My First Day At Work As A...

As you know, I have recently started a new job in a farm shop. At the moment I am working in different areas. I am mainly on the shop till but I also cover the Deli counter and help in the cafe if it gets busy. I love that I get such variety throughout every day. There is just one area left for me to start learning about and I had my first lesson today.

Bleary eyed and freezing cold, I scuttled through the door at work this morning. It was 7am and definitely a shock to the system! I welcomed my first instruction to go and make a drink to warm myself up as it was -6 degrees outside in the wind.

After putting on my coat and apron, I got used to my new surroundings. In case you haven't already guessed today I started to learn about how to lay out the Butchers counter!

This is how the counter looked when I first arrived. I was given the job of laying out the sausages, bacon and faggots. I was quite pleased that I managed to correctly match the 7 different flavours of sausages with the correct labels.

This is what the counter looks like fully stocked. The meat is all very high quality organic or free range. Did you know the regulations on organic food are so tight, if your organically raised animal goes through the same abattoir as non organic animals you can no longer class your meat as organic. Similarly, if you sell meat as organic when it isn't, your establishment can be closed down. That sounds fair enough, until you are the other side of the counter trying to work out what is organic and what isn't! Eeeek!

I diced up some veal and made chicken kievs. I had a go at labeling all the different cuts of meat and didn't do too badly. There really is so much to remember, it blew my mind. Especially at that time of the morning!

My Display

We didn't have enough faggots to fill the tray so I was asked to go up to the big walk in freezer and get some more from the chest freezer inside. We have several walk in freezers so I didn't think much of it. This particular freezer is quite big though. It's about the same size as a single garage! I pulled back the sliding door and couldn't help but gasp a little, as this is what I saw.....

Don't get me wrong, I'm not squeamish but I honestly wasn't expecting to see that! (I know you're thinking Der, butchers freezer?! But at that time of the morning I was just thinking about the faggots I had been sent to get).

I took photos of these posters as they show the areas and different cuts of beef and lamb. I thought it would be a good idea to try and learn some of these before I next go in. I'm not sure when my next day will be but I hope it's soon, I really enjoy it as there is so much to learn.