MAY 2007 www.countrvliving.co.uk The tale of Yew Tree Farm

Beatrix Potter pioneered the idea of diversification at this quintessential Lakeland farm. Now the Watsons are following in her footsteps to create a thriving success story of their own

How do you help people make the connection between a beautiful landscape and the food it produces? You get them to ‘eat the view’, according to Caroline Watson, who works 600 acres at Yew Tree Farm in the Lake District, with her husband Jon. “Asking people to look at the view, to see the kind of life our animals have, prompts them to start asking questions,” she explains. The couple’s view is a fine one: mountains overlook fells criss-crossed by dry-stone walls and low-lying meadows. In the 1930s it would have been familiar to Beatrix Potter, one of the Lake District’s most passionate defenders. Yew Tree Farm features in Miss Potter, the biopic starring Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. However, Caroline and Jon have a more lasting connection than the excitement surrounding the film: their tearoom is full of the children’s author and illustrator’s furniture, including her grandfather clock, still ticking away.

This is a rather different Potter to the purveyor of singing squirrels and bunnies in blue jackets. By October 1930 she was earning substantial sums from the sale of her books in the US, and joined forces with The National Trust to buy Monk Coniston Estate. Developers planned to turn the land over to forestry, to make a profit: Beatrix, believing this would spell disaster for the landscape, took on the role of land agent, overseeing the management of the estate’s farms. When the tenants pleaded for rent reductions, Beatrix was having none of it; she moved the contents of her parlour into the tearoom at Yew Tree Farm to make a point.

“Many think of farm diversification as a new thing,” Caroline says. “But Beatrix Potter was pioneering it a long time ago. She rolled her sleeves up and told the farmers they couldn’t rely on agriculture alone. The tearoom was a very early example of diversification.”

Caroline and Jon are following her wise words; as well as a tearoom, they also offer bed and breakfast at Yew Tree Farm. Beatrix Potter would recognise the animals that remain the core of farming at Yew Tree — , Cumbria’s traditional breed, and (or ’humbugs’ to the Watsons because of their distinctive white stripes). “We stick to our ethos of not wanting to lose the special character of Yew Tree Farm, making sure that all our projects sit well with the history and feel of the place,” Caroline says. “We also make sure that we remain, first and foremost, farmers: this is a working farm and the diversifications must not become the main focus.”

Caroline sounds as though she was born and bred to lambing from five in the morning, but in fact she trained as a warden with The National Trust. Jon, although he managed farmland in Yorkshire (where Caroline formerly lived with her parents), did not come from a farming family either. When they first met, Caroline would help him out at lambing time. Ironically, it was the foot-and-mouth epidemic that led them to marry and start searching for their own farm to rent, after all the animals under Jon’s care had to be killed.

“The slaughter came after a particularly hard lambing time,” Jon says. “We took all 1,200 sheep and their newborn lambs to the next farm to be killed. All the cattle had to go as well. Looking back, it was the push I needed to get away from being an employee and stop farming the way other people wanted me to farm. It soured the happy memories, making me decide it was time to move on and move to the small, family farm we’d dreamed about.”

Buying a farm was out of the Watsons’ league financially, so their only hope was to be taken on by a landlord. They spotted an advert for a viewing day at Yew Tree Farm, owned by The National Trust, and made a formal application, which involved putting together a business plan and attending an interview — Jon’s first one, ever. The interview panel also visited the farm that Jon was managing. All went well and the Watsons moved into Yew Tree Farm a few months later.

“I’ll never forget the first time Jon and I walked around on our own after moving in,” Caroline remembers. “We kept saying to each other, ‘How can they possibly trust us to look after a place like this?’ We’ll never take being here for granted but it’s amazing how, with all the hard work, you do eventually go a whole day without wondering if it’s all been a dream. We’re very proud of the fact we got here as first-generation farmers; people often find it hard to believe we don’t have agricultural blood running through our veins.”

Their farming policy is simple; they want to prove that you don’t need thousands of acres of wheat and intensively reared to be successful in agriculture. “Although awareness is increasing, people still go to the supermarket and buy food wit bout considering where it came from,” Caroline says passionately. The appalling quality of most mass-produced meat really upsets me. It’s not hung properly, it’s vacuum packed in additives and, not surprisingly, tastes awful.” And this is where her principle of ‘eating the view’ comes in. “Education is vital, empowering people to look further than the piece of meat in front of them: to look at the view and start taking control of what they eat.”

The Watsons slaughter their animals later in life than most farmers and the abattoir is only a 20-minute journey away. “We get up early and they are killed by 5.45am,” Jon says. “No long journeys, no livestock markets. We then get the carcasses back and hang the lamb for ten days and the for four weeks, before I butcher them into the cuts we want. Caroline packs them. We’re often still working in the early hours, hut we’d rather do it this way - every stage done to our standards.”

Nobody could tell from the outside, but the butchery takes place in the prettiest of barns. Along the front runs a spinning gallery, where women would sit under cover to spin the fleeces . The lamb and beef that comes out of this striking building, which dates back to 1740, is sold as Heritage Meats. It is packed into recyclable cardboard hampers which are ingeniously lined with sheep fleece and chill packs to keep it cool.

There is little time for a social life or hobbies. Caroline is busy cultivating an organic vegetable garden to supply the tearoom with fresh produce. At this time of year, Jon is up at 5am to check on the lambing and is lucky if he gets to bed before midnight, tip- toeing over the creaking oak floorboards and dropping the latch of the original 1690 door behind him. Before their daughter lona was born in March 2005, Caroline loved running and mountaineering. She now uses those skills as-a volunteer with Coniston Mountain Rescue Team. Juggling the farm, the tearoom and other commitments is not easy. Sue Daniel from the village of Coniston helps run the tearoom, baking everything fresh each day. “We’d be lost without her,’ Caroline says, with feeling. “If she’s not cooking, she’s minding Iona or helping round up the sheep. Now, that’s multi-tasking!” The tearoom itself is timeless, with its crackling fire, Jacobean table and Cumberland dresser laden with plates. The one oak and one mahogany table are reserved strictly for famished walkers and cyclists rather than motoring hordes: once all the seats are filled, the alternative is a bench outside or walking on along the fell. The smell of fresh scones drifts from the kitchen, mother and daughter Jack Russells Pip and Cass scamper excitedly underfoot, a newborn lamb snoozes in an old log basket. If Beatrix Potter were to reappear, she would not only recognise everything, she would no doubt approve

For details about Heritage Meats, the B&B arid tearoom at Yew Tree Farm. call 01539 441433 or visit www.yewtree-farm.com .

EAT THE VIEW

If farmers don’t receive a fair price for the food they produce then the countryside we know and love will disappear. Hill farms like Yew Tree are particularly under threat — numbers have halved in a decade. Find out more at www.fairtradeforbritishfarmers.co.uk .