Dairy farm complete their farm-to-fork journey with off-grid on-farm restaurant

Gazegill farm is gently nestled into the heart of the Lancashire countryside, and for years owners Emma Robinson and Ian O'Reilly have been building their farm-to-customer business through meat box and raw milk sales. Nature is at the heart of all they do; it comes first and that approach applies to their new on-farm venture, their restaurant Eight at Gazegill. Only serving food from the farm or local specialities, Emma and Ian want food, produced in a harmonious way, to connect people back to the land.

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You're listening to the Farmers Guardian podcast. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's Farmers Guardian podcast with me FGS online editor Emily Ashworth. I had the pleasure of going to visit a very unique place Gaitskill, a dairy farm in the heart of Lancashire which has over the years grown to become a really diverse and successful enterprise run by husband and wife team Emma and Ian. I visited the couple years ago when they were in the middle of building that onsite farm to table restaurant, and I recently had the pleasure of going back to see the finished product. The thing about Gaitskill is its heritage and history. Having been in my family for hundreds of years, and at the heart of all of this is nature. Over the years, they have built a really exciting business selling raw milk and organic meat boxes from the farm. And now the restaurant called eight completes a cycle which all starts in the fields and finishes in the farm shop or on the table in the restaurant. Right. I'm and I'm back. And we all sat in front of finally the finished product of your. Well, how long has this been going on now? Too long. It's changed the business. Last time? Yeah, it was a shell, isn't it? Yeah, it was a shell. So this is really nice to come back. Open up. Really exciting isn't it. Been the longest build ever. We feel it's right. Yeah. And it's evolved. It's grown. We've grown with it and we've got the right team. Well it looks beautiful. so we will, we won't start off with talking about, this beautiful building behind us. Well we'll start at the beginning because, I love the story of you two and how you've built this business up. So let's go back to the start. Let's talk a little bit about your background, because, well, for one, I know that a and you're not from a farming background. So if we start there and then look at how we kind of. Well, you came together to to start there. The farming business at your house. Yeah. Ian's from central London. Yeah. So I grew up in London. I joined the Army. So, Army aviation, background and. Yeah, left the army, stayed in Germany. and probably wasted many years skiing and mountaineering and generally enjoying life and, decided that, it was now time that I actually did something with my life instead of playing. I have to go. Yeah. and I came back to the UK, and I hated London. and I had friends, up in Lancashire. I came and visited, decided it was nice part of the world settled. and then, I was in the Ashton Elms on here, and Emma was in collecting money for pork, and, that's how we met. I bought a ticket from there. So it's always a big ANZ. Yeah, for the people. So what? Buying? It's, No. And of course, I miss, you know, your stories. And I've always been. It goes go. I've grown up on a farm. yeah. It was, just a normal farm, but. Yeah, at Lost Investment. And when we came along, there was hemorrhaging money. Older siblings that, you know, left. And so, you know, I was sort of there's 20 years, isn't there, between you and your older siblings and. Yes, I didn't want to take over. I didn't want it to go out on me. So I took over in recession. What generation are you, Emma? Oh, good grief, this is 80 something. So our generation has seen, the old crikey haven't. Yeah. Here. Lord knows. how far is it go about the history? So the house is 1580, and we're fairly sure the bloodlines been there all the way through. Okay. Putting an actual stamp on that, we don't know, but yeah. Yeah. Generations and generations. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Muslim Australia. What's a very haunted. Well it's always room. yes. Yeah. We've always been a dairy farm. And, with the stubbornness of my mother, we've got pigs. there was no value in having pigs on organic feed and taking them into an auction. So hence the fact we started doing farmers markets to sell them. And then we put in a little cutting room, a little blocks we could cut. So to take to the farmers market, it, it just seemed the right thing to do to sort of start actually keeping a profit center and retaining that profit center. Yeah. and then people started come in and buy in from the block. Yeah. And then it got busier and we didn't have anything left the market. So then we thought, well, we'll just open at weekends and it's just growing from there. Yeah. And and it soon became a sort of seven day operation. and then 2013 we discovered the world of e-commerce. I wish we'd done that years ago. Yeah. and that just just took off. The days of Britain went boom. And we had this, like, bottling