Our article a few weeks back on butchers who were creating their own solutions to the beef crisis mentioned the splendid O'Kane brothers, Michael and Kieran, of Clady, another of those luminary teams of dedicated meat artisans which the North is so fortunate to enjoy.
Well, the brothers have just added another gear to their clutch of skills, and are now slaughtering and supplying organic beef to customers, via the three hugely successful box systems now operating in the North. Using beef from David Hawthorne's Brackfield Farm - where the feeding regime is strictly to organic standards, no compound feeds are used, high standards of animal husbandry are used to prevent the animals becoming stressed - the O'Kanes vacuum-pack the meat, which is then ordered by the customer and delivered to their door.
You can order everything from fillet steak at £6.40 per pound to steak sausages at £1.69 per pound, and this combination of farmer, butcher and supplier seems to me to be nothing less than a dream team for good food.
The suppliers handling the meat and the box systems are Nicola Monk at Organic and Fine Foods, Bangor (tel 01247-456873); Dermott and Claire at Cross Head Organic Farm, Cros (01504-302035); and Brian Wallace at Coleraine Organic Foods, Coleraine, (01265-868951).