Archived News

7th October 2011

Yesterday didn’t go according to plan at all, but some days are like that I suppose. 

We were going to start by bringing in a group of Belted Galloways that had started to calve; the calves needed to be tagged and the bull calves ringed, then I was meant to head off at 9am to help butcher and box up my beef ready for collection from the farm.

However I had a call before breakfast from Michael Fordham, telling me his butchers shop had been broken into overnight; he didn’t know exactly what had been stolen, he was waiting for the police and couldn't touch anything. There was no point in me going down until we knew more.

Kathy and Michael work extremely hard on their family farm and a few years ago they diversified by opening a small butchers shop on the farm.  However, just two months ago they opened a new, larger shop in the village which provides a farm shop and village stores alongside their successful butchery. The shop opens three days a week providing a valued service to locals and on the other days, there is farm work to be done, plus they’re available to butcher for other farmers who sell their meat direct or self sufficient smallholders.

Michael is obviously gutted and we’re all left sickened by these thieves (the only polite name I can give them, as I can’t print what we’re thinking) who’ve left a trail of mess for Michael and Kathy and of course the knock-on effect to so many others.

The butchery tubs and containers normally used on a daily basis were stolen to carry meat away from the shop and over the field; sausages, chicken, burgers and as it transpired, some of my Beltie beef.

Luckily the lager sides of beef that hadn’t yet been cut down, were left hanging in the chiller, so we’ve had to re-arrange the butchery and beef collection for next week and I’m grateful to our understanding customers in light of this awful event.

Back here on the farm, we decided to gather up the cows and calves to walk them out to Paddington barn, but only one calf was with its mother. The cows tend to hide their calves in grassy clumps or nettles on the edge of the field for safekeeping, but as we tried to gather up the cows they didn’t fetch their calves straight away and we had to search the undergrowth to find them. Once in the barn, another bull calf was born and this morning another cow appears to be calving.  It’s a very tight calving group so far!