line in, which was another learning curve. But the cows have been it as long as it was. Really. It's the same with that line. And yeah, I think I owed it to them to keep going. I think just trying to find a, you know, retail home for, for like best part of quarter, 1,000,000l of milk a year, was going to be the big challenge. The meat was fairly sort of straightforward, wasn't it? And there was a good demand and volume for it. But milk was going to be, you know, and that's where we sort of went on the journey of, you know, we, we did process some milk, but raw seemed to be the way to go. And raw has grown incredibly in the UK. So if we just take a step back to the, you know, so you it was a dairy farm predominantly and you obviously ventured out into exploring how you could, you know, diversify slightly. You started selling meat and whatnot dairy wise. What were you running, what livestock numbers wise? Oh, I'd say we'd go to about 85. Yeah. Dairy Shorthorn. So the only dinky they don't give a huge amount of yield. But it's really creamy, really lovely. And I was milking twice a day, every day. And it's really clean, like my girl, clean, OCD my back discount of between 5 and 8. It's really low. So yeah, yeah I think I think the thing about Chilterns as well is, it's longevity that, you know, we've got cows that are 18 years old that's unheard of in dairy. And and I think it'll come to the name. Yeah, it's a testament to the breed that, you know, it's it's the always I think we don't have a strict, you know, 11 month view, the calving interval. Yeah. The calf is very sort of, hands off and yeah, let's see what happens. some of them do calf every sort of 11, 12, 13 months. Yeah. Obviously every time. And you know, ones that work harder and ones that work less. But it seems to balance out. We watch them. Yeah yeah yeah. They I see them more than our kids. So yeah from my family you know family the more behaved as well. yeah. Sometimes. So talk me through the, the route into the raw milk then, because obviously that requires certain changes. And tell me about the process of it all. And how do you make it work? Yeah, I think we didn't stumble across it. We knew that there was a demand for for raw milk. And, you know, we're going back to good numbers for ten, 12 years now where there was probably only about 1,000,000l of raw milk being sold in the UK, it's now up near 8 million. it's got a massive following and a real demand. And we start off with a very manual little bottling plant and decided, you know, as it grew, there's no way we could manage to literally handle bottling everything with a hand-cranked machine. And even with the bottling line we've got now, we'll be bottling for two hours. Yes. It's, but, you know, so that evolved into it, you know, a proper grocery filler and, it became a bit of an operation. And, as that sort of product took market share on the website, the milk really stopped selling because it was now selling it. It's nationwide. It's 750 to 1000 boxes of meat, milk and other goods going out every, every week. so people come to the farm shop. Yes, yes. Yeah. It's nice to come to the farm and see goats and geese and God knows what running around the farmyard. It's really too real as well. Yeah. Because it's not just a factory. It's not just a factory farm that's buying in. Yeah. There are piglets running around the yard. Okay. Come meet them. Yeah. Let's talk about then. you know, you both have a very focused idea on how you want to farm. Can you tell me a little bit about that in terms of, you know, your principles and, how do you make how you make those decisions? Well, this year has been prime example. It's rained and rained and rained, and we've not been able to get on the fields and roll chain. Harrow makes bread, but then the cowleys came in and they've nested so we can't go in the meadows, whereas everyone else will still go in a row. What happens if those little ground nesting birds are in the skylarks, the lapwings? It's their fields. I think they've been here longer than us. Yeah, there are some generation Z generation is is look after your meadows. Look after your nature. and I think that that was a big message. And, you know, we don't even look at with custodians. We're current custodians holding the baton, carrying the generations of my family looks after the meadows. So we've got biological heritage. So because there's not many flowers in there. Yeah, we've got to look after them because every flower, every grass has got a little insect on it. And that when the runners are in the grass, that's the folks that are looking forward to it. And, you know, it's a take take. Ragwort is about my theory. So we reliant on rugby. If you eradicate ragwort, you eradicate that muffin, you eradicate the raptor of that moth, and the whole food chain breaks down. So it's it's a huge responsibility, isn't it? But we've not had to do any region. We've just been past beautiful already. Very pretty. Lucky that you a testament to your dad that stood firm you in the 50s and said I'm not making silage grass that he he was actually but it wasn't a, you know, peasant farming and still making hay. You know, you