Farmer Copleys, Pontefract, recognised as simply the best farm shop

Mrs Copley said they had been delighted to win the accolade, but “there was absolutely no way we thought we were going to win the award because we are always being critical of ourselves”.

She said: "It has always seemed to be one that eludes us through the years, and it means an awful lot to us and the team who work so hard throughout the year and thoroughly deserve the recognition from the judges. The key is we love what we do. This isn’t a diversification project just to make money. This is a real passion for Robert and myself, I call it my third child.”

The couple said farm shops were reaping the rewards of a people becoming more aware of what they are putting in their bodies.

Mrs Copley added: “There’s also the big Jeremy Clarkson effect, where he has been able to communicate to the public how hard farming is. I think we are that fresh experience. Once people have been to the supermarkets and got all their tinned products, people still want to interact with a human being, with fresh food, and then we have the theatre as well and samples and then the products are fantastic, so they can taste the difference.

“At the moment if farm shops are good they are doing well. There’s still appetite for it even though there are cost of living pressures. We are very lucky in Yorkshire because there is a high density of good farm shops, which keeps us all on our toes. Yorkshire has so many varying types of land and land use so we’ve got access to a very good larder on our doorsteps if we don’t produce it ourselves.”

Mrs Copley said the enterprise had developed differently to many farm shops “that do the entertainment, such as feed the animals”. She said: “We’ve decided to go down the soft fruit and vegetables, so the pick your own strawberries, tulips and sunflowers.

“When we’ve got events such as tulip picking and have between 200 and 500 visitors a day they all go in the farm shop and cafe afterwards, so we operate at a very sweet spot. We don’t necessarily need extra staff in for it, which is even more important with the minimum wage and National Insurance. We operate efficiently which means we have the money to reinvest and keep growing.”

She added keeping up to date was also important, so they try to employ people of different ages to get different perspectives as well as sending themselves and staff on fact-finding missions. Mrs Copley said: “Robert and I have just come back from a ten-day tour looking at single farm shops in Australia. We didn’t come back with any major blinding flashes, but it did give us time out of the business to look, talk to other people and hone our products and range.”