Farm Of The Week: Ice cream farm scooping the top awards

Faced with continuing low prices and ever-increasing overheads, the sector has faced some very tough times.

In the picturesque environs of Denby Dale, however, Jeremy and Louise Holmes have managed to triumph over the odds.

Alongside 250 acres of grazing land and 120 milking cows, Delph House Farm is home to the Yummy Yorkshire Ice Cream Company.

The diversification consists of a processing centre, a tea room and an ice-cream parlour.

Up and running for less than five years, the business is proving a huge success and continues a proud tradition of self-reliance that Mr Holmes inherited. He is the third generation of his family to farm at Delph House Farm.

The site has been processing and bottling its own milk since the early 1960s, cutting out the middle man. “When we started we were probably milking around 40 cows,” said Mr Holmes.

“The whole process and set-up here involved going on a milk round. We would milk the cows then go out and deliver.”

However, when it came to 2007 the flattening of the dairy market meant that the family needed to look at ways of creating additional revenue.

Mr Holmes said: “The milk and milk processing was taking something of a dip and we were facing a lot of competition from other dairies and processors.

“We knew that this was very much a potential problem so we decided to look at what else we could do.”

He and his wife considered a number of ways of using the milk from their Holstein herd.

After mulling over making cheese or butter, they settled on ice cream.

“We knew we had plenty of excess cream from processing here, so we thought we would have a go,” said Mrs Holmes.

They bought some equipment and began the learning process.

“We tried all sorts of recipes – it did not just come straight away,” Mrs Holmes said.

“We wanted to make it creamy without having that awful fatty taste that you sometimes get. From our initial try-outs, we hit upon our base recipe.

“Whenever friends came we would end up giving them some to take away and try.”

As well as using the milk and cream from the farm’s own herd, the couple combined in flavouring ingredients, sourced from local producers where possible.

Their big break came from an unlikely source when they experimented with making a liquorice flavour. Despite the fact that it is a taste neither particularly cared for, it proved a massive hit with customers.

Last year it took three stars at the Great Taste Awards, organised by the Guild of Fine Foods, and also won plaudits at the Great Yorkshire Show. And other adventurous flavours have also gone down well.

Yummy Yorkshire’s chilli jam ice cream was a finalist in the 2011 Yorkshire Post/York Food Festival Taste Yorkshire Awards and a beetroot ice cream got a gold star in the Great Taste Awards – and there are a dozen more honours listed on the business website at www.yorkshiremilk.co.uk/

The sales operation started literally at the farm gate. Customers would drive in and take their pick from three large chest freezers on the site.

In Mr Holmes’s words: “We had one row of strawberry, one row of vanilla, etc. It was very basic.

“People would literally have to stop us working on the farm to buy some. Sometimes they wouldn’t be able to find us, or we would get calls asking if we had any in stock.”

Taking two old redundant buildings on the site, they set about making an ice cream parlour.

Formerly used for housing dogs and old ice cream containers, the buildings were given a new roof, the walls were sandblasted and today it is a charming and rustic place to enjoy a cup of coffee and a piece of cake as well as ice cream.

The couple say they were fortunate in the respect that they had a core customer base from the milk processing and retailing side of the business.

And, despite having launched at the start of one of the wettest summers on record, followed by two years of economic decline, Yummy Yorkshire has beaten the odds and seen its sales rise year on year.

The couple say the wholesale ice cream business they run has grown tremendously over the past 12 months with significant account wins including the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and a National Trust account.

They also supply the Cedar Court Hotel group, restaurants, farm shops, delis, coffee shops and award-winning gastro pubs.

In all, ice cream production increased by 160 per cent between 2008/09 and 2009/10 to over 20,000 litres per year.

The figure increased again by 36 per cent last year, to over 27,500 litres.

Today the company employs five full-time and six part-time staff, having increased its headcount by four in the past 12 months.

Mr Holmes said the challenge was to make sure the business ran alongside the traditional farming operation as smoothly as possible.

He said: “We have three businesses here – the farm, the processing and the ice cream making.”

One reason they have managed, he said, was being lucky with staff. Another was being already used to running processing alongside the farming ...

“It was something that was instilled in me from my father.

“He always said we should be the ones selling the product, rather than letting someone else do it for us.

“He would say they are our cows and we are milking them, why let someone else sell it and get the profit?”