Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: beef, customer, old spot, organic pork, picture, sausage
It’s always nice when customers tell you how much they enjoy cooking and eating what it is we raise and sell. After we worked so hard at Christmas and seemed not to have any more money in the bank than in November it was doubly nice this week to receive two unsolicited testimonials from customers. One felt so inspired they sent us a picture of the beef we had supplied them after they’d cooked it – this was a rib roast joint of Aberdeen Angus I was worried might not quite have enough on it to serve 2 adults and 2 hungry boys… so my colleague Ian sent me “proof” that it was ! What I like about the photo is that I didn’t ask him to send it, and he has not tried anything fancy by way of photoshop – it’s just the outstanding meat!!
Beef Rib Roast for 4
The second bit of cheeriness came from one of our sausage customers. Although we like to keep our food-miles low, another colleague of mine asked me if we could send a pack of our sausages to his brother in Edinburgh every month thoughout the year – a sort of seasonal serial sausage delivery. Anyway, off we sent January’s Pork and Herb bundle and asked for some feedback. This is what he wrote:
We’re quite spoilt here in Edinburgh as our local butcher (Crombies of Broughton St) have labelled themselves with the immodest epithet; “Sausage Kings.” So it is only fair to say that your competition is fierce. You should be pleased therefore to know that your Old Spot ‘n herb are a rival fit to scare Royalty! …. I really liked the fact that your sausages have such a thin skin which ‘scrunches’ so pleasantly at first bite releasing the meaty interior which is happily looser than many of the tightly packed bricks one has to put up with these days. The flavour of the herbs complemented the pork well without dominating and the sausage-meat itself is not too chunky and not too grainy rather reminding me of some freshly grilled Bavarian porkers the likes of which we rarely see in the UK.
So that cheered us up !
Unproductive Black Rock Hens
I just realised we are nearly at the end of October ! What happened ? Probably something to do with the arrival of a new (human !) baby on the farm (born on the farm which means a true Forester – with foresters rights in due course ) and an incredibly busy time since the last blog entry. We have been featured in the local newspaper. We are now in the sausage king’s regional UK links and we have been incredibly busy selling our fine organic meat and produce at Beechenhurst Forest Showcase food fair and our local markets in Soudley and near Lydney.
The only downside of the month has been the poor laying performance of our new Black Rock hens. Allegedly they came in at 18 weeks old ie point of lay – thus far we are getting 2 -4 eggs a day from nearly 60 birds !! Not great economics … perhaps they think there’s a credit crunch on too !
