Diversification in farming is nothing new, but it's gone from being desirable to essential for many farms across the country.
As a largely agricultural county, farms in Gloucestershire have been leading the way in terms of trying to find ways of keeping their businesses alive in an unusual manner.
From a gelato parlour to a pick-your-own business, we've spoken to two Gloucestershire farming families who are adding new and unconventional money-making aspects to their lives.
Wholly Gelato
Farms that diversify successfully are often able to put their existing assets to use – which is exactly what Jenni Hobbs and her family have done on their working dairy farm in Elmore.
The Hobbs’ have been farming land in Elmore for almost half a century, starting off as a mixed farm but always specialising in dairy farming.
Their milk was sold to Müller, before the family began to sell their produce to a more local firm – Cotteswold Dairy.
However, as anyone in the industry will know, dairy farming reaps poor profits.
“During the last twenty years, the milk prices have been shocking – they mostly have been very low,” Jenni explained.
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With this in mind, it is no surprise that the Hobbs’ decided to branch out into offering a new dairy product that would attract Gloucestershire foodies to their farm.
“My daughter Emily and I were always talking about diversifying, and how we could make things better and ice-cream was one of our ideas.”
Ice-cream tends to be made with a mix of milk, cream, egg yolks, and sugar. Sometimes, ice-cream can only contain 10 per cent milk.
Gelato is different – Jenni tells us that the Wholly Gelato produced on the farm contains 80 per cent fresh milk and cream, and not much else.
Not only does this mean that the gelato is less calorific than regular ice-cream, but the team also go to every length to ensure that their delicious Italian-style dessert has the lowest food miles possible.
Local sourcing
“We’re very lucky that we’ve got a new fruit farm in the village, so we now buy a lot of our fruit from just down the road,” Jenni explains.
“We even do fruit swaps with our neighbours – we ask them for their figs in exchange for gelato. It really is about low food miles and low carbon footprint. Basically, just people buying local food – it’s really important. It helps everybody.”
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In July 2018, the family opened the doors to its small, rustic on-site shop, selling Italian-style ice-cream.
Just over a year later, their quirky and original gelato flavours have won them an avid cult following and a Cotswold Life Food and Drink Award.
If you want to pay a visit, but are aware of how harmful plastic-based packaging can be, then you do not need to fret. The eco-conscious company have not used plastic tubs at all since their start-up, with biodegradable cardboard tubs filling the freezers of devoted customers.
“Our spoons have always been biodegradable too.” Jenni reassures, “We’ve even gone one better – we now use corn starch spoons which can go in the compost bin with the fruit.”
Although the Hobbs’ diversification of their dairy farm has brought in many more customers, profits were not the main drive when the idea came to fruition.
“The whole point of this was education; we want to educate people on where their food comes from. We want to employ local people, and we want to utilise our local economy and businesses,” Jenni says.
With the shop being on-site, excited customers, who travel from all over Gloucestershire, are able to see the cows that produced the milk used to produce the milk for the gelato.
When asked about diversifying in the future, Jenni was very enthusiastic. “Not in the future – now!”
The Hobbs’ have ordered something that will revolutionise the visiting experience for the masses who routinely flock to the dairy farm on warm summer days and on weekends; a milk vending machine.
This smart concept involves customers bringing their own milk bottles from home or buying them from the farm, filling them up, washing them at home once they have been used, and then bringing them back to be refilled.
In the future, Jenni and Emily are hoping to diversify further by offering milkshakes at the farmyard and making an education corner to school visitors on the process involved in making their award-winning gelato.
Hayles Fruit Farm
Martin Harrell has seen his fruit farm flower from selling apples and pears out of the garage, into a bountiful pasture with a successful farm shop.
Hayles Fruit Farm in Winchcombe was one of many planted in 1880 by Lord Sudeley, and is the last fruit farm standing in the area.
The farm, which is nestled amongst the Cotswold Way, is home to around one hundred acres of various types of typical British fruit, including strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, apples and pears. All of these can be picked by members of the public.
However, although the beautiful farm attracts large numbers of families with young children now, company director Martin says that business on the farm has not always been fruitful.
In the 1920 and 30s the farm was thriving and the fruit was taken down to the local railway where it was transported across the country.
“Then things started to get tighter and tighter.” Martin explains.
“When we joined the Common Market in the seventies, pressures started to grow in terms of climate, and production costs and techniques.”
When Britain decided to import more fruit from Europe, the price of British fruit began to drop, meaning fruit farmers suffered.
In the mid-seventies, the building that the farm shop now inhabits was used to sell apples and pears, with a sign on the road to let people know.
“This was way before supermarkets and 24-hour shopping, so that’s how the farm shop started really.”
Fruit was sold seasonally, with apples being sold in the autumn and blackcurrants in the summer. Some of these went to wholesale, and some even went to Ribena.
However, Ribena started to tighten its contracts, and the farm struggled to sell its blackcurrants. With this, Hayles Fruit Farm was forced to diversify.
“In the late seventies and early eighties, we planted strawberries and raspberries. This was the start of our Pick-Your-Own venture.” Martin says.
Although Pick-Your-Own (PYO) struggled a bit in the nineties, the strawberries that were being grown could be sold as wholesale to some of the farm’s local customers, including Budgens in Winchcombe.
Today, with an urge to buy more local produce to tackle our carbon footprints, more families bring their children to the PYO experience.
In the early nineties, the farm opened a café to accompany the farm shop and PYO activities, further enhancing the fruit-picking experience – the juices in the tearooms are pressed straight from the apple trees on the farm.
In terms of environmental sustainability, the farm has a low impact. All of the produce in the shop is either grown and produced on the farm, or bought from other companies in the region, such as the Three Choirs Vineyard. All punnets in the shop are packaged in a compostable container with a kerbside recyclable lid.
In an attempt to further utilise the natural assets of the farm, the coarse fishing lake was opened a few years ago. This, combined with the hugely successful campsite, attracts outdoorsy people from all over the country to come and stay on the farm.
“The campsite is something that has truly been a massive success, it has been fantastic,” Martin explains.
“I think what’s helped the campsite is the fact that it’s in a nice spot, and is very quiet because we are a mile off the main road. Also, the Cotswold Way is now a national trail, so we get a lot of people coming into this area to go walking and cycling.”
Martin adds that they have diversified so much from the original farm, that the only thing that they really need to diversify further is the fruit, which Martin says is “letting them down a bit”.