Christmas Comes Early For Country Fare Bakery
06/12/05

Christmas has arrived early for a chef from Kirkby Stephen - in fact Dianne Halliday and her hardworking team at Country Fare have been baking home made luxury Christmas cakes ever since January.

Festive business is booming this year for the farmhouse bakery. They are currently selling a staggering collection of Christmas confectionery and have produced hundreds of hand decorated cakes, including versions with and without nuts, cakes with whisky, glace cherry cakes and gluten free varieties, in sizes to suit every budget from individual portions to super-sized family extravaganzas serving up to 40 people.

The tempting yuletide range also includes Christmas puddings, as well as the 500 mince pies per day that Dianne and her staff are still busy baking.

Country Fare is a real culinary success story, which has gone from strength to strength since it began in Dianne's own kitchen in 1999. Business boomed and in 2002 Dianne was awarded a Defra Rural Enterprise Scheme (RES) grant to expand into a converted barn, and was soon employing eight full time staff from local farming families.

The barn, which is a traditional farm building on the family's working sheep farm, also benefited from an Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESA) grant to help towards the costs of re-roofing, using traditional materials such as flag slates and a wooden A frame.

The following year, Dianne was ready to expand again and was awarded a further RES grant towards the costs of a packing and wrapping room, a staff room, toilets and parking. She now employs ten staff, all from local farming families, and ropes husband David in at the weekends when she needs an extra pair of hands.

Country Fare now supplies ASDA and Booths supermarkets, as well as selling their range through several local shops and farmers' markets. The non-festive range includes butter, walnut and ginger shortbreads, traybakes, caramel slices, tiffin, scones, Madeira cake, date and walnut cake and traditional Grasmere gingerbread made to Dianne's grandmother's recipe.

They also ring the changes in January and February and make preserves such as marmalade and pickled damsons while the majority of the nation is on a diet after consuming too many Christmas goodies.

Despite the venture's huge success, with Dianne even being named one of Rick Stein's 'Food Heroes' on national television, Country Fare still remains very much a Cumbrian business. They use top quality local suppliers for the ingredients with eggs from nearby Levens, Cumbrian milk and flour from Carr's Flour mill in Silloth.

Dianne says:

"I buy most the ingredients locally, employ local staff and sell through a lot of small outlets as well as supermarkets. My staff work incredibly hard and we are delighted by how successful the business has been.

"We still have a working farm, but with farm incomes on the decline Country Fare has been a wonderful opportunity to diversify and we are delighted by the success. We have made literally hundreds of Christmas cakes this year and they have been selling extremely well - although I don't know if I will even feel like eating one myself on December 25th after spending all year surrounded by them!"

Tracy MacDonald, an adviser from Defra's Rural Development Service in the North West, said:

"Country Fare is an excellent example of a farming family using RES to diversify and make their business sustainable by adapting to changing markets. The venture is also supporting the local community both in terms of providing employment and by using local farms to source quality raw ingredients such as eggs and milk for a fair price.

"Since the initial grant was awarded Dianne has made a huge success of the business, and the demand for her cakes at Christmas and all year round illustrates the popularity and quality of local Cumbrian produce. Country Fare is an asset to the rural economy."

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