should be doing 3 or 4 cuts of silage here. And he said, no, I'm right. I like my nature, I like my birds, and I like the flowers in my meadows. And they've been passed to me to look after. And he gets the best customers. Love now that we really are nature led and we do look after the soil. Yeah, but it is absolute testament to you that you know who was handed that and told you look after those meadows and you stood firm and kept his word. To me. It was the last thing he told me last night when he was going to bed. I looked after those my do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was about an hour before he shouted for a brandy. Yeah, not a bit of balance. Yeah, I like that though, because actually, you know, if you think about the 50s, that was that postwar era where actually everybody was being really hammered with, you know, getting that produce more, produce more, produce more. And the problem is you live from an acre of land. There's only so much you can produce naturally. Yeah, yeah, I said naturally. You know, I'm not saying that silage cross is unnatural, but it's a process that doesn't allow for other things to be to be there. And it doesn't always sit comfortably hand in hand with the ground nesting birds. Yeah. you know, we got the curlew back on the red list, you know, that's that's that's shocking. The UK is responsible for 30% of, you know, global curlew population. And here it is, you know, severely endangered. And you know, the next step is extinction, which is, you know, I, I believe we've got so much wrong, you know, in terms of, habitat loss and, species going extinct in the UK alone. you know, we're in the some of the top ten in the world for, for getting it wrong, you know, that's. Yeah, that's not anything really to be proud of. So it's just nice to try and promote that. Yeah. There are other ways we can we can still do it. And I know the argument was, how are we going to feed everyone how we can feed everyone, but we need to look at our diet a bit more, vary our diet. And I think we've diet. We've talked about ultra processed foods before and before we start talking here and, it is very true that, you know, you can keep it very natural if you if you try, but you need to eat a lot more of other things. I'm not going to use the, the, the plant based argument because I don't think that washes at all. but I do think we do need to process. You look at proteins from pulses and beans as well as meat as well as dairy. because that broadens our diet. You know, we never grew up so well. I mean, I grew up eating offal because that's all we could afford. but we never used to eat meat three times a day, seven days a week. Yeah. You know, it was a luxury. and, perhaps we should be rearing, you know, better, better meats and paying more for them, and eating less of them. Maybe it's also a kind of societal value of food, isn't it? You know, we've that's what we've shifted away from as well and probably maybe, somehow quite enforced to do that. Yes. Yeah. It's, it's, the whole situation, isn't it. So actually it's a tweak in all areas. Yeah. Household budgets and other household budgets. are being hammered from every corner from television packages. that's by our phones, you name it. Yeah. and the food budget is the one that often gets sort of pushed and squeezed the most in the world would just be. I think that's the most important thing that you're in a health. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, you can see that from our sales obviously in Covid online shop. Yeah. Our sales went through the roof. Yeah. But they're still growing and we're not in Covid anymore. So people are understanding good health far more. Well we've managed to manage to sort of a healthy 81% return customer base online, which which is absolutely fantastic. So we're obviously doing something right. Yeah. and it's nice to see you too, when you're gaining traction and more customers, they are also returning. and I think that's, that's testament to your understanding, you figures and blessed Matt, analyzing everything that goes on on the back end of that website, hot mapping it to see why our customers going cold there and tweaking it and changing it. but yeah, who thought you two years ago would talk about hot mapping? Wouldn't even though I'm not the most hot mapping, but that's so used to be used to you in a butcher's shop at one in the morning, making sausages for maybe strapped. It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I like the idea though obviously, you know, you have diversified to put money back into the farm. However, you've done it in a way that you can actually still retain what you're passionate about, which is, yeah, this land, you know, we can see it all around us. So it's very evident that this is all part of the same jigsaw page. Where else? I mean, I we sort of this was realized this segment where we're talking to the group show guys, and when they summed it up in two and a bit acres, it's supporting 26, 27 members of staff now. Yeah. That's massive. Yeah, yeah. I thought yes. And growing. You know, I would imagine by the time we actually finished fully staff in the restaurant we'll