Food straight from the farm

DEBBIE Bell is standing at the stove in her kitchen, stirring up an enormous pan of what will eventually be cheesy-topped cottage pie, one of her range of ready meals. On the draining board is a huge heap of peeled parsnips.

Outside there are chickens ranging free. In a field down the road, some big spotty black pigs are rootling around, looking like something out of a child's picture book.

The Village Pantry really is a farm shop.

What's more, it's just been named as the Specialist Retailer of the Year in the Flavour of Hambleton food and drink awards, beating Lewis and Cooper into second place. "I couldn't really believe it," says Debbie, "beating Lewis and Cooper..."

For 18 years, Debbie was a civil servant, as well as a farmer's wife and mother of three. "Then one day five years ago - it sounds like a clich but it's how it happened - we were having Sunday lunch with the children. We had roast lamb, one of our own from the farm, and home grown vegetables. Everything was home produced and it tasted so good, I thought it was a shame that other people couldn't have the chance to enjoy food like that."

So she opened a shop in the garage.

"Just in time for foot-and-mouth."

Despite that, the shop prospered and has since been extended. Debbie stocks a range of locally produced food but there's bacon from the spotty pigs, lambs from the farm, and lots of free range chickens, which have always been Debbie's responsibility.

"When we started, we used to sell six a week. Now we sell 60 and more. People come from York, Pontefract, Northallerton, just for our chickens."

But it's hard work, "very labour intensive". Saturday morning is chicken plucking day. "My son helps with that too," says Debbie.

And she also makes all those ready meals... lots of favourites, but also including spicy chicken, lamb with red wine and rosemary, fruity pork with ginger, mustardy sausages with apple wedges.

"We get all sorts coming in for them - busy mothers, or people on their own who want a meal they don't have to cook themselves."

There are modest plans to expand a bit more, perhaps open a caf - with her daughter as head waitress."But we don't really want to get much bigger," says Debbie. "The whole point of this shop was to sell what we produced. If we get too big, we'd lose that. We like what we're doing and so do our customers, so we'll keep it that way."

* The Village Pantry, Raskelf, just off the A19 between Thirsk and Easingwold. Tel: (01347) 822475. Open Tues-Sat, 9.30am-5pm. They also have a stall on Easingwold market on Fridays.

LIZ and Chris Hodgson are heroes - top chef Rick Stein says so, having named them in his Food Heroes of Britain for their organic farm shop at Piercebridge.

When they had young children, Liz and Chris started thinking about what they were spraying on the land on the family farm. As a result, they now run a successful farm shop in which every item is certified organic.

"The children were playing in the hedgebacks and you'd wonder," says Liz.

The change-over to fully organic was very hard work but has been worthwhile and the shop simply seemed the next logical step.

"We'd always sold our own eggs from the farm, so we had the idea of selling straight to the public. Though of course we were all ready to go when foot-and-mouth started, so we had to put everything on hold until people could come onto the farm again."

Their eggs are still a best seller - so good that they won an award from the Soil Association. As well as high level fans like Rick Stein, and their strong core of local customers, they have regulars from all over the country.

"We have Londoners who holiday in Scotland and order a hamper to collect on their way up. Then they'll order another one to pick up on their way down to take back to London."

They are most famous for their own free range chickens, but also sell their own lamb, pork and beef, as well as a big range of other organic products. "Once you go into it, it all seems so obvious that you want to do as much as you can," says Liz.

They stock a huge range of organic dried fruits and nuts, plus sauces, yoghurts and a number of groceries. They have locally produced vegetables and also bread and cakes produced by the Camphill community at Botton near Whitby. They also work closely with big organic retailers Out of This World. There's a range of baby products too and they act as a refill station for Ecover cleaning products.

Chef Lynette Anderson has developed and prepares a range of ready meals - moussaka, lasagne, beef bourgignon, apple and cinnamon crumble, chocolate roulade - for those who like the goodness without the graft.

"As they are all organic, it means we can't chop and change the recipes whenever we like as every single ingredient has to be accounted for by the Soil Association. We can't be just "nearly" organic or "as good as" organic - we are organic and have a mountain of paperwork to prove it."

There have been other bonuses from going organic. "We see so much more wildlife in the fields now and so many birds - we had six pairs of skylarks, as well as curlews, plovers and migrating birds."

As well as the shop, they have a tea room, popular with locals and with visitors and walkers and they plan to be a Soil Association visitor farm.

"But above all, we're a working farm, and trying to run it in a traditional way," says Liz. "Chris's grandparents had this farm and they would recognise a lot of what we do and the way we do it - except for all that paperwork."

* Piercebridge Organics, The Green, Piercebridge, shop and tearoom. Tel: (01325) 374251.