Newsletter Sent on behalf of Flock & Herd

It has truly felt like the longest winter imaginable but we hope that Summer finds you well. We’re just about figuring out where the land lies after what could be described as one of our more unusual years. If you had told us two years ago that we would have two hour queues for lamb legs at Easter we’d have politely asked what exactly you’d been putting in your chicken Kievs. It’s been a difficult and stressful year in many ways but we are incredibly thankful for everyone who has supported us whether that’s braving the queues, ordering from our brief but beautiful home delivery service or just continuing to stop in and take a second for a chat, we of course couldn’t do it without you.

In Case You Missed It- Beckenham Has Opened

After a couple of set backs, including having an entire team of specialist shopfitters being stuck in the north of England, our Beckenham shop is finally open! Bigger than our Peckham shop we’ve tried incredibly hard to find a nicely curated selection of jams, sauces and other deli items as well as a full charcuterie and cheese counter. There are still familiar faces with Sean moving over from Peckham to manage the new shop and using his passion for food and years of experience working in cheese to create an amazing array of products.
We’re very pleased to be working with Mons and Neal’s Yard Dairy to bring some amazing produce to the area. Our meat selection is of course from the same suppliers we’ve built great relationships with over the years and our ethos of providing great free range meat is unchanged. We hope to see lots of you over the next few months and we have plenty of bits pieces to provide for an impromptu picnic in Beckenham Place Park!

John’s Lambs

We’ve made many allusions and mentions of “John’s Lambs” over the years in Instagram posts, news feeds and over the counter. With the “lamb’s” now in the shop this seemed like as good a time as ever to give them a little more information, to put some meat on the bones if you will.
The funny thing about John’s lambs is that they are not in fact lambs when we get them, they have actually grown in to hoggets. In case you’ve never studied the specifics of sheep farming, and we would hardly blame you, lambs are actually called lamb for a fairly short time. A sheep is called lamb until one year old, a hogget from one to two years and mutton thereafter. The hoggets we get from John are also not your classic breed, they are in fact called Hebrideans. Instead of your classic cloud looking sheep but rather they are small and hearty with thick black fur and two or sometimes four horns. Although they can have the appearance of a William Blake devil they are actually quite small under their thick coats and very slow growing. Hebrideans need at least a year to grow to maturity hence why we eat them as hoggets and not lambs.
The breed probably arrived in the UK around six thousand years ago, sheep not being ‘native’ to Britain and was almost driven to extinction by the 1970s after a century of farmers preferring white fluffy sheep which put on weight more quickly. At one point there were only around 300 Hebrideans left in the UK almost totally unmanaged.
The Hebrideans in Otter Valley in Devon from which we get supplied is a project between John and his one of his shepherds who came to him with the idea of reintroducing these sheep to their low intensity farm and realised what a fantastic potential they have. Their slow growing nature means that they develop an incredibly richness of flavour and remain fairly lean. It is a wonderful example of a farm owner putting faith in a new idea based in traditional craft, taking a risk that greater work and more time will yield results and we are very proud to be their exclusive retailer in London. We should be receiving Hoggets from Otter Valley every week from now until the end of the summer.

Our Euro 2020 T-Shirts

Last but not least, we are incredibly pleased that our t shirt campaign has raised over £800 for the Southwark and Bromley food banks. Thank you to everybody who has bought a t shirt and to Support Your Locals who made it all possible with their great printing and distribution. Of Course we never could have done any of it with GARETH AND THE BOYS!!! Hopefully by the time you read this football will have come all the way home and if not enjoy these heady moments of optimisim. It has been an absolute pleasure to see so many people support the campaign and get behind a good cause and we are incredibly grateful for everyone's support.

COME ON ENGLAND!!