be sort of into the mid 30s. Yeah. Yeah. On a couple of hundred acres. Well yeah that's that's testament to that. A couple of hundred acres or doing something. Right. Yeah. Yeah. and yeah diversification is something we've embraced it was do or die if we, if we can't run that butcher shop with just our little bit of land. So we've got all the farms like us. Yeah. That now suppliers. But they were also looking after the birds. They're also looking after the meadows. Yeah. So it can work. Yeah. It's communal things and I think we've matched 35, small family farms that otherwise taking market price for, you know, great produce, great stock. and it was lovely to have that that first conversation with what do you want for per that per year per lamb. Yeah. and they look at years of said, well what are you going to give me. No no no no where's your profit. Where's you know we're in need to be here picking them up. They've not had to waste the day going to market. Yeah. But for us to pay a, you know, a fair price for it, for them to make a profit, for them to still be there next year, to supply small lambs for that's that's critical in that either it's good market practice. It's not it's not everything about price because it's not either qualities. They're and if we've the retained all the profit centers back here, we can at least, you know, allow that. You know, that family that's that's worked really hard. I'm in no shape. you're doing all the legwork, isn't it? We've been there, we've done it. And so, to not give them a fair price, you know, just felt wrong. So it's it's been it's been interesting, isn't it? But. Yeah, about 35 little family farms, a lot of famous ones, five miles, five miles north of Bognor Regis has a track. Yeah. Back in the day, M25, over to car park. Yeah, it's about an 18 hour day. It's horrendous. But in terms of, you know, diversification can feel quite scary to some, you know. Yes. Change people don't want change to. What do you think is your key kind of success is how have you made this or successful? Is it those relationships in terms of building on local? Is it it's well, it wasn't going out of me, out on me. It's pure stubbornness. I'm sorry. Believing in our product. Yes. And then being told by everyone else that I couldn't do it yes I can, yes yes, yes. Yeah, I think I can add to that the, pick a business model that works for you, that works with your land, that doesn't change what you're doing in your core business. And you know, the people, the only person stopping someone actually diversifying and changing their businesses themselves. Yeah. and I think, and you have to have belief in your product. You have to believe in yourself. And. Yeah, I mean, I go back now 16, 17 years and early days when you're thinking, you know,

we're still at 1: 17:11

00 in the butcher shop making sausages for a market, we've got to leave. We've got milk.

The cows be at the market by 9: 17:16

00 the next day. and it's an hour and a bit away. What are we doing? Yeah, but school is hard at times. I think the the vision was long term. Yeah. And it was. We will get there. You know, we never had the plan to sell online that that wasn't a thing that we started out to do. But it, it was something that we were sort of push towards, by, by someone saying, look, there's a window out there. oh my God, it's a window. It's a massive window. It's it's changed what we did the right, platform, though, was hard. Yes. Yeah. and there's there's. Yeah. And, when we set out, we didn't understand, let's say hot mapping and you have crunching numbers in the back end of website. What I knew is my experience of shopping online was the fewer steps you put to a person being able to check something out, the better it is and the more yourself, because, yeah, hot mapping and they go cold at checkout. I mean, you checkouts wrong. and I get to the point where I got right and not filling in another form. Right. That's it. You know, if I can't solve express checkout with PayPal or whatever, other payment platforms are available. and I think and then I think the last key ingredient is get good staff and look after them. You know, it's a no is huge if you look after them, if you pay them right, if you look after them, you know, don't be the greedy business that says, you know, let's keep all the money in an ivory tower and beat everyone off with a big stick. you've got to share that success. and I think, you know, here in the restaurant, that conversation the other week was, you know, there's people that been in hospitality for ten, 12 plus years that have never been put through any training, any wine training, a personal license. So I find that you're completely odd. You've worked in that industry, so invest in them. Yeah. You pay for some courses, get them on, get that knowledge of wine, you know, and someone's selling, you know, a very good quality bottle of wine. You know, they've got to be able to understand the wine and sell the wine and explain the wine that. Yeah. Staff cuts off key. we've got we've got a happy team. They all get on really well together. It's so lovely to watch. They even go to evening classes and stuff together like little exercise classes. So that means we're happy at work when they hang out. Out of work it is. Yeah. The two distinct sort of the retail. And then the hospitality team. But they gel together as well. It's it's really not to come. I think it's just the nature of the people. We've, we've got, generally, you know, nice, outgoing, happy people. So much time. Just like all the chefs hang out in the butcher shop quite often. Say what we got? What can we. