What started with half a sheep, two knives, a cleaver, a saw and three aproned friends somehow resulted in us being asked to speak Greenbelt Festival.
In Novemeber 2008 an article in the Guardian caught our eye, and a link to it was sent between a wider group of friends. The idea of home butchery was planted. But it took a year before we actually got on and did it.
In November 2009 we visited Smithfield Market in London, a place where people have been buying and selling meat for 800 years. We arrived at stupid oclock in the morning, and from a man in a shirt and tie with a white coat, we bought half a sheep.
We loved the experience. Our purchase was an event, a little bit of London theatre. The journey to the market that dark early morning was an adventure, and the fried breakfast in a greasy spoon a rare treat.
And were thrilled by how inexpensively we were able to purchase good quality welsh meat and how much we had doing it together.
Some months later, when the calendar pointed to spring, if not the weather, the three of us began to consider how would prepare for Easter, how we would do Lent.
Mike spoke of his desire to spend time communally, there was talk of eating together each night. So creating space for meaningful interactions, whilst eating simply and giving the money saved to charity. When his best mate Tim got himself a girlfriend this plan floundered.
When I suggested we butcher a whole sheep, and spend the feast days of Lent and Easter sharing it with our friends we decided that’s what we’d do.
When we sat down to unravel what motivated this project, some key themes came to mind.
These are community, hospitality and food. Our understanding and motivation is much coloured by our desire to live out our faith. For each of us these common themes have a different emphasis and attraction. However we don’t see them as stand-alone ideas - one of the fascinations for us is how they all converge and intertwine with one another
If you're curious you can hear the whole talk. You need to use the following login "speaker" and password "thankyou" to listen to it for free. There are ten years worth of talks available to purchase from the Greenbelt website, but the Butchers talk isn't included there, I guess it's a bit too niche a subject!
If you are interested in all this butchery malarky, and curious to hear more about it then I direct you my co-conspiritors new blog: Saffron and Salt