mother and daughter - Sue and Marjorie - the love and respect they feel for their animals can be deeply felt whilst visiting their farm.

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT
Developing a website to sell speciality food or drink is a complex business and needs careful planning.

This case study should help producers to understand the essential five stage process.

Stage 1
EMAIL

In order to use a website as a business tool you must be able to use email efficiently, the importance of this cannot be over-stressed. So stage one is to get set-up with a good powerful computer, connect it to the internet using a reliable service provider and then learn to send and receive email. Also learn to send and receive emails with attachments such as pictures or word documents.
Once you've been shown how to do it once or twice it is really very easy - the key to sucess is having your computer set-up correctly and this is a job for an experienced professional so get some help at this stage and save loads of aggro!

Dales engineering - still standing after 150 years and a tribute to a byegone age when labour was cheap.

CASE STUDY - FAR ISLE FARM

We plan to feature some of the farmers and producers we have been working with so that visitors to the tasteofengland Website can learn more about the people tasteofengland is putting them in contact with. We'd like our customers to know about the trials and tribulations in farming and how individuals have become successful by concentrating on producing a quality end product that they can be proud of.

Our first case study is that of Far Isle Farm in the Yorkshire Dales, an organic beef and lamb farm since 1940. Thirty years ago the family started their own butcher's shop and now would like to sell meat direct to many more people across the internet. This is where Fair Isle Farm came to tasteofengland for help.

From left - Tracy Frankpitt of tasteofengland, Chris Argent of Far Isle Farm, Louise Page, Sue Argent of Far Isle Farm and Roger Mudditt of tasteofengland weighing up the possibilities in our informal Cullompton offices.

Why Fair Isle farm sees the internet as the future

Chris and Sue Argent, who have been farming all their lives, have not made the decision to get involved in technology lightly. "We have been retailing our meat successfully for thirty years and we know that our customers will travel miles to our butcher's shop just to get it. If we could mail order via the internet, so many more people would have access to our meat."

We know very little about web sites and the internet so we were pleased to find out about tasteofengland which has experience in building web sites for small farmers and producers such as ourselves.Chris and Sue visited the Taste of England offices, met the directors and staff and discussed their plans for an e-commerce web site. (See above) Roger Mudditt (Director) explained that the next step would be a visit to Fair Isle Farm to get a feel for the farming and butcher's businesses and gather information and photographs for the website.

Finding out about the farm
On reaching the farm after many hours of driving across the West Yorkshire Dales to Oxenhope Roger was struck by the beauty of the farm and it surrounding countryside. "We have plenty of pretty farms in Devon but the bleak isolation of harsh hill farms has a drama all of its own."Sue and her mother showed Roger around the farm. Sue explained that the cattle were reared organically and their welfare was a very important aspect of the regime. He was also led up steep hills to see the sheep (Rather a climb for a man who spends many hours slumped in front of a computer). Sue's mother filled in with the history of the farm and described how she and her husband had struggled in the early days.

Chris showed Roger around his butcher's shop and explained what advantages his meat had over that purchased in the average supermarket. Roger was not the only person who was learning from his visit. He spent the evenings showing Sue and Chris different e-commerce sites on the web and taught them how to send and receive e-mail.

Learning to master the sending and receiving of emails at Far Isle Farm.

Plans for the Website
"The Far Isle Farm website is going to be an exceptionally good one.", said Roger. The farm has so much to offer, people will be very interested in reading about the welfare friendly farming methods and seeing pictures of the dramatic landscapes. They also have such a good range of quality products for sale."Farms like Far Isle Farm and farming people like the Argents are naturals for a website. Customers like to know where their food is coming from and that they can trust the people who produce it. All we have to do is facilitate communication between the two parties via the internet.""My trip to Yorkshire was very successful from a business point of view but I particularly enjoyed being boarded, fed and entertained by such a genuine, welcoming family."