Valhalla Croft

25/08/2026

SLAUGHTER — WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS?

One thing that keeps coming up with pretty much everyone I talk to is slaughter and the facilities available to us.

Here in the north, we have one realistic option: John Munro’s in Dingwall. They do a great job at what they do, but the conversation nearly always turns to the same questions:

It is so far away. What happens if something happens to them? What about the welfare of transporting livestock across the Highlands?

Orkney is now developing the Tiny Trailer Abattoir, or TTA. It is a different model from home kill, but I think it has planted a seed for a lot of folk:

What if we could have something better here too?

For a lot of people, home kill is already how they put meat on their family’s table. However, some people cannot—or do not want to—carry out the slaughter and processing themselves, even though they believe it is a better way.

If a service could come to your croft and slaughter an animal for your own consumption, would that interest you?

Instead of loading the animal into a trailer and driving it to the slaughterhouse, the deed would happen at home. The animal would remain on the croft and the meat would never leave the site, so you would know it was your own animal going into your freezer.

We believe the Highlands may need a different option, and we are gathering evidence to establish how much demand exists and what livestock keepers would need from it.

We are looking for emails or private messages answering the following questions:

• Would you use this service?
• What animals would you use it for?
• Approximately how many animals each year?
• Would you be willing to pay less than, the same as or more than your current slaughter and butchery costs?
• What area are you in?
• Could you give us a short comment explaining why you would—or would not—use it?

As an example, this is one of the responses we have already received:

“We had a home kill carried out on our Shetland beast, and it was a decision I will never regret. From now on, it is how I want to put food on my family’s table.

There was no stress and no hassle—the animal knew nothing about it. We have a large family, so we eat a fair amount of meat, and I would definitely be looking at two beasts a year.

We are just outside Lairg and would happily pay more than the traditional method. It was stress-free and a proud moment knowing that my freezer was full of my own beef, done the way I wanted.”

Equally, another response might simply be:

“We don’t need change. The current system works for us, and we would continue using it.”

Both answers are valuable. We need genuine responses to build an honest picture of what crofters and smallholders across the Highlands actually want.

Please send us a private message or email:

[email protected]

Keeping the responses in one place will allow us to gather clear evidence and show whether there is a genuine need for this type of service.

Please share this with anyone who keeps livestock for their own consumption.

22/08/2026

Extra order now open for next week!

We’re putting on an extra order for next week, with all our usual meat, sausages, burgers and meal ideas available on the website.

We’re also really pleased to be doing more with Tollie Croft, adding their locally grown Dingwall veg boxes to our Sunday deliveries. It feels like a brilliant fit — properly local meat and veg, brought together in one order.
Both sizes come with 5kg of potatoes and 1kg of carrots. The small comes with 3 extra items and the medium comes with 6. Below are some examples boxes but items will change depending on what's ready to harvest.
Small Veg Box — £13

• 5kg potatoes
• 1kg carrots
• Leeks
• Cabbage
• Kale

Medium Veg Box — £18

• 5kg potatoes
• 1kg carrots
• Cabbage
• Leeks
• Onions
• Parsnips
• Beetroot
• Kale

Veg boxes are available for Sunday delivery only, alongside your Valhalla Croft order.

After this extra order, we’ll be running orders every two weeks, making it easier to plan a proper local shop for the fortnight ahead.

We’ve also got a real mix of bits on the stall today, so pop by and have a look — and make sure you grab some of the amazing tomatoes before they’re gone.

Orders close Tuesday night.

Grow slow, eat well.
Now delivering from Tain to Wick and Halkirk.
The Roberts Family.

21/08/2026

Thanks everyone we have managed to get it updated so you can all be able to place your orders. We might even be covering a few oil rigs on that map.😂😂😂
Please note we don't deliver to oil rigs.

19/08/2026

18/08/2026

Still time to get your orders in for this weekend!

Orders don’t close until tonight, so there’s still time to get yours added.

We’ve now had a few orders come in from Fearn and Balintore, so we’ll be heading that way on Sunday too.

We’ve also got just ONE Family Fortnight Box left this week — once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Collection from the croft on Saturday, with deliveries on Sunday.

