“The Milking Yard’s ethos is to offer produce “the way nature intended”, but clearly Bruce uses all the modern methods of research and breeding and some forms of intervention to reach that goal.” – Kirsty Simpson, Eat In
Photo credit: Angela Miller
You couldn’t ask for better luck. The sheep that Bruce Burton had kept to mow the lawn at his farm, had begun to ringbark a new stand of trees, so their time was up and Bruce and wife Roz decided to “try them out” at the local abattoir.
“We then found a bespoke butchery over in Kilmore, the Meat Room. They were hung up for three weeks and then we had a day up there when there were a whole lot of chefs there as we were cutting them up out the back. And this chef from Movida said, ‘This is the best lamb I’ve ever seen’ and he asked what I was feeding it and I said grass. He rang me the next day and asked for one of our sheep, and then they bought another one and another one.”
Bruce says the difference with the meat is that they grow their sheep to maturity, rather than than the four-six month old lamb that most of us eat. “So the meat develops marbling. Let’s call a spade a spade, it’s mutton (when we sell it). Because they are free ranging and out in the cold, they develop this marbled layer of fat, which means you can age it for three or four weeks.”
