closely with the farmers on how they feed and keep the stock in order to produce the healthiest naturally behaving and ultimately tastiest meat! We have agreements with our farmers on standards of husbandry.

Stress free slaughter

A stress free slaughter process is key to great tasting meat and to respect for the life of any animal. We have a small slaughter house which we have extensively refurbished in line with EEC standards where we slaughter our modest number of animals. We work hard to ensure that this process is performed to the highest of welfare standards and have used generations of knowledge and expertise to design the lairage to keep the animals in a calm relaxed and healthy environment.

Optimum hanging

Hanging of carcasses is key to the tenderisation and development of taste in the meat that we eat. We have huge fridges that control the temperature and humidity of the environment so we can optimise the time we can hang meat for.

Butchery

Meeting Callum is meeting a butcher with 5 generations behind him and in him. It is a pleasure to watch this immense knowledge and passion oozing out. “What Callum doesn’t know about meat, isn’t worth knowing” (Inout magazine, August 2011).

Callums knowledge and skills have trained all the staff at the shop and perhaps it is this reason that they are known to be a cut above the rest when it comes to knowledge and skill with butchery skills. Well butchered meat can mean the difference between mediocrity and excellence.

The Lowest of Food Miles

All the stock we buy is sourced from farms within a 25 mile radius. Having our own abattoir, you can be assured that our food miles are extraordinarily low.

Call us control freaks?

But since we work closely with all our breeders to produce the very best tasting rare breed meat, slaughter ourselves on our premises, we really do control the process from farm to fork so you can have utmost confidence in the provenance of the meat you get from us.

Beef, lamb and rose veal is slaughtered on our own premises. Poultry is slaughtered on the farm of rearing and pork within a 25 mile radius of the farm.

Our values

It is our vision that people will eat meat only when they trust that it is sourced through a chain of breeding, feeding, husbandry and butchery that pays respect to the animal and is in harmony with its' environment.

Treating the whole animal with respect

We know it in’t everyone’s ‘cup of tea’ to eat the less ‘choice’ parts of the animal; but for those who it is, we have the very best offal, tripe and ingredients for your brawn, pate and other delicious fair that you love to make.

RSPCA Good Business Awards

In 2009, we won the RSPCA independent retailer award. In 2010 we were runners up and this year we were 'Highly Commended' in the Food - Independent Retailers category.
We are continously trying to improve ways in which we handle our stock from the farm to the abattoir and involve local vets and other husbandry experts in the evaluation of how we do things.