Butchering 'Whiteface' the lamb

We got the meat back from the abattoir today. There is a lot of disagreement on the internet how long you should hang lamb for, although people seem to agree that as the animal gets older you should hang for longer. This lamb was just about a year old. I believe they still count as lambs at this age although they become hoggets at some point before becoming mutton later on. This one was slaughtered Wednesday evening and hung until Monday morning, so four days hanging.
We didn't get any 'innards' apart from the kidneys (and for some reason the slightly inflated bladder - with skinned willy still attached! Eeeurgh!). We brought it back from the abattoir wrapped in black bin bags. Stylish!

We have got a bone saw, cleaver and boning knife as well as a giant butchers 'steak' knife. The boning knife went awol unfortunately but we struggled on without.

We mostly followed this guide from The Guardian. We started middayish, had lunch and finished about 6ish so it did take us quite a long time. It should be quicker next time now we can visualise better what we are aiming for. Boning the shoulders took a long time and so did just getting the carcass divided in to various sections. Things like cutting the chops was quite quick once the section was prepared, removed from the spine etc.

The first cut

 Stamps from the abattoir certifying it is fit for human consumption

 Sawing through the bone in various places was pretty hard work. Maybe our saw is crappy!

 Divided in to a few pieces. Working on the shoulder here which was hard work.

 Soon to be lamb chops (it could have been a rack of lamb but we went for chops)

 Some of the chops. There were 15 in total (should have been 16 but we miscounted ribs on one side)

 'Barnsley chops'. There were 4 of these

 The back end

Chops for lunch. Fried with salt, garlic and rosmary. Very tasty! The meat is firmish, I guess because he is quite an old lamb rather than a young spring lamb. We did intend to slaughter a bit earlier. Maybe around 8 months of age, but things got in the way so we didn't.

 Shrink wrapping some chops

 All the meat except the chops (which were already in the freezer)

The kidney fat. Generally beef kidney fat is used for suet, but we thought we might try dumplings in a lamb stew with this. I would guess it is not normally used because it tastes quite 'sheepy' and that from cow has a less destinctive taste.

 The kidneys

Cooked to a Nigel Slater recipe. Doug said 'Not bad - considering it is kidneys' (apparently they have a foul texture and gross flavour - shame as I love steak and kidney pudding) which I think is high praise given his views on the sense of eating them.

We have read some interesting ideas for lamb charcutery which we are interested in investigating more with future lambs.