Great care is being taken at a newly launched Upper Eden farm shop and café to clearly mark where all the food it sells is from – so customers know exactly how local the produce is that they are buying.
Rob and Jill Owen, who have been farming at Sandwath Farm, Kirkby Stephen, since 2014, are passionate about producing and selling their home-grown products at Owen’s Farm Shop, which had its opening weekend at the start of April, but they also stock items from other carefully selected suppliers.
Jill explained their ethos was a simple one – they aim to use local suppliers. And in order to let everybody know how local they are, all their products are labelled using a “Sandwath Miles” sticker system, which shows the proximity of production to Sandwath Farm. Green means home produced, blue is within 10 miles, and orange is within 25 miles.
Home-made jams and lemon cheese from Kirkby Stephen-based Country Flavour, cheeses from Appleby Creamery, bread from the Ivy Cottage Baker and cakes from Bridge Street Bakes all have blue stickers.
“Ideally, I would love to supply everything within a 25-mile radius, but sometimes people don’t produce what you want to sell in that close a radius.
“We want to be sustainable so we can continue farming and we want to promote local products from local people,” said Jill.
Both Rob and Jill come from local farming families and have farming running through their veins. Jill is a daughter of retired dairy farmers Graham and Joan Foster and her sister, Julie Atkinson, has their farm which is a mile up the road at Waitby, while Rob is the son of Clive Owen, who farms at Ravenseat, Swaledale.
Rob and Jill, who have a four-year-old son, Archie, rent 125 acres of land which stretches around Stobars Hall and has a boundary at the back of Kirkby Stephen Grammar School.
“The farm shop and café gives us the opportunity to diversify and sell our high quality beef, lamb, pork and bacon to our customers and to share the great location in which we live,” said Jill.
The café and farm shop has been built where some redundant dog boarding kennels once stood and there is ample parking available. Jill said they were also aiming to serve as much of their own produce as possible in the café with breakfasts, burgers, sausage rolls, quiches and cakes all available.
The main chef and chief baker of cakes is Lucy Lancaster-Davies, of Appleby.
An outdoor seating area is also being erected with picnic tables overlooking some of the “happy animals” at Sandwath Farm, including its sheep and lambs.
There is a little playground which they share with the neighbouring Wigwams at Sandwath business which houses glamping pods with hot tubs about 50 yards from the farm shop. Later in the year, Jill said the plan was to apply for a drinks licence so they will also be able to sell alcohol produced fairly nearby.
The opening weekend was said to have gone really well. Guests were treated to glasses of non-alcoholic prosecco along with tastings, which included light canapes, sausages, burgers, sandwiches, quiches and cakes to give people a taste of what will be available.
