Butchery in the Pub

Countryside Column for 16 May.

Steaking Out Better Farming Practices

I popped into a pub in Hawkhurst the other day.  No particular surprise there I hear you say.  But, like me, you might have found what was happening down in the far corner of the dining area a little unusual. A man was cutting up large chunks of beef on a wooden butcher’s block.  Customers seemed to be lining up for them. What was going on? Had the pub manager got a little something going on the side? I’ve heard of some pubs housing a village post office, but a butcher’s shop?

The solution soon became clear when, a short while later, I spotted a waitress bringing a large cooked steak out of the kitchen. Diners had clearly been choosing their cut straight from the carcass. What better or more direct way of sourcing your food could there possibly be? And a little further enquiry elicited that the beef cattle in question had been raised on a farm just a couple of miles distant.

In fact the farm owns one of the village’s two butchers shops which it supplies almost entirely from its own livestock. According to the farmer and proprietor, Andy Clark, this ensures you really do know where your Sunday joint has come from. The emphasis, he says, is to give stock a pleasant life with minimal stress. For the customer it means the emphasis is on traditional, grass fed, free-range animals and the best animal welfare practice.

All of which must be good news and will do the image of farming no harm at all. It is, in my view, a profession that urgently requires some serious public relations attention. People may rely on farmers to provide their food but they do not love them. Over the years they’ve seen hedges grubbed up; woodland areas denuded; rivers polluted by pesticides and slurry; ugly barns erected with minimal planning oversight; larger and larger tractors and harvesters clogging up country lanes – the list goes on and on.

Yet the countryside that people round here so venerate and vehemently protect is largely a result of farming and farming practices. So it’s particularly encouraging when farmers seem to be going out of their way to be ‘user friendly’ and to be caring for the environment of which they are so intrinsically a part.

Now, when is steak night at that pub? I think I may have to arrange another visit.