Rachel Hammond of Hammond Charcuterie, a successful one-woman business based in Eyemouth, Scottish Borders, plans to expand to new premises and to employ staff for the first time.
Demand for Rachel’s artisan charcuterie means she needs to expand both the butchery and to offer a wide range of training courses in charcuterie, craft butchery, curing and smoking to both professionals and home-cooks.
Hammond Charcuterie's crowd-funding campaign with Indiegogo offers rewards based on her business. Contributors can chose from charcuterie gifts, tasters and courses and even half a pig, to donating for four local unemployed people a one-day butchery and charcuterie course.
“I am really delighted and grateful at the support my business has already received. The campaign launched at the end of October and has already raised over £5000, ” said Rachel, “ I sell at Edinburgh Farmers’ Market and I see how much my customers love my charcuterie. I am excited to take my business to the next level and to be able to create jobs at the same time.”
Reestit gigot. Picture: Hammond Charcuterie
The new butchery will be in old stone buildings in the grounds of Ayton Castle just inland from Eyemouth, and supporters of Hammond Charcuterie's new Craft Butchery will be invited to visit, to see the butchery, the smokehouse and the air-drying spaces.
Funds raised by the Indiegogo campaign will convert the beautiful but disused buildings into a rustic yet state-of-the-art butchery, where the traditional crafts can be practised and taught.
All the current backers of the “New Craft Butchery” campaign have already been enrolled in Hammond Charcuterie's “Meat and Greet” Club; ensuring that they will be first to receive invitations to launches and tastings of very special Scottish charcuterie.
Rachel always sources from tiny farms in the Borders, with an emphasis on the highest welfare, as well as wild game from the woods and hills around the River Tweed. This ensures total traceability and provenance; the use of traditional charcuterie methods creates some of the finest tasting products available – allowing the fresh cool Scottish air to do the magic of transforming free-range pork into year-aged air-dried ham, fine enough to rival that of Italy and Spain.
Other charcuterie products are salamis, pates, coppa, lomo embuchado, smoked wild venison and the chicharrones, Hammond Charcuterie's own “posh pork puffs”.
To capture the essence of the borders, local rare-breed hill-reared mutton becomes “reestit” mutton, the pinnacle Scottish charcuterie, a whole gigot, air-dried like serrano, but oak-smoked to enhance the depth of flavour and distinctive sweetness born of the wild herbal pasture here.
• Hammond Charcuterie's Indiegogo campaign runs until 29th of December.
