Visit to Bif at the abattoir

Actually I went to talk to the butcher about how they are going to cut the meat up rather than to visit Bif. This is what they filled in for me on the form.
There were some communication difficulties 🙂 but I believe we managed to communicate ok. They will not mince the bits that will end up as mince but will cut them in to strips so it is easy to do.
There will be some roasts, some ribs, quite a lot of steak, some stewing chunks and some stuff ready to mince (I believe!)

While I was there I asked if I could see the carcass and they trundled it out for me. It is HUGE. But looks GREAT.

The new freezer was delivered this morning too. We had to bring it up the last bit of the drive in the trailer but all good. Though it is quite big it looked rather small in comparison to the size of the meat I had just seen.

Is this steer ready for the abattoir?

We better hope that he is, as he is booked in for slaughter on the 17th of July (about 10 days after this photo was taken) and will then be hung until the 26th when they will butcher him and return him in nice shrink wrapped packets.
We are planning on getting the skin back on the 21st and starting it curing over that weekend.

Rosbif. He is two years old and milk then grass fed. We are hoping/expecting him to be very tasty.
Bit concerned though how much meat there will be and how on earth we are going to fit in in the freezer. We have kind offers from friends to lend freezer space.

On the right here with his mum and little half sister

Pigs are in the freezer

Doug managed to get the pigs to the abattoir despite the snow storms. We now have them back - slightly less alive - and everything is processed in to salt or the freezer.

Despite having the butcher at the abattoir do a lot of the butchery (and vacuum packing it) it still took much of two days to wrestle it all under control and ram it in to the freezer.

We made farmhouse liver pâté. It came out better than last time which was too big chunks, too crumbly and didn't tast very like pâté. It is fairly solid this time, but can be spread and tastes very good. It looks a bit gross before being cooked.

It has tongue, liver and a bit of pork along with spices, salt and garlic and onion

Black pudding - the blood was really really fresh as it didn't come from our pigs (they forgot to keep it or something) but the nice man at the abattoir got us some more. Red! Not many photos as my hands were all overed in blood for a while!

Mmmmmmm lunch of fried belly pork sandwich!

That is a big knife! This is a side of port which Doug is cutting down in to some chops, some bacon and some ribs.

Both freezers are very full now. We need to get eating! As well as the pork there is lamb and rabbit as well as pâté, haggis, black pudding, soup and various other treats.

Bye bye bunny...(pics bit gross - but not too bad)

... and hello new bunny.
The bunny girls are a breed called Fauve de Bourgogne. When we bought them we impulse bought a male of a breed called Lapin Lièvre Belgique as we couldn't find a male Fauve (who wasn't the brother of the girls). However we have now found a male Fauve so Lièvre was surplus to requirements. As we can't have slackers on the farm (apart from Poppy) we ate him.
Doug killed him (quick bash to the head), gutted and skinned him (all the difficult parts!). I chopped him up and cooked him (the skillful parts!).

You can see the recipes here and here

We are curing the skin, I will write a post about that later.

Butchering Bro

The meat animals don't have names, but they do tend to get labels to make it easier to know which one you are talking about. The first hogget (lamb over a year old) we butchered we called 'White Face' because he had a white face... This one is his brother, hence Bro.
We collected the carcass, fleece and this time the pluck (heart, lungs and liver - last time for some reason we didn't get it, I think they forgot) back from the abattoir today. It seemed to be 'old payesanne bloke collecting his meat' day at the abattoir. Each of them had a pristine white sheet that they openned out and spread on the back seat or in the boot as the sheep or cow was loaded for them. I felt out of place with my green towels and bin bags!
We used the same instructions for butchering as we did last time with the hope that it would be quicker and easier the 2nd time. I have to say that it was not - it took about 4 hours. We did do a few things different though and chopped up some meat for sausages instead of a roast and boned some roasts that we left bone in last time as well as cutting them smaller - more suitable for 2. So we did a slightly more thorough job. The total weight of meat was just over 10kg (from a carcass weight of 12.4kg) with the rest going to make stock (which we will use with some of the joints to make stew mmmm yummy).
We have put the pluck in the freezer to make haggis when we have got our hands on some pinhead oats.
The fleece is being washed to get the salt and the sheepy smell out of it. There will be another post about curing with Alum this time (we used Oxalic acid and soap/fat last time)

The sheep watching Doug

Cut in to bits

Lunch (perspective is wonky - chops are bigger than kidneys)

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.