The Christmas Fatstock Show
Every year I used to go to the Cutcombe Christmas Fatstock Show so that I could get a report into the Western Morning News - and so that I could buy the giant turkey, as mentioned in the last post…
And even though that post has only been up for an hour I’ve already had requests from a few people asking if I had any of the old reports I wrote for the paper. Here’s the one from 2016…
When it comes to the annual Christmas feast, Bill Liversidge knows a thing or two about placing a premium item on his festive table.
Not only was his massive 32 pound turkey named overall poultry champion at this year’s Cutcombe Christmas Fatstock Show, but his best goose won first in class and was named reserve champion.
The December fatstock show, which is staged every year by Exmoor Farmers Livestock Auctions at the company’s Wheddon Cross market, has become a Christmas fixture in the diaries of the hill folk and is the largest of its kind still left operating in Southern England.
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 the proceedings.
“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, part of which is held in aid of local charity.
Mr Liversidge, who ran the West Somerset Community College’s Farm Unit for 25 years and still looks after his own smallholding near Dunster, told us: “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.
“And you never stop learning. For example, last year the young girl who now helps run the college farm told me that to avoid scratching the backs on the turkeys when you tie them up, you need to keep the feathers on that patch and remove them later. Which is why she’s beaten me for the last couple of years.
“I never knew that before, even though I’ve won this show several times,” said Mr Liversidge who, despite rearing winning geese, says he can’t afford to have one for Christmas so it will be turkey as usual.
Poultry judge, Devon based Mike Wright, 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.”
Over in the lamb carcass section, schoolboy Dominic Blackmore was showing more experienced Exmoor farmers how things should be done by having his Dutch Texel-Black Beltex cross win the overall championship.
“I am absolutely chuffed to bits,” he told me. “This is the first time I’ve ever entered a competition. And no… I don’t want to be a farmer - I want to be a livestock auctioneer.”
He certainly has the right eye to be one.