Now delivering from Tain to Wick and Halkirk.

If you’re outside our normal delivery area, we’re more than happy to arrange to meet you somewhere along our route.

But when you order from Valhalla Croft, you’re supporting something much bigger than just our family.

We’re building a cooperation of crofters and local producers — and these aren’t just suppliers to us. They’re our friends, neighbours and fellow crofters.

We know where our meat comes from. We know the people who reared it, we know the crofts it came from, and in many cases we’ve stood in the field and seen the animals ourselves.

That relationship matters to us.

Because every order doesn't just support Valhalla Croft. It supports the crofter who reared the animal, the grower who produced the vegetables, the small producer making something brilliant locally, and the people and businesses involved along the way.

It supports crofting, local food production and hundreds of years of Highland tradition.

We’re simply trying to build another way to keep more of what we produce here, here and keep more of its value within our communities.

So when we say thank you for supporting us, what we really mean is:

Thank you for supporting all of us.

Grow slow, eat well.

The Roberts Family
Valhalla Croft

16/08/2026

Quick update thats 3 of the 5 family boxes gone already.

Another quick update BBQ Box is now sold out as well.

YOU WANT BUYING LOCAL TO BE EASIER. SO THAT’S WHAT WE’RE WORKING ON.

We’ve had loads of feedback from our recent posts, and rather than just talking about the problems with buying local, we’ve been working through some of the things you’ve asked for.

You wanted more individual products, so we’ve started adding them.

Foot-long Black Pepper & Garlic Pork Hot Dogs — 6 for £8.50
BBQ Pork Ring — 400g £6.50
Jalapeño & Mature Cheddar Venison Sausages — 400g £6.50
Cider & Sika Sausages — 400g £6.50
Chilliman’s Highland Heat Venison Sausages — 400g £6.50
Wild Boar & Wild Mushroom Sausages — 400g £6.50 — limited
Venison Lorne — now available too

You wanted convenience, so our Fortnight Family Box is back this week — enough meat to feed a family of four for two weeks, with a slightly different selection this time.

We’re only making 5 Fortnight Family Boxes available this week. Once those five are gone, they’re gone.

And all of that is on top of everything else we're bringing together.

We’ve got amazing soap handmade in Helmsdale — genuinely the only soap we use now because we think it's the best around.

Seasonings from Craic Larder.
Hot sauces from Chilliman in Muir of Ord.
Cheese, cream and yoghurts.
Local honey.
Pork and venison.
And plenty more.

The gooseberry yoghurt is our current favourite — huge chunks of actual gooseberry through it. It's cracking.

You also wanted us to cover more areas delivering truly local food.

We deliver from Tain to Wick and Halkirk, and everywhere in between, and we can also arrange deliveries to Ardgay, Lairg, M**e and Rogart.

We can shout BUY LOCAL all we like, but we think there's a better way.

Make buying local easier.

More choice. More individual products. More Highland producers in one place. And more places we can get it to you.

Orders close Tuesday night, so get your order in before then. For collection Saturday 22nd and deliver sunday 23rd.

Head over to Valhalla Croft on Ooooby to check out the full range — or simply Google “Valhalla Croft” and you’ll find us.

And most of all, thank you.

Every order, every share and every person who chooses to buy something produced here is helping to rebuild our local food resilience.

It means more of the food produced in the Highlands is eaten here in the Highlands, rather than being put on a lorry and sent hundreds of miles down the road while we bring food back up to replace it.

That’s what buying local really means to us.

Grow Slow. Eat Well.

Valhalla Croft — now delivering from Tain to Halkirk and Wick, and everywhere in between.

14/08/2026

People who shop at Iceland don't eat venison.

Or so I was told in a comment on a recent post.

And I can't stop thinking about that.

Because when did venison become food for wealthy people?

We've gotten so used to eating what supermarkets put in front of us that we've almost stopped looking at what's actually around us.

Beef. Pork. Lamb. Chicken.

That's the choice. Pick one, find the cheapest version of it and apparently that's what eating on a budget looks like.

