There’s one day in the year when every Yorkshire Man and Woman’s heart beats proudly in their chests and one farm receives a very innovative award!
The Tye Trophy is an important prize which gets awarded annually at The Great Yorkshire Show. It recognises the achievements of successful farms who go above and beyond when it comes to environmental sustainability. In true Yorkshire style, this isn’t about paying lip service to green issues, it’s about rewarding those farms doing a ‘proper job’ of setting environmental standards for the future.
Dalefoot Farm, in the Lake District, has been proud to be shortlisted this year. As an upland sheep farm we are also home to Dalefoot Composts and Barker and Bland Peat Bog Restoration Ltd. Our farm, maybe highly diversified but is made up of inter-connected businesses which enhance wildlife habitat, transform wool and bracken into nutrient rich products and sustain the cultural heritage of our location.
At a time when we’re told that successful farming and landscape enrichment are mutually exclusive, Dalefoot Farms challenges this assertion. By harvesting bracken from the fells of Cumbria creating habitat and easier gathering, and buying-in low-grade Herdwick and Swaledale wool from neighbouring farms, we produce a high-quality peat-free compost that enables gardeners to go green with award winning results. Peat-free compost reduces the demand for peat in our domestic horticulture market. This along with our peat bog restoration breaks the cycle of degradation to our U.K. Bogs. By healing and repairing them we create native habitat, increase bio-diversity and have the add-on social benefits of carbon sequestration and flood resilience.
Although we’re just runners-up in this year’s competition, we’re very proud to have been considered for this prize. The worthy winners this year are the Robinson family at Strickley Farm, Kendal, an organic dairy farm. We’ve been delighted to meet with them and hear what they’ve been doing in the North west to increase yields etc.
We’re enjoying our ice-creams and admiring the livestock now... we have to say The Great Yorkshire Show doesn’t fail to impress - All in all a great day out!