On the way to finding his own balance, he has found out a few things all farmers will be interested in.

The purpose of going to see him was to find out how an organic dairy farm is faring. Just two weeks ago, the annual report of the Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative (OMSCo) revealed it was losing members because of the high cost of organic feed.

At Goulton Grange, near Potto, North Yorkshire, Mr Cornforth is reasonably content with the way things are, although he adds "the small family farm is still in a dangerous position" – and, like every producer of premium products, he is wondering what impact recession will have on shopping with principles.

Meanwhile, he gets a premium of 8-10p a litre on the market price for standard milk and reckons that just covers the cost of not pushing his cows to the limit.

But he has the advantage of being nearly self-sufficient in feed. He has never fully costed how much he subsidises himself in that way but OMSCo reckons it must be 4p a litre.

He gets 1,000 litres a year each out of the 110 Friesians and Ayrshires in the milking herd he runs, with about 60 followers at any one time.

He used to run 150 including Holsteins, but they do not do so well on a pasture-based diet.

He could get twice as much milk from intensive feeding. But that would probably be for only four lactations and he gets eight or nine out of his animals.

He is 53 and no hippy. He grew up on a small farm in the Esk Valley, 600ft higher than this one, and dreamed of getting into the lowlands. He moved to this one, near Northallerton, in 1990, to run a dairy herd with his brother.

When they split the herd to go their separate ways, he started a broiler business, producing supermarket chicken. It was that experience that started his search for another way.

"It changed my heart," he says. "You had to keep up with the genetics and that meant growing birds which had more weight than their structure could bear. And when things go wrong – heat stress, disease – it's just too upsetting. I had to tell myself I believed in it but deep down, I wasn't happy."

He began looking into organics and started converting the dairy business in 1998. One job was to sow more clover, which grabs nitrogen the natural way.

He spreads 10 tonnes of matured compost from his own sheds on his grazing ground, plus a bit of slurry and silage, instead of 80 tonnes a year of artificial nitrates.

With that and the clover, he gets as much grass and silage out of his pasture as he ever did – which is one of the findings getting interest from other farmers, now manufactured nitrates are up to £350 a tonne.

He acquired 80 acres last year, taking his total holding up to 240.

About 40 acres at a time are devoted to growing oats and triticale, which suit the organic conditions and are turned into feed mixes and whole-crop silage for the off-meadow months.

He also grows some feed beans as part of the rotation but has to buy a bit of protein. He is close to his aim of 95 per cent self-sufficiency and thinks he can get there.

"I'm not sure it would work as well on higher ground but I've been very impressed with the results here," he says.

He is less sure about the advantages of doing without herbicide.

He quite enjoys a few hours a week hand-weeding "dockens", but cannot see the younger generation going back to it. He is also a believer in "fallowing" and said: "If you have a bad infestation, just turn the ground a few times and let the sunshine get at it."

But the ploughing involved burns fuel, and sometimes a bit of chemical assistance would be handy. He wouldn't be unhappy with that kind of "middle way".

Meanwhile, he is reasonably content with the rules laid down by his accreditation body, Organic Farmers & Growers, which he thinks is probably "slightly more farmer-friendly" than the Soil Association.

Mainstream farmers always want to know how organics deals with problems which would normally require a vet. Mr Cornforth says he has reduced his use of antibiotics by at least 50 per cent through natural precautions against mastitis.

Occasional cases of bloat in the cattle, from a clover-rich diet, are eased with a bit of cooking oil in their drinking water. A high-pressure water spray just about does instead of disinfectant, to keep flies off udders during milking. But he can use medicines if he has to, and said: "The welfare of the animals always comes first."

Following the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall campaign against mass-produced chicken, he thought there might be a market for organic broilers and he had 100 fine specimens running free in one of his fields until the night before we met.

The henhouse door fell shut and nobody realised the hens had been shut out, because they huddled behind their shed. A fox ate the heads off 65.

Even before that, Mr Cornforth had worked out they would have to sell at £15-£20 a carcase to pay for their keep. "Maybe at Christmas, when people are looking for something special," he said.

It was just a little experiment and he doubts if there is a future in it. He is well aware that commercial free-range is an entirely different thing.

"On the other hand," he said, "when you see hens living like that, you can't help comparing it with the way they usually do."

He shut his own broiler sheds when avian flu became a cloud on the horizon. He re-opened them to breed pullets, from day-old to point-of-lay, 15,000 at a time, to Freedom Food standards – which means he can sell them into the free-range eggs business. He is "happier" than he was with 22,000 broilers, but wishes he could go further.

Foot and mouth in 2001 drove the farm's biggest diversification. It came close enough to prompt a rethink about the future and Mr Cornforth's wife, Marian, opened a nursery for pre-school children, which now contributes an important share of their income.

She had to train for the job but was fairly well qualified in the first place – they have 10 of their own, aged seven to 25. The eldest, Oliver, works half-time on the family farm and half-time as a contractor elsewhere.

n Supplies from the farm go into Co-op own-brand organic milk and some Yeo Valley products.