FARMERS and their families travelled to a hay show held in the region yesterday to demonstrate that country life was "alive and kicking" in the aftermath of foot-and-mouth disease.

Hundreds of people, from Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Cumbria, turned up for the tenth annual show to be held in Upper Weardale.

It attracted a record entry of 125 for what has become one of the biggest social events on the farming calendar. But, at the same time, farmers vented their anger at the way Minister Margaret Beckett and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), handled last year's foot-and-mouth crisis.

Among the bales of hay outside the Cross Keys pub, in Eastgate, were two laid as wreaths "in memory" of Mrs Beckett and Defra.

Sheep farmer and breeder Bill Wearmouth said: "This represents the anger and frustration that farmers, not just here in Weardale, but throughout the country, feel at the way the crisis was handled."

Mr Wearmouth, national treasurer of the National Sheep Association, said he had travelled to London twice a month during the summer for meetings, trying to impress on Defra that lessons must be learnt from the crisis.

Other farmers applauded the wreath-laying at the hay show the first big farming event in Weardale since the foot-and-mouth restrictions were lifted.

After the customary sniffing and feeling of the hay, judges Joe Raine and Arthur Yeats, both retired farmers, declared the entries to be of "high quality with a good leafy smell and texture".

Eastgate farmer Herbert Hutchinson picked up the trophy for best hay in show. The prize for the new class of best young farmers' hay went to Anthony Jopling, 15, of Eastgate.