Farm of the Week: Pulled ham the next big thing for happy trotter Anna

Pulled pork has been one of the food world's marketing successes in the past 12 months and pig farming entrepreneur Anna Longthorp of Kilpin near Howden has come up with what she hopes will be the next winner: pulled ham, marketed under her Anna's Happy Trotters brand.
Anna Longthorp with her free range pigs at Kilpin, near Howden.  Picture: Scott MerryleesAnna Longthorp with her free range pigs at Kilpin, near Howden.  Picture: Scott Merrylees
Anna Longthorp with her free range pigs at Kilpin, near Howden. Picture: Scott Merrylees

“I’m constantly trying to find better ways to get value out of cuts that are not proving as popular as they should be. It’s all about carcase balance, making sure that we’re able to market everything.

“We have a massive bacon trade. It can fly out all day long but cuts such as our pork bellies weren’t selling particularly brilliantly last year so I came up with a Yorkshire free-range pancetta that won an award from Deliciouslyorkshire that set them back on their way.

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“We’re now aiming to get more for our shoulders that mostly go into sausages at the moment. The hams you will see are generally from legs and we can shift those every day. It’s funny really because to my mind the shoulder has the most flavour and deserves to be much more popular.

“I’m sure that once consumers taste our pulled ham they will realise just how good a shoulder of pork really can be.”

Many consumers struggle with what pulled pork or now pulled ham actually means, but it’s simple as Anna points out.

“It’s basically a slow cooked shoulder that just pulls apart because it is that tender and succulent. Pork had a bad rap years ago when there was a push for no fat. When that happened many said that pork lost its flavour, but our pigs have had the right amount of backfat for years and the taste they give is great.

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“The beauty of both pulled pork or pulled ham is that you can shove it in the oven, on low and slow, as many people do these days, come back later and it’s ready along with a gorgeous aroma. The difference between pulled pork and pulled ham is that the ham is cured.”

Anna started up her Anna’s Happy Trotters farm business in conjunction with her parents’ pig farming enterprise eight years ago. It came after a supermarket left them high and dry after they’d invested heavily in what the buyers had initially wanted but then decided against and serves as a lesson in just how cut-throat the food world can be.

“Before I launched Anna’s Happy Trotters we used to fatten all our pigs indoors on straw yards after being outdoor bred. The supermarket we were supplying asked us to go fully free range saying they would pay us a premium for it but a couple of weeks into the contract they decided there wasn’t a market for it and that they weren’t going to pay us the premium.

“They’d effectively pulled the plug after we had gone to considerable expense in setting up to go free range, which has its own increased regular on-costs too. That’s when I came up with how I might be able to launch a business where we set the price rather than purely being a price taker by using our unique selling point of being amongst only one per cent of pigs in the country that are completely free range.”

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Anna went on her own last year, a separate enterprise from her parents’ farm, and now buys the pigs she needs from her father Richard and mum Diana’s output of their 1,500 breeding sows. In the past eight years she has built her company on selling direct to butchers and farm shops. It’s been successful but it has not been plain sailing.

“I had one customer that was taking 80 pork bellies off us every week. Unfortunately they dropped us and for a while we were getting hardly anything for them as it was quite a hit.

“I’m getting pressure at the moment to drop my prices because elsewhere the pig price has fallen once again. Fortunately I have some really great customers who understand that running free-range pigs and producing marketing campaigns that benefit their sales also have increased costs attached that I’m bearing.”

Anna’s Happy Trotters has its own butchery, housed in what was a grain store next to her home. Anna employs four butchers who also make the deliveries as far afield as Newcastle and London. The average throughput in the butchery is 220 pigs a week with 150 going out as full carcase and the other 70 processed into bacon, sausages and the whole variety of cuts.

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“The pigs are Landrace X Duroc X Pietrain and we fatten the pigs at our units in Pollington near Snaith and Hayton near Shiptonthorpe. We’re well spread out because we need large enough patches of sandy free draining land and that’s hard to come by. We have two 60-acre sites that we rent and stock at the rate of 100 pigs per acre where they have pig arcs and tents for cover. We have used the Pietrain boars for about ten years as it keeps the backfat to the right level and is very meaty. The sow line we use has the intermuscular fat that gives the great taste.”

The pig price for most of the industry is back on the floor at the moment and although Anna is receiving some pressure she’s holding as firm as she can.

“We’ve put posters and flyers around all our butchers and into farm shops announcing what pulled ham is all about and how tasty it is. We’re hoping it will start a real trend.”

Anna is also a corporate member of the Ladies in Pigs organisation that’s done much to highlight pig produce and which is celebrating its 25th year. Anna has appeared as one of the roadshow cooking team and is always keen to warn against complacency amongst consumers who may think they are buying British when they’re not.

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“Consumers should always look for the little red tractor logo when buying meat from supermarkets as they have to label properly, but when you’re buying from a butcher or farm shop you should always ask where the pork, beef or lamb has come from because the assumption is that it is all local produce. Most of the time it is but there are some who are still buying imported meat.”

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