Tucked away in Dunlop, East Ayrshire, is a family business working hard to try to maintain both an ethos and a livelihood from native and rare breed animals.

Nethergate Larder has been in existence for the past four years, however, Thomson and Arlene McKenzie, who run it are not from a farming family and have come to this point after 12 years of keeping small amounts of different livestock, until they settled on the uncommon faces that currently graze their land.

“We produce a range of speciality food which help us to convert the naturally reared animals into high value, worthwhile, food products for the food chain. After a good life on the farm it is our belief that we should strive to make the best possible products from our animals,” says Thomson.

“At the moment, we are rearing Shetland, Whitepark, Belted Galloways, and Dexter cattle and we have Tamworth pigs, Badgerface, Shetland, and Castlemilk Moorit sheep, plus a few other things, like Icelandic sheep, which come to us, rather than us looking for them.

“We are happy to support smallholders, especially when they don’t have the capacity to finish their animals. We can keep them here until they are mature and then we can send them off to the abattoir etc, and they come back to our own butchery here to be processed,” says Thomson.

Their butchery employs one full time member of staff and one apprentice, as processing rare breed carcases is slightly more specialist than commercial carcases.

Asked whether life would be easier if they stocked the run of the mill beasts, both McKenzies are firm that their future lies in the rarer animals.

“We try to make everyone know how rare these breeds are and how important it is to keep breeding them. The proof is all there at the end of the day in the taste. The Shetland cattle meat is just ‘wow’, our customers get very excited when there is a Shetland due to be finished.”

Nethergate takes cattle from a few of Scotland’s more remote islands, which provides a steady stream of rare breed meat for the larder, especially as it takes such a long time for these animals to reach maturity, to ensure good marbling in the meat, some taking double that of a commercial farmer.

All the animals are grass fed, and are out throughout the year, hardiness being what the native breeds are famed for. Supplementary feeding is provided during lambing time etc and silage provided during the worst of the weather. The pigs are fed twice a day and at the moment there are around 20 snuffling around.

So far, farmers markets are the primary selling point – attending 11 a month – and the larder is open at Dunlop, the website will be a fully functioning shop in the New Year, but they both agree that having that one to one with the customer is invaluable at the markets. They really enjoy ‘preaching’ to customers about animal welfare and the slow food movement.

Arlene doesn’t see the point in providing meat to other retail outlets to sell, she feels it should be sold by the producers, who should in turn, receive the profit for all the hard work that has gone into producing a product to the highest standard.

They do send some of their meat to Muirburn House, a B and B at Annbank, which has won awards for the food that they serve, and the customers have dubbed Nethergate’s meat as ‘orgasmic food’, which was praise indeed!

Looking forward, they have already dabbled in producing steak pies, and using veal from Duncan Lyon, on Bute, to make into pies, and sausages, and they also have a venison licence, which is frequently on the menu here, and their Highland burgers have gone done very well with customers.

After attending a course on Islay which dealt with adding value to your products, and how best to market it, and also to make the best use of cuts that are not valued so much, they will be focusing on charcuterie which will keep them busy into next year, and their first venture will be producing their own haggis for Burns night.

At this time of year, yuletide hampers are selling well (see website for more details) and they are providing Kelly bronze turkeys to their customers, which are reared by a local farmer.

“We love this lifestyle and would really like to see more people doing it. We encourage people to live off the land and are willing to help people produce their own animals, getting into this is brilliant.

“There was a time we would take animals, just because they looked nice, but now that the business has grown, we don’t take anything that our customers wouldn’t like. Even small scale farmers – athough we can’t compete with the larger outfits – can make a profit. This isn’t a hobby, it’s a lifestyle, and we love it.”

www.nethergatelarder.co.uk