WHEN the vicar of Askrigg gave a butter-making demonstration in the village hall in the summer, someone in the audience asked what sort of cream she was using: single or double?

“It’s Allen Kirkbride’s cream. That’s all you need to know,” said the Rev Ann Chapman firmly, never missing a beat in the churning and patting and smoothing process.

It didn’t entirely answer the question, but it was an instinctive vote of confidence in the man whom she’d once referred to in a sermon as the embodiment of traditional, rural values: a third-generation farmer whose year-round commitment, unbroken by foul weather (lots of it) and family holidays (not many), helps to bind a community.

We take such service, whether from village farmer, butcher or shopkeeper, for granted, but we shouldn’t, was Dr Chapman’s message. And she’s right. Doorstep milk deliveries now account for just three per cent of retail milk sales in the UK: direct-fromthe- farm sales, like the Kirkbrides’, are so rare they don’t even show in the official statistics.

Meanwhile, since the 1980s, and the deregulation of prices, supermarkets have taken more than 60 per cent of the retail market, forcing down prices while production costs to farmers of feed, fuel, and even bedding, have rocketed.

Add to that the foot-andmouth crisis of 2001 and you had the perfect storm which swept away thousands of small dairy farms, unable to survive the toxic mix of hostile market forces and rural decline.

But the Kirkbrides of Town Head Farm in Askrigg did survive, and indeed thrived.

“We were lucky in that our herd was one of only three in this area not to be hit by footandmouth.

“But it changed farming in the Dales dramatically.

It was a devastating time,” says Allen who, with wife Jenny and son Ian, now farms 250 acres with 60 head of cattle, all Friesian-Holsteins, and all grazed on open pasture in line with the Free Range Dairy code of practice which sets standards for grazing, winter feeding and animal welfare.

With the exception of the surplus that goes to the Wensleydale Creamery, all their milk business is retail, delivering to homes and businesses from Hawes to West Burton in Wensleydale, and all of Swaledale from Muker to Reeth. It demands a massive commitment of time and energy – up at 5am in the summer, 6am in the winter – as they do their own pasteurising, separating, bottling and labelling: but no homogenisation.

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“That’s the big difference between ours and the supermarket or shop-bought product. Our is much creamier and tastes better and of course it’s fresh from the farm,” says Allen.

It even – sometimes – comes in bottles.

“Most of the milk we sell is in plastic cartons because people prefer it that way.

But the glass bottle is much more environmentallyfriendly because it can be used over and over again,”

he says.

Apart from the relentless nature of dairy and sheep farming – they have 300 sheep as well as the cattle – Allen and Jenny are deeply embedded in the rural community they serve. Several times throughout the summer their home and garden is open to the church and charities for barbecues and summer parties, shared with villagers and visitors from far and wide.

Allen has been a member of Askrigg and Low Abbotside parish council for 34 years, and its chairman for the past ten years. Each year he produces a parish report with a run-down of prime and second homes, holiday lets, local businesses and leisure facilities.

“We have a vibrant community here, with shops and pubs and even a part-time post office and our own gym. Tourism is a vital component and we’ve got the Low Mill centre which brings so many children here to enjoy the outdoors.

We run the farm in the way we do to make a living, of course. But we also see it as a valuable part of village life as a whole. You can’t separate the two.”