Pheasants Hill Farm

This is Lefty and Righty (Lefty is on the right, Righty is on the left), the first of many characters you will encounter if you visit Pheasants' Hill Farm, in the countryside between Downpatrick and Killyleagh. Pheasant's Hill is Ireland's only exclusively free-range, rare breed butcher, and we go there when we're planning to entertain because you can guarantee a) the welfare of the animal and b) (obviously a and b are linked) the quality of the meat. They specialise in free-range Tamworth, Gloucestershire Old Spots pork, bacon and ham; rare breed Irish Moiled and Dexter beef, wild venison, rare breed lamb and mutton, free-range chickens, turkeys and geese, ducks, guinea fowl, partridge, pheasant, quail and rabbits.

The Pheasant Hill website (for online ordering in Ireland - I'm not sure if they deliver to mainland UK) is http://www.pheasantshillfarm.com/. I was there today to order pork loin for a dinner on Wednesday, and they mentioned that their website was under refurbishment and about to go live again - if that hasn't happened, there's a form to fill in so they can keep you posted.

Lynn and I don't often eat meat, but having lived near an intensive chicken farming operation in Scotland, we have been traumatised enough never to buy (or order in a restaurant) anything that hasn't been humanely reared outdoors. If I'm ordering meat in a restaurant, and the menu isn't explicit, I always ask if the animal has been free-range, and if the answer is anything but an uniquivocal Yes, I order soemthing else.