7 minute read
DELI OF THE MONTH
NORTH OF ENGLAND
SPECIAL When Marjorie and John Park launched a pick-your-own operation on their farm, branching out into retail was not on their minds. Now, thirty years on and under the guidance of their daughter Alison, the business may be largely unrecognisable, but it still retains the same principles: local food with low miles.
Interview by Tom Dale
Field to fork
THE SUMMER TOURIST season is palpably underway when FFD visits Low Sizergh Barn Farm Shop at the foot of the Lake District National Park. Holidaymakers pack the farm shop’s courtyard sipping cups of take-away tea, licking ice creams, and gathering to watch the daily milking of the cows that produce the same milk that graces the frozen treats and hot drinks the punters are enjoying.
This hyper-local approach – bringing the connection between farm and food to the fore – is something characteristic of the Cumbrian farm shop, and director Alison Park’s approach to farm and food retail.
Low Sizergh Barn – nestled in the heart of the farm which shares its name – owes its origins to Park’s enterprising parents who, she says, rarely failed to capitalise on an opportunity.
After launching pick-your-own strawberries in response to 1980s restrictions on milk production – taking advantage of the farm’s fortuitous position just off the main arterial road into the south Lakes (A591) – John and Marjorie Park found that many of their customers were asking for refreshments and a toilet, and in 1991 Low Sizergh Barn Farm Shop was established in response.
Housed in a characterful converted 17th-century barn, the shop still owes a lot to the passing trade that provided the impetus to launch the retail arm of the operation.
“When we first started, my mum and dad had it in mind that we’d be a seasonal business and it would be about tourists coming to the Lake District,” she says. But over the years, the season has been extended by loyal locals, visitors to the Farm Trail, and a new younger, more healthconscious customer that has been drawn in by Low Sizergh Barn’s vending machine selling its award-winning raw milk.
Currently, though, the tourist trade is roaring – exacerbated by the pingdemicinduced closure of the nearby Sizergh
VITAL STATISTICS
Location: Low Sizergh Barn Farm, Sizergh, Kendal, LA8 8AE Number of lines: 2000 Sales split (retail/café): 65%/35%
Café covers (including outdoor
seating): 110
Average volume of raw milk sold
per day: 50 litres
MUST-STOCKS
Castle’s National Trust café – and Park is taking full advantage.
The operation’s new campsite is packed out with staycationers. “With impeccable timing, we opened it in April last year,” she says. “So that was a bit of a baptism of fire, but it’s worked out alright.”
Inside the shop, the locally focused gifting offer – usually confined to the mezzanine floor – has been ramped up and integrated with the food retail space in a bid to entice the passing customers with Cumbrian curiosities, clothing, and cards. However, there are exceptions to the ‘local’ rule. The shop holds a range of knitwear from Nepal by Pachamama, but its ethical and Fairtrade credentials are sufficiently strong for Park to stock the brand.
Her approach to sourcing isn’t as hard and fast as it may seem from the largely regionally sourced range on display at Low Sizergh Barn. “The local, organic and ethical boxes are not absolute must-ticks. For example, I wanted to stock a load of Kilner products so people could have a go at making their own yoghurt and preserves, but Rayware is a big international brand. However, the product did what I wanted it to do.
The farm itself is organic, too, making the final three in the inaugural Best of Organic Farms category at this year’s Soil Association BOOM Awards, and some of the fresh produce on sale is grown organically on-site through social enterprise Growing Well.
The milk that fills the raw milk vending machine, goes into the ice cream sold on site and into three exclusive cheeses – Kendal Creamy, Kendal Crumbly and Kendal Crumbly with Red Onion – is also from the farm’s herd of dairy cows which can be seen grazing and in the milking parlour daily.
But local is more of a hook than organic – and this shows throughout the shop.
Rabbit, pheasant and duck are sourced from a gamekeeper in nearby Cartmel, fish is delivered every Friday from Morecambe Bay, preserves are supplied by a range of local makers, and porridge oats are milled at a Cumbrian water mill in the north of the county. All have identifiable local supply chains, often sourced from within a 40-mile radius. Even the tea served in the café is a bespoke blend created by a local loose-leaf guru from Hazelmere Tea House in Grangeover-Sands. “There is some desire among the multiples to do what we do – closely identify product with farm – which is often complete fakery,” says Park. “What you see is what you get here and there’s no doubt where it’s come from. That’s a very strong marketable feature for us.”
But it isn’t something that Park does simply for the brand image value. “It’s something we’re absolutely passionate about.”
Kendal Creamy cheese Cumberland Farmhouse (Thornby Moor) Cartmel Village Shop Sticky Toffee Pudding
Side Oven Bakery organic flour Lakeland Brewhouse Damson Beer
Kin Vodka Toffee + Vodka
Hawkshead Relish Westmorland Chutney Hodmedod canned pulses Herb Fed Poultry free range chicken Higginson's of Grange Cumberland sausage Organic vegetables grown on site Low Sizergh Barn pies Low Sizergh Barn frozen ready meals
Nurturing the connection between grower, producer and consumer is a topic that comes up frequently at Low Sizergh Barn. Making a spectacle of the milking parlour, creating a Farm Trail to give visitors an insight into the workings of the farm – passing its cows, vegetable plots, and orchards – and knowing the stories of the local lines on the shelves all help to foster that link.
Communicating these stories is difficult, though, with produce like the shop’s meat offer. All of the lines have great stories, she tells FFD, but without a butcher’s counter, the operation struggles to communicate these with the more transient customers that make up the bulk of the summer trade.
Some of the stock in the wooden fruit and vegetable crates will need no introduction to a minority of the clientele, though. Through Low Sizergh Barn’s Crop for the Shop scheme, green-fingered customers who have a glut of home-grown veg can exchange their crops for a gift card, which can then be redeemed in the farm shop or café.
That said, you can’t control what the customer wants, says Park. Over the years the foodservice and food-to-go trade has grown faster than the “slow food” ingredients on the shelves. “Often, people are not coming here to shop, they’re coming here for that experience, leisure time and a treat. That’s okay, but I do like to push the fact that we’re a farm and we’re about food.”
You can do that in different ways though, she says. For example, the ice cream served in the café is made with the farm’s raw milk by a producer based in nearby Windermere. “We can be in the treat market too – it doesn’t all have to be about milk, cream and butter.”
For Park, fostering these connections isn’t all about the customer. “My dad always says and stresses the importance of this interdependent network,” she says.
The small producers need retailers like Park to be a shop window, and Park needs them to keep her shelves stocked with the right produce. And it isn’t just the producer that rural independent retail is helping sustain, it’s the secondary industries and producers in the supply chain, too.
“I am always flying the flag for the farmer-producer-makers, there is an honesty and integrity to that which is vital to support.
“Our community and our culture and traditions are important,” she adds.
lowsizerghbarn.co.uk