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And it. Yeah, it's lovely to watch. I think that's where the restaurant perhaps differs. And I think Doug has said this that I don't, I don't decide what I'm putting on the menu. I look at what's available. Yeah. So the last couple of weeks from the forage to our menu was, was Saint George's mushrooms. edible flowers, wild garlic still in seasons. Plenty of that. and it's just nice to be able to sort of. Right. That's what seasonal, rhubarb is just going out. So we're just looking to see what seasonal, fruits are going to go in the desert. But I think that's quite a little interlinked, isn't it. Here. Yeah, absolutely. So before we move on to talk about the actual restaurant, if we could just finish off the kind of farming story with, you know, in terms of how farming is moving forwards, obviously, you know, we've got SFI and people's perceptions of how they should be doing things in the industry is also changing. Yeah. are you guys in any schemes here? Environmental. we've gone back into a mid tier scheme. We were in a higher tier scheme. We came out of a oh we have a sorry eight. That's with very less options. Oh yeah. That's right. Yes. Option. Sorry. so yeah we do tend to run with stewardship schemes. I'm more excited about what Janet Hughes has done with SFI. I've just his tweet from, this morning saying, you know, and I think let's see comments along the line of, not not not too bad. Not too shabby. What you've done there, Janet, she said was perhaps the closest, closest. I'll get to a couple of them from afar, but I think she's pushed it in the right direction because, Defra needed that. It needed that sort of shake up of your. Not everything is black and white and there are gray areas, and you've got to allow for those gray hairs was, you know, if it didn't fit, it didn't fit. And and I like the idea of the fit, all of the recycled money because that was handed to local OMB that knew all the areas needed new. We've got a wider issue in this area. So they spent a lot of time on hate on projects and wider projects, and it's not so much the same crew deciding what works on on Dorset Chalk, you know, also works on K schools, Neolithic boulder clay, you know, because they're completely different soils and completely different needs. So I think it's encouraging that we're seeing that that sort of change come through. how it will work out. I don't know that, the early signs are encouraging, I think personally. And, just to wrap up on, like, numbers, what, what numbers even in, in terms of, like, the dairy side. So we're just taking that back up, aren't we, to about 85 going through milking, which is where. Yeah, we did drop it down to about 60. because it was just too much for me. Well, endless. Twice a day, every day. Yeah. Without ten days. No, ten years without a day off. Yeah, yeah. It was, you know, trying to juggle all the bits of the farm at that point and I had to drop it down because I just didn't see anything else but the inside of the milk. And then the bottling room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got some help to me. So we've, we've we've got someone in the Amy's coming in, been trained up and that's taken a lot of pressure off Emma. So that means we can just push the numbers back up to about 85. which is about right for what we've got and what we can harvest in terms of forage. lambs, which is, which we're running a few use, but not not as many as we used to. because we tend to buy in these 35 farm store lambs. Yeah, 100 to about 120 on at the minute that we're just finishing that we bought enough for the farms. Finished them here. Yeah. pigs got about 200 on at the minute. Yeah, yeah. Not enough. Yeah. We've normally got about 400 to about 500 now rearing them for Christmas. Yeah. and organic seed. What you said the word. Yeah. Yeah. Organic food price for pigs has gone through the roof and everyone's the issue. The issue is there isn't enough organic pork in the UK. So where we buy anything, anything, any size, any flavor, because, you know, we know from rear it to, to, to to a standard that, you know, we want, but, it's trying to encourage people to, you know, even to keep a couple of sales. We the organic would be an issue to whatever progeny they produce with with would take them. and that that's been really difficult. I think that we still got Helen Browning is probably UK's largest organic pork producing supplier. there's 1 or 2 other, organic pig companies that. Yeah, 1 or 2 others that they're still doing. But, the smaller producers that were producing, you know, a handful takes a year, a few and far between now. So, yeah, still got a few, but not enough. so let's talk about this