Meanwhile, here in the Highlands we've got an abundance of venison.

A meat that's fed people here for generations has somehow become a "speciality" product that apparently isn't eaten by people who shop at Iceland.

How did we manage that?

I could give you all the usual guff about venison being high in iron, low in fat, full of protein, great macros, vitamins A through Z...

But who cares.

EAT IT BECAUSE IT TASTES AMAZING.

EAT IT BECAUSE IT'S LOCAL.

And if you're watching the pennies...

EAT IT BECAUSE IT CAN ACTUALLY BE CHEAPER THAN BEEF.

I'm not even going to use our prices to prove that.

Another local vendor sells venison roasting joints at around £16/kg.

The Iceland beef roasting joint we've been comparing against is around £18.75/kg.

So someone watching their money can walk past the local venison because they think they can't afford it, go to Iceland because they think that's where affordable food comes from...

and potentially pay more.

Then there's something we hear all the time:

"Buying local keeps money in the local community."

But what does that actually mean?

And this isn't just venison. The same applies when you buy local lamb, beef, pork, vegetables, milk and everything else we produce here.

Take that venison joint.

The money from it helps pay the stalker and the ghillie. The vet who comes out to the estate ponies. The mechanic who services the Gator, quad bike and machinery. The local fabricator welding a broken trailer at 9pm.The processor and butcher. The refrigeration engineer who keeps the chillers running. The roofer fixing estate buildings. The handyman. The guest house where visiting workers stay. The changeover staff cleaning it. The local shop where those people spend their wages.

And then those businesses need accountants, electricians, builders, fuel, supplies and staff.

Their staff have families. Their children go to our schools. They spend their wages in our villages and towns.

That's what "keeping money in the community" actually means.

It's not £16 going into one local farmer's pocket instead of £18.75 going to a supermarket.

It's the same pound getting another chance to be spent locally. And then another.

That's why buying local matters.

Don't get me wrong, venison isn't going to replace beef, lamb or pork, and it shouldn't.

But why do we not consider it alongside them?

If beef is expensive this week, why not venison? If lamb is plentiful next month, eat lamb. If your local farmer has pork, eat pork.

Maybe instead of deciding what meat we want and then finding the cheapest place to buy it we should occasionally look at what's being produced around us and build dinner around that.

So, people who shop at Iceland don't eat venison?

Maybe they should.

Grow slow. Eat well. Now delivering from Tain to Wick and Halkirk.
The Roberts Family

11/08/2026

Local lamb is terrible... should I stop selling it?

Well, looking at our food system, you'd be forgiven for thinking so.

Between January and November 2025 the UK exported 85,700 tonnes of sheep meat, while during exactly the same period we imported 74,200 tonnes.

Read that again. We exported 11,500 tonnes MORE than we imported.

On a simple mass balance, we produced enough sheep meat to cover what we imported and still had 11,500 tonnes left to export.

So why are we sending perfectly good lamb away while bringing somebody else's halfway around the world?

Well, there isn't anything wrong with our lamb. Scotland, Wales and England all produces fantastic lamb, and the fact there's a valuable overseas market for it rather proves the point.

I'm not against exporting our food either. Selling what we produce overseas brings outside money into our economy and there's absolutely a place for that.

But I think we've got the order wrong.

Surely the first job of the food we produce should be feeding the people who live here. Then, once we've done that, export the surplus and bring that outside money back in.

The farmer generally isn't standing there deciding they'd rather feed someone in France than someone down the road. That decision happen further along a supply chain of processors, wholesalers, retailers and international markets.

Meanwhile we buy what's put in front of us, and increasingly what's put in front of us is dictated by what works for the supermarket system.

Supermarkets want consistency because consistency is cheaper. Similar weights, tight specifications, predictable packaging and reliable supply week after week makes a huge system easier and cheaper to operate.

But farming isn't uniform.

One lamb is bigger than another. Different breeds finish differently, grass grows differently and the seasons changes what's naturally available.

If our farms can't provide exactly what the supermarket wants every week of the year, the supermarket system can simply look somewhere else in the world.

