It was easily the coldest day of the year when we spent the morning on a Yorkshire farm with fencing contractor, Wilf Standeven.



Wilf grew up in Yorkshire and after a brief stint in London was drawn back to the countryside, where he started working for another fencing contractor. After gaining valuable knowledge and expertise of the fencing industry, he felt there was room in the market for him as well and decided to go it alone, buying all the equipment and setting up his own company, Standeven Fencing, in 2006.


Emma and Wilf

The morning we were there, he was finishing off some electric fencing for a local beef farmer. Luckily for us, most of the hard work had been done, as the posts were already in the ground, and our job was just to help fix the wire to the posts and tighten it. We're not ashamed to say, we did some tea-drinking as well; Wilf seems to be immune to the cold, but even with two pairs of gloves on we could hardly feel our fingers!


Gloved up, but still feeling the cold

Electric fencing is just one of the things he does; he also puts up post and rail, wire stock and metal parkland fences, plus rabbit netting, cattle grids, gates and lots, lots more. For more information, call 07803 499584 or visit his website. There is obviously an abundance of entrepreneurial spirit in his household, as his wife Lizzie has just set up her own interior design company, Standeven Interiors!

Ample Bosom

When Sally and John Robinson were looking for new ways to diversify on their farm near Helmsley, North Yorkshire, Sally came up with the idea of selling bras and lingerie on the internet and, in 1999, she launched the wonderfully-named 'Ample Bosom'. It was certainly one of the more unusual farm diversification projects that we visited on this journey!



Initially, they tried to go down the more traditional B&B and holiday cottage route, but as her two sons got older she was looking for a new challenge. A local, technologically-minded friend was looking on the internet for a bra to get married in and when, as Sally puts it, all she could find was plastic or feathery ones with tassels on or holes in them, she turned to Sally knowing that she was looking for something new to do and suggested she started selling bras on the internet.

Having managed to get six suppliers on board, and with a loan from her local bank manager and an EEC diversification grant, she converted an old cow shed into an office, bought a mailing list and sent out her first paper catalogue in September 1999. A couple of months later and she was ready to launch her first website.

She had spotted a gap in the market for properly fitted, quality bras for normal women of all sizes and, recognising the importance of her repeat customers and how time-consuming bra shopping can be, she kept a history of people's orders so they could reorder the same or similar items without any fuss.

As the popularity of her service has grown, so have her premises, the number of suppliers and staff, and the range of bras and accessories she stocks. She now uses about 30 suppliers, stocks more than 177 different bra sizes and employs around a dozen members of staff, all of whom have to muck in wherever they are needed, whether that is packing in the warehouse or cleaning the holiday cottages. People buy her bras from all over the world and she has attracted an incredible amount of media attention, not only because she is a success story, but also because she is a farmer's wife who has thrived in an industry where many other more likely internet entrepreneurs have failed. This is testament to her hard work, determination and wonderful no-nonsense personality, and she is an inspiration to many.


Lucy, Sally and Emma

For more information, call 01439 798388 or visit the Ample Bosom website.

Watch Sally on Richard & Judy!

SLOE Motion

Those of you who were coming to see us at the CLA Game Fair this year might remember one of our sponsors was Yorkshire-based sloe gin company, SLOEmotion. Since we were in the area, we thought it would be nice to pop in and say hello to Jonathon Curtoys, the owner, and have a quick look round.

This close to Silly Season, they are obviously extremely busy (75-80% of their sales are done in the run-up to Christmas) so we could have timed our visit a little better, but they were all very friendly anyway! Actually, they've had a busy year: they've moved offices, everyone is talking about them and they have just been awarded gold in the Taste of Britain Awardsbest drink category.



With a degree in agriculture and a background in farm business advice and environmental campaigning, Jonathan saw the possibility of creating an ethical but profitable business by harvesting a crop that is essentially free. He had grown up drinking his dad's homemade sloe gin and decided to team up with a friend near Malton and start making the tipple just like his dad's but on a much larger scale.

They started off by using all their own sloes, but have grown so much that they now have to buy a lot in. However, nearly 80% are from North Yorkshire and since the blackthorn bushes must be left to grow in order to harvest the sloes, as Jonathan points out, he is effectively paying farmers to manage their hedgerows in a way that is good for wildlife.

The harvested sloes are frozen to split the skins; traditionally each sloe had to be pricked twelve times with a thorn from the bush, but this new method is a little more practical for large quantities! They are defrosted as and when they are needed and put into large metal tanks.

The gin that is added is sourced from London's last traditional distiller and is added to the tank (two parts sloes to three parts gin) with some sugar. The mixture is then left in the tanks for six to eight weeks (any longer and it gets too sweet and you begin to lose the alcohol) and stirred occasionally with paddles. Jonathan said that it's quite a happy time when they're filling the tanks as it is very easy to get tipsy off the fumes!


Jonathan checking one of the tanks

The liquid is then filtered three times through a piece of muslin (if you do it any more, it starts to lose its taste) before being gravity fed into the bottling area, where it is bottled by hand. The labels are produced by a local printer, but the labelling and packaging process is done by hand on site.


Bottling up

The gin-infused sloes that are left in the tanks are then put through a machine that brushes the flesh from the stones. Said flesh is then used as the centre for their SLOEmotion truffles, or cooked up with onions, apples, raisins and tomatoes to make a delicious chutney. As well as the truffles and chutney, they also make sloe whisky and vodka.

They make around 20,000 litres of sloe gin a year, 5,000 litres of sloe whisky, 3,000 litres of sloe vodka and about 6,000 jars of chutney (we forgot to ask about the chocolates!) and sell their products at shows, online and through a network of around 200 retailers. On average, half their sales are made at shows, a quarter on the internet and a quarter through retailers. The company seems to be going from strength to strength and, having recently bought out his partner, Jonathan has loads of ideas about how to take the business forward.

Even if you make your own sloe gin and baulk at the idea of paying someone else for it, the truffles are absolutely delicious and well worth a try.

If you fancy trying one of Jonathan's sloe gin cocktails - a Sloegasm - come and visit the Muddy Matches stand at next year's CLA Game Fair!

Sloe Motion, Green Farm, Barton-le-Willows, York YO60 7PD
0844 800 1911
info@sloemotion.com
www.sloemotion.com