wonderful building behind us. You were talking before about having that long term vision. You know, if you all think about diversification for you, it's happened in these steps. pardon the pun, but made you organically grow. Yes it has. Yeah. Has has this. So eight years girl has this always been the vision. There was always a desire. Wasn't there to do something to put food from the farm on a plate, on the farm? At the outset that was always a yeah. Wouldn't it be nice? it was on the wish list, wasn't it? It wasn't a farm, some part of the business plan or the diversification plan, but which come back from farmers market with a lamb shoulder. Yeah. And it wasn't going to last to the next farmers market, so. Well, you could maybe cook it and serve it here. Yeah. Wouldn't that be nice. Yeah. I think yeah. When, when we sort of set out and started looking at actually seriously planning the building, again, it was the very simple model that evolved in that we, we knew we had, single phase electric coming in, so we didn't have enough. Yeah, to run it. So it was going to have to be off grid or powered by some other means. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's an antiquated, single phase you grid supply and, struggling with electricity. So there was literally just about to signing off, 231kW of solar panels to add to the wind turbine and the other solar arrays we've got. But, that will take us effectively off grid and we're going to we're going to join an energy exchange where you do you bank energy, you don't sell a surplus back to the grid. You bank it with the grid and then you draw it back when you need it, which is cheaper than the battery. Yeah. probably safer the battery as well. Some of the horror stories you hear about them. But, that that seems to be a really, you know, good way off the grid. Demand it, use it. And, you know, when in winter, perhaps when they're not producing as much. Yeah. we'll, we'll draw that back. So, I think that side of the business, it just had to happen. because we can't, we can't, can't switch another light on without something going pop. it's really we're down to have you see that Apollo 13, where they still restarting the Lem? And, you know, it's not literally every day that we switch off work. so that will take you, though, when when the process is finished, you will be the only off grid that we know. Yes, that we know of a food restaurant in the country. Yes. Yeah, yeah. There, like burger shacks and stuff on beaches everywhere, off grid because of cooking onboard. But they don't, they don't make their own electricity. So yes. Yeah, yeah. And I think the it is a restaurant, the dishes that Doug and Luke and the kitchen team, create, are just stunning. They are absolutely, you know, different take on brunch, which is, proven a really popular service. and it's great to, you know, to be put in, ribeye from the farm on a plate, you know, that served to someone wants it and is from, pork with, wild garlic, from down the river, from just across the the way there. Really. It's it just it tells that lovely story. yes. The chip glasses will change as the garlic goes out of season. Will look at an alternative of, foraged. But, we're very lucky. We've got a lovely chap from. He's got a thing called edible leads, but he, Craig comes in and forages and it turns out with a basket full of Saint George's mushrooms in the closest. Got a secret. Won't tell you what he's gotten from, you know, but he ends up with. And that's the main thing. and that's that's beautiful. You turn up the, so the garlic, the flower heads before they open. Just picked and pickled. Yeah. They're amazing. Absolutely amazing. It's nice not to think that, you know, you actually might be able to change the perception of people who come here. Might change their perception of how, you know, how they can actually cook. I, I hope so, I hope so dishes inspire people to do the to cook. You know, because let's face it, there are many dishes that have been or even Rob's tried to recreate some. Yeah, yeah, I think it does inspire. If you can have something that you haven't had elsewhere and you think, well, that was exceptional. we did that time limit beach shack in Dorset with that, that pickled mackerel. And we've tried to recreate that, that failed miserably. We've tried a couple of times and. Yeah, I think it just inspires you to do something, get back in the kitchen and cook. I mean, Covid relief. One thing came out of Covid that was positive is people fell in love with cooking again. and cooking unusual things. I think, you know, we still are flabbergasted at the sort of top ten sellers. There'll always be ox liver in their tail bones, milk, you know, raw milk. performance moments from the show. yeah, yeah. And it's just to see that sort of, you know, people are cooking and they're understanding nutrient dense meats, their understanding, and, you know, organ meats. we're bringing some of that across into here, which is fantastic is, yeah. Just nice to be able to put something out there. it's like the the lamb fagots that, you know, everyone, everyone thinks of fucking. Oh, God. It's got long in it and it's got they're