This is the story of how I once successfully pulled the belle of the ball. Well, not belle perhaps - but certainly the biggest bird at the ball. Or him, actually. For it was a male, or stag, turkey that I bought for my family’s Christmas dinner one year at the amazing, colourful, traditional, Cutcombe Christmas Show. And, weighing in at 33.5 pounds, he really was the biggest bird at the ball.

The crowd gathers to bid for turkeys and geese after the judging has finished

However, I didn’t manage to get a bird at today’s annual fatstock show- mainly because it is just a little early for Christmas and I don’t own a chiller cabinet.

The birds which feature at the now rare traditional Christmas shows like the one Cutcombe, are what some people call “long-dressed” - in other words they are killed and plucked, but still contain all the insides which are normally gutted or drawn. This apparently - and counter-intuitively - helps them remain fresher for longer.

A previous winer of the Christmas fatstock show

Sorry if this carnivorous talk is offending anyone, but there it is. It’s the reality of meat-eating at Christmas, or at any other time of the year. Or, rather, an old-fashioned kind of reality that many millions have forgotten ever existed.

So why am I and hundreds of others willing to go to all this extra trouble for my Christmas dinner? It isn’t a decision made on price. It is because the kind of birds which are sent to shows like the one at Cutcombe are, for the most part, real free-range farm creatures. They have never seen the insides of a large industrial shed.

Like the geese, capons and other carcasses up at Exmoor Farmer’s Market - situated in one of the highest villages in Southern Britain - they are properly reared, proper bits of meat, and as such will have a depth of flavour that makes any extra effort well worth the while.

In so many ways events like the Christmas show at Cutcombe represents all I love about enjoying the very best provender of this remarkable region. It’s about people using the natural attributes of this peninsula to grow, glean, produce and prepare great food.

Each year, the people of the Exmoor hills come together in the festive season to demonstrate publicly what they do best – which, for the most part, means breeding and raising animals for meat.

The result is the very antithesis of the modern world’s overly commercialised build-up to Christmas. At the Cutcombe Christmas Show everything going under the hammer has been produced in just a handful of parishes. So the show is a shrine to localness. A high church of eco-friendly, sustainable living. A temple of authenticity when it comes to rapidly shrinking British way of life. A tabernacle of tradition. A memorial in praise of mankind’s ability to work with nature.

We found show chairman David Powell organising the live lamb section outdoors at Cutcombe

Staged at Cutcombe Market under the auspices of Exmoor Farmers Livestock Auctions Ltd, the annual event is organised by a special committee. It begins with a sale of donated items, the proceeds of which are sent to local charities and organisations. The craggy-faced farmers of the hills and their soft-spoken spouses often pay over the odds for everything from a jar of honey to a slab of belly pork (I saw a small jar of honey fetch £10).

In the meantime expert judges are busy evaluating live lambs and ewes as well as the carcasses of recently killed lambs, and poultry.

Judges examine the Christmas birds at Cutcombe

I’ve been attending the event for years and recall one poultry auctioneer telling me: “Historically, you won’t always find a bargain here. But these are fresh birds - and they are locally produced - people will pay a premium for quality and what we have here is excellent quality.”

A show committee chairman added: “People do come for the ingredients of their Christmas dinner – this is a community thing for people in the hills. We have had ladies come up from local towns to buy turkeys – and they do go quite pricey - but they are such good quality people come back year after year. All these birds are free range.”
And an erstwhile vicar of the parish once told me: “The market feels almost, to me, like you are stepping back in time. You could imagine it would be happening here 100 years ago - and there would be very little difference - and that somehow encourages the feeling of Christmas.”

It does. And I’d add this… We consumers consume for 365 days a year. Some of us always try to make the food we eat special, others aren’t particularly interested and scoff whatever’s put in front of them. But if there is one time of year we really ought to be pulling all the stops out, it is Christmas. Not only in terms of quality and flavour, but also in ways that reaffirm who we are, what we are, and what we believe in.

A crowd gathers to bid ion the annual Christmas charity auction

If we love the countryside and approve of the things that make the place look so beautiful - then we ought to be supporting the folk who live and work in, and help create and sustain, those green and productive spaces. In that way the food on our plate has a story to tell.

Christmas fatstock shows - at which farmers and producers large and small traditionally compete with one another in all manner of categories - used to take place in just about every market town in the country before strict EU wide regulations began to restrict proceedings.

The all-important auctioneer is centre of proceedings at the Christmas Fatstock Show

“This is probably the biggest Christmas fat stock show left in Southern England - we’ve no cattle, but today we’ve got 100 poultry, 69 lamb carcasses, 100 live show lambs and 40 show ewes,” said David Powell, chairman of the annual Cutcombe event.
My old friend Bill Liversidge, who often wins the poultry section and whose turkey came second this year, told me: “It is all about breeding, feeding and presentation. You can buy the breeding from the marvellous breeders we’ve got - and you can buy the feed from the marvellous feed companies we’ve got - but the presentation is down to you.”
Poultry judge, Devon based Mike Wright, once told me he was looking for well fleshed birds. “A turkey has to have a lot of meat, obviously, but also a good layer of fat on it. Otherwise it’s not finished completely - it also enhances the cooking.
“On top of that in a show like this they have to be well presented. There are one or two that haven’t been dressed properly which would have got higher marks if they’d taken the trouble.
“With the geese you are basically looking for weight and meat - they can be over fatty,” said Mr Wright. “The one I picked out obviously isn’t. You have to have a bit of fat on a goose but not too much. The biggest goose you can get will only feed eight people - whereas a turkey of the same weight would feed double that.”