Christmas might arrive on the table in December, but at Pipers & Co the work begins months before.

From planning livestock with farmers and choosing the year's Christmas pantry selection, to photographing the collection, writing recipes and preparing thousands of orders by hand, the run-up to Christmas is one of the busiest and most exciting times of the year.

September & October: crafting the Christmas table

By early autumn, Christmas is already in full swing behind the scenes at Pipers & Co.

September sees our Christmas shoot, bringing together much of the food that will make up the collection for the first time. It's also an excellent excuse for a rather substantial final taste test, to make sure the whole team is as excited about every product we have carefully selected.

We work with brilliant small-scale British producers throughout the year, but Christmas gives us an opportunity to seek out a few particularly special things for the festive table. Everything is meticulously tasted by our team before it makes the cut. However beautiful the jar or compelling the story, if something doesn't taste exceptional, we won't sell it.

At the same time, we're developing the recipes, cooking guides and advice that will accompany the Christmas collection. We want customers to buy a beautiful piece of meat or a wonderful ingredient and know exactly what to do with it when it arrives in their kitchen.

October & November: back to the farms

Long before Christmas orders begin arriving, the most important planning on the farm has already been done, many months earlier.

Our grass-fed beef, lamb and pork are produced in partnership with Philip Warren & Son, the renowned family butchers and farmers in Launceston, Cornwall. Meanwhile, our Christmas poultry, including turkeys and geese, comes to us directly from our partner farms.

Christmas requires careful planning. We work with our community of producers well in advance to do our best to predict what our lovely customers will be looking for on their festive table. It's a very different approach from simply buying more when demand increases: we are working with farming systems that cannot and should not be switched on and off according to a sales forecast. That means thinking about the whole animal, balancing different cuts and planning carefully, so that nothing goes to waste and we do our best to avoid selling out too early.

The Christmas birds

Our Christmas turkeys have an even longer journey to the table.

They are reared for us at Orchard Farm in Devon, where they grow slowly from spring until winter, spending their days ranging across pasture and amongst established cider apple orchards. The trees provide natural shelter and somewhere for the birds to explore and forage, while in autumn the windfall cider apples become part of life in the orchard too.

It's a wonderfully simple farming system: plenty of space, plenty of time and birds able to express their natural behaviours.

For us, time really matters. You cannot rush a genuinely good Christmas turkey into existence in December. The quality of the bird on Christmas Day is the result of how it has been farmed for all the months that came before it.

Read Abby's full story on how our Christmas turkeys are farmed

December: the countdown begins

As December approaches, everything starts to come together. The pantry fills with the cheeses, preserves, puddings, sauces and other things we've been squirrelling away for Christmas. Our farmers and producers are preparing for their busiest weeks of the year, while our own team begins the enormous job of bringing every element together.

Then comes the final Christmas rush: the last butchery of the Christmas poultry, packing, and getting orders safely out of the door and onto Christmas tables across the country. For a few weeks, almost every corner of Pipers & Co is given over to Christmas. It is a huge logistical operation, but one our excellent team thankfully have decades of experience delivering.

Underneath all the busyness is a really simple mission: excellent farmers and the very best food producers, making and growing exceptional food, and a team of people working incredibly hard to get it onto the table at its very best, to give our customers a truly magical Christmas.