amazing. Yeah. So, you know, there's nothing wrong with a really good fagot. And that was just a a piece of a lamb dish. It's a fagot. It was a bit of a confit shoulder and lamb fat potatoes and yeah, it was just a celebration of lamb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But to be able to bring that in and start using, the lesser known cuts of a duck said, etcetera, which is really nice to be able to use the lesser known ingredients or the lesser eaten ingredients and put them into a dish and get to say, I'm going to eat that again. You know, I've never wanted fagots because it's got all that off with it. It's got that, oh yeah, I can't eat that. but yeah, I think it's, I find this really interesting just on a personal level in terms of, you know, so you look at farming and then you look at what you're doing with the food, you know, we'll look at fertilizer prices. But in terms of, you know, going back to like a milk system, like I said before about just, you know, the perception of how perhaps people are farming is changing and that they are going to have to change. Yeah. And then, you know, you look at what you say about offal being used or different cuts of meat. And if you go on social media, you know, the, the health market in terms of connecting the health market to, to farmers, etc., there's a huge these are the gaps. These are the gaps I was talking about in our diet is use every part of the animal. You know. And like I said you shouldn't necessarily. Yeah it's you. Yes. It's absolutely nose to tail eating the same point I was reading again this morning about, bison. So how do you get time to read so much? About bison and how, herd of 200 bison can can, store, you know, create storage for 2 million tonnes of CO2. but the boss is always against cattle, is the bison is the hero, and the cattle is not. And we've got to change the exceptions. Usually well managed cattle and grazed cattle really, really are good for the environment. And we've got to get away from this, the plant based agenda that is, that is trying to sort of a sink, you know, meat proteins, I mean, what else could be going on your grass? Your grass is about it, isn't it? You can grow grass really well and convert that to protein, but, it's really interesting that, that doing a trial, I think it's Romania where they've repopulated. bison. They're in the wild. It's having a massive positive impact on the environment. and I think, you know, well-managed cattle can also do that. And we're back to the single most important thing, for agriculture is soil health. We're ignoring it still. Yeah. To it, to a degree where ignoring it. and we've got to really start focusing on how we can make that soil health, a priority, what we can do to improve it, and how grass animals can really, really improve it if it's managed sensitively. I can we should eat grass. Grass. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, I, I coined this quote so much because it's one of the most interesting interviews I've ever done, but it was with a food critic. Joanna Blythman. Oh, yeah. Yeah. later on, well, she said something interesting a few years ago when we were talking about, kind of the, you know, if you look at different populations, you look at Japan or the, the country, there's a place in Japan where it's like the most healthiest communities in the world, okay. Because they eat, a specific type of food that is only grown in their area because it can only be grown in that area. Yeah. And then the idea of eating what the land around you produces, you know, what we eat up here is going to be different. yeah. You know, because a lot of different down in other parts of the country, obviously, you know, I'm, I'm not saying that's how we should know. No, but the idea is things are these things are location specific. You look at either honey, the nearer to you the honey you know is harvested, the better it is. In terms if you're a hay fever sufferer. Yeah, yeah, it can have a really subtle positive effect on. You're not suffering from hay fever, as badly or at all. But, you know, that's that that's a really good example of, where sort of food can be fairly sort of geographically site specific. and probably be healthier that way. Yeah. Yeah. Plus there's the environmental sort of benefit of not sort of shipping food halfway around the world, you know, when we did so milk in a tanker, it get collected here. Oh, so inside dairies and then come back up to get sold in Manchester. It could have just got processed up here for the fish. Yeah. I think this is, this is, it becomes economies of scale to, to grow businesses into, doing really sort of alien, crazy things. But they seem to work financially. So yeah, that's what the board says. Well, if we can do more of that and, that you scratch your head and think, you know, it's done 400 miles to, to to do 30, it's really alien. But, but again, even when we, we approach the corporates, if we were part of almost scope said, look, you know, we've got seven farms on this tanker. surely that's not viable to get that down somewhere. Let's process it here. Let's, let's, you know, maybe get to work with the the co-operative. That