New Zealand farmers aren't doing anything wrong here. In fact they've become incredibly good at producing and supplying exactly what our supermarket system asks for.

I think the problem is the system we've created.

Here in Scotland you'll often hear people talk about our food being sent "down the road", and that's something we've believed from the beginning at Valhalla Croft.

Stop sending our food down the road before we've fed the locals.

That doesn't mean nothing should leave Scotland, Wales or England. Far from it. Feed the people around us first, then proudly send the surplus down the road, across the border or overseas and bring that outside money back into our economy.

Local should be the first market, not the last one we think about.

And changing that doesn't mean everyone needs to abandon the supermarket tomorrow.

Buy your eggs from someone local. Get the occasional meat box from a farmer or crofter. Buy your Sunday roast from the local butcher. Pick up vegetables from a local grower when they're in season.

Just move one thing you already buy from the supermarket back into your local food system.

Because if enough of us make that small change, suddenly there's demand. More animals can be sold locally, more vegetables can be grown locally, local processing becomes viable and more people have a reason to produce food for the communities around them.

We don't need everyone to change everything. We need lots of people to change something.

So back to the question I started with.

Local lamb is terrible... should I stop selling it?

No.

I think I should sell more of it.

And I think we should all try to buy a little more of the food produced around us.

Small changes, made by enough people, can make a huge diffrence.

Buy local. Feed the locals first. Then send the surplus down the road.

Grow slow. Eat well.

The Roberts Family

09/08/2026

YOU ASKED. WE LISTENED. LOCAL FOOD JUST GOT EASIER.

One thing that came through clearly in the comments on our recent posts was this.

You want to buy more local food, but it has to be convenient.

We said we would listen to the points being raised and work through them to see what we can actually do about each one.

This is one of those changes.

We’re really proud to be expanding our partnership with Tollie Croft.

We’ve been selling bits of their veg for a while now. The quality is brilliant, their growing practices are something we’re happy to stand behind, and they’re genuinely good people to work with.

So we want to put more business their way.

From our next delivery on Sunday 30th August, you’ll be able to order their veg boxes directly through our website alongside everything else.

Small Veg Box £15
Medium Veg Box £18

These will be available for delivery only.

One order. One delivery to your door.

Between what we produce and the other fantastic local businesses we work with, you can now order beef, lamb, pork, venison, veg, milk, cheese, spices, hot sauces, soap and more without spending your Saturday driving around half the Highlands collecting it.

Your whole Sunday roast can literally turn up at your door.

From Tain north, we deliver all the way to Wick and now on to Halkirk too.

We’re aware that the delivery area showing on the map on our Ooooby page doesn’t currently reflect the full area we cover. We’ll get that addressed. Thank you to everyone who messaged us to point it out.

If you’re south of us, Tollie Croft also produce their own pork, produced in a way we’re very happy to support, and deliver from Drumnadrochit onwards.

We don’t need every sale to be ours. If another local producer is doing a brilliant job, we’d rather work together, put more business their way and make buying local easier for everyone.

You told us convenience was a barrier. This is one way we can help remove it.

We’re still working through the other points people raised too.

If there’s something stopping you from buying local, or something you think we could do better, put it in the comments.

We’ll read it, and if there’s something practical we can do about it, we’ll see what we can do.

Grow slow. Eat well.

The Roberts Family

09/08/2026

Now this is exactly the sort of thing we love to see.

We've just finished cutting some really lovely Hebridean lamb for Doigh Nadair Croft over at Lairg, and they're selling it direct as meat boxes.

These are proper mixed boxes making use of the animal, with a mix of leg of lamb, b***d and rolled shoulder, chops and mince.

I believe they've only got a couple of boxes left from this batch, so if you fancy some genuinely local Hebridean lamb, get in touch with Doigh Nadair Croft directly.

And even if you don't need lamb this time, give their page a follow so you don't miss the next batch.

This is exactly what we've been talking about over the last few days. Local crofters producing good food, selling it locally and supporting each other to make it happen.

We don't need to produce everything ourselves.

Sometimes our job is simply helping someone else get their food onto your plate.

Grow slow. Eat well.

The Roberts Family