Quality control from field to counter

The sign says J Brindon Addy: Traditional Butchers & Graziers. The addition of “& Graziers” was a satisfying moment. James Brindon Addy always wanted to be a farmer.

Now 42, he grew up in the Holme Valley before it was fashionable. However, he is grateful for the incomers, with their libraries of cookbooks.

He started work as a Saturday lad for an old-fashioned butcher, Eric Kenworthy at New Mill, who sometimes took him out buying stock. That was his first lesson in what a butcher-ready animal looked like and he still likes to pick his own. A lot are sent to market too lean, he says.

At 16, he was doing a “meat technology” course and running a second-hand fridge in the barn at his grandad’s place at Hade Edge, on the moorland edge of Holmfirth, so he could cut up the odd carcase for the sort of farmer who slaughtered one at a time. At 17, he was on the production line at the Malton Bacon Factory, looking for a way back out again.

He wangled a trial with a Holmfirth butcher, Martin Turner, and stayed three years. Then he bought an old Transit van and went self-employed in light haulage. Then a butchering mate of his, David Cannon, was made redundant, and Brindon raised the money to buy the Hade Edge property after his grandfather died and build a little shop in the barn with the cold store in it. It was 1993 and the time was right. They are both still there, but with six more people working beside them and a wall full of awards.

Two years in, Brindon spent £2,000 on a refit and announced himself ready to join the Q Guild, a new and exclusive society for top butchers.

He was told his cutting was okay but he still had work to do on the shop – and got invited on a Q Guild tour of Lishman’s of Ilkley.

“It was fabulous,” he says. “I came home and looked at mine and nearly wept.”

He called in his dad and went to work on another refit, which cost £10,000 by the end. Since then, he has probably spent £100,000 more. But the DIY job got him into the Q Guild. And now he is its national chairman.

The guild’s 140 members pay for pooled marketing and swap tips on business management as well as on making pies and so on. It would be easy to get stuck in the routine of cutting meat dawn to dusk, says Brindon. He credits the guild with helping him to understand spreadsheets and marketing calendars.

When he was 30, he married Louise, daughter of Tony and Lorraine Cartwright, who used to run pigs at Carlin Farm, Holmfirth. The pigs went and the senior Cartwrights moved on and Brindon and Louise moved in – and took a share in a little flock of sheep which Louise’s brother, David, had been running there. Between them, they did better and better with it and since David married, and moved into a farm at Hepworth, it has grown further, to 250 ewes, using the extra acres at Hepworth and a big lambing shed at Tony and Lorraine’s place at Meltham. In other words, all has ended up in the nice old-fashioned pattern of a local butcher buying livestock from the family, plus a few neighbours.

The original sheep were mainly Mule ewes, tupped by Suffolks. But after giving their lambs the butcher’s eye, Brindon started moving to his current blend – mothers three parts Texel to one part Mule and tups Charollais. And he buys in the same formula.

“Meat quality comes 80 per cent from the farming and 20 per cent from the butchering,” he says. The butcher’s job, he says, is to know the farmer and hang the meat right. As for the farming ... “It’s about getting the right age, breed and sex of animal, and then about animal welfare and feed. An unhappy animal does not eat properly. And feed is the most important element of all. People go on about grass-fed but then they come back from America raving about the meat there, which is nearly all corn-fed. You only get two months of good grass here and although silage is good enough for suckler cows and ewes, it’s no good for finishing stock. I think the perfect balance is slow maturing on grass and haylage and so on but then corn to finish.”

He likes beef suppliers who follow a similar formula, feeding Angus-Limousin crosses. He thinks the extra bulk you get from Belgian Blue sires comes at the expense of eatability, but Limousin does what Continental blood is supposed to do, without spoiling the virtues of the native breed. He rates Herefords, Shorthorns and Longhorns, as good as the Angus, by the way, and he and his brother-in-law are still dithering as they window-shop for rearing their own beef.

He buys outdoor-reared pigs which are finished indoors on corn – once again, he says, the right compromise. He sells Freedom Food chickens at about £10 each and free-rangers for up to £2 more. He also does everyday English chicken fillets for £7.50 for five. But that is as cheap as chicken ought to get, he says.

He sells no NZ lamb but the price of British is a concern. Legs of lamb were £50 last Easter and demand has fallen 40 per cent since. However, the dinner-party trade has kept up a reasonable demand for his and he can sell any spares. The flock lately includes 20 Dorsets, which are expected to lamb three times over two years. Their first crop was born in December and some will be tried at Easter. But from a butcher’s point of view, an Easter lamb is a bit of a rushed job. Come August will be more like the time to judge. And nowadays, thanks to selective breeding, Brindon thinks lambs are best when they get to be hoggets.

He has two daughters and the elder, eight-year-old Grace, is being lined up to take the name of Addy into the show rings of Yorkshire.

Last week, Brindon Addy came second in a national butchering competition in Birmingham. See www.jbrindonaddy.co.uk/