was very little, stomach for doing that was there. And it was very helpful. If you want to do it, we'll see if we can support you. And thankfully, I don't know what's happened, but they are now. They are now processing and butter and cheese and that's brilliant. And I think that's a really nice 20 years ago. I wish I had a little easier but it, it I suppose things take time, but it was almost an unviable tanker run of seven small organic farms. that was out on a limb. and yeah, it was. And we did feel it because we get phone calls only. We're not sure if there's a tanker today. What do you mean, there's not sure if there's a thank you for that. It was really sort of, yeah. When you're up there with everything, the bulk of it's down here or wherever you have concentrated elsewhere. thankfully, we don't have those problems anymore. No, no, it's all under your control. Which, you know, it's one thing, obviously, that you can now dictate. Well, you know, you price everything from the from the beginning to the end product. So I want to finish on, you know, you obviously have you know, I have no idea that you ever going to end up here, and mean you've kept something going in like the most wonderful way for your family. So just, you know, both of you, how does it kind of feel to look back on everything that's happened so far? Because you have built this up for him. It's been a long journey. Yeah. It's been really, really hard at times. It's been very hard. we've got good banter between us. We've brought our kids up in the middle of it and the they want to take it on. We have a laugh. crier voice. No, I think you've got shared values and focuses, though, don't you? For the farm itself. We do. And that that's really odd because, yeah, I grew up in London and I never, never in a million years. If you'd told me at 16 when I was going off to join boy service, which was with the Army, it was boys called junior, this boy service. But, you know, you'll end up there doing this. I will set you absolutely potty and crazy. And I've got a military career. That's what I'm going to do. And, But I think we are of one mind, uncannily so, because we know what each other's thinking. And that's really weird. and we'll have the same thoughts, the same worries and the same sort of doubts or positive thoughts. And, I don't know, that sounds a bit better, but it's the way we sort of work, and I think it's what's driven us in terms of making it work. because, you know, we don't always agree, you know, we have other ideas, but we'll find we'll always find a compromise. But on the whole, we might be safe. And that's what we're doing. That's that's a good idea. Yeah. That's that's the next step. Sitting down and designing this together, it's been it's been good fun. I thought we've had to sit in it and go well that would work if we did it like that. And yeah there was no there was no design concept on paper. We didn't pay an architect to come up with a concept we could have done, you know, can we have we sat in the space and as it evolved, as it grew, we then added bits to it and the whole that. That's probably why the build took so long, because, although they let the electrician need this and the electrician, it's, it's because I keep changing things and moving stuff and said, he said, I've done every job here twice. but it, it was I suppose there were there. I have two thoughts on that. Right. Well it's change that. But on the whole it, it evolved and sat out here with a terrace full of people and having a glass of wine and, you know, hearing people enjoy it and hearing people talk about the food and quality. See the reviews. Yeah. It was it's a very proud moment. Is he our daughter? Just come and sit down here because she's seen it grow with us and she's just so proud. Now she'll just sit down and watch one of us. We are very proud of them. But they did go to their awards day the other night. Yes they did. Let's talk about your first wall. We've been open 11 weeks and they got invited to an award ceremony. We were like, it's your thing. Yeah. You go all the time, you go, but yeah, they said they came away with them to tourism innovation. So the, innovators that that stood on the stage got their award, sat down at the table, put the award on the table, switched it. He should remain nameless. It's not an island. No, no, it's, That was a Ripple Valley tourism. A lot. So, you know, it really, really pleased because, you know, to be open 11 weeks and to if you'd have already been nominated and shortlisted and won, you know, it's absolutely great. And we'll just continue to see where that journey takes us. So, I know what that kitchen is capable of. well, perhaps I don't, because every time he puts another dish out, it just blows me away, I think. Where did that level come from? You know how you can make a single carrot tastes so damn good and present it on a plate? You know, it's just a. Yeah, amazing. Absolutely amazing. Great team, brilliant team. It's really good to hear how many in making McNair farm work for them. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite platform and tune in again next week. But that's it for me. Thank you and goodbye.