Chippenham farming pair set to bring home the bacon (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Chippenham farming pair set to bring home the bacon

9:00am Saturday 18th February 2012 in Chippenham By Tom Mooney

Residents in the Chippenham villages now have their steaks, chops and sausages right on their doorstep, after two pals launched a mobile butchery company.

Stuart Rolfe, 39, and Nick Philpott, 35, have been supplying butchers in the area with products from their herd of Gloucester Old Spot pigs since last year.

Now they have decided to take their business – the Cotswold Pig Company – on the road and will be serving Biddestone, Yatton Keynell, Castle Combe and Colerne as a trial, before hopefully expanding.

Mr Rolfe, who lives in Corsham, operates the butchery side of the business. He said: “We had been supplying butchers and we started looking at what the farmers’ markets were doing.

“But people can’t always get out to markets on certain days or maybe they don’t have transport.

“There used to be one in the area but we haven’t seen it for years now.

“So we thought we would have a go, and get a chance to interact with the customers, too.

“The products we sell, we think, are very good quality and we are a little bit cheaper than the supermarkets.”

All of the pair’s pork products will be from Mr Philpott’s family farm in Doddington, South Gloucestershire, where they have a 40-strong herd of Old Spots. The rest of their meat will be from other local farms.

They started the Cotswold Pig Company six months ago with just two pigs.

Mr Rolfe said: “Nick got a couple of pigs and asked if I wanted to go in with him and get a couple more.

“We liked the product so much we started getting more in and people bought them. That made us think we had something good. Now we have about 40 pigs.

“We are starting with the four villages and seeing how that goes.

“If it works well, we will definitely look at bringing it to the other villages.”

The mobile butchers starts on February 23.

To find out when it will be in your village, visit www.cotswoldpig.co.uk or call 07585 778954.