Marybelle: the local dairy farm raising the food bar I was expecting an idyll, and I got it. The Strachans, David and his wife, Collette, and their children Katherine and James, run the business between them, with an amiable air of mutual respect. The walls of the hall in their 17th-century farmhouse are laden with rosettes from their award-winning herd. And the neat new dairy, built in 2002, is home to the production of not only the yogurt, made in small 150-litre batches, but also milk, ice cream, crème fraîche and cream. They use milk from their Jerseys and Holsteins, and from seven other nearby farms. But for all the care and apparent prosperity, the path to prize-winning produce has not been straightforward - as David and Katherine explained over lunch at the table in the family farmhouse, which Collette also runs as a b & b. David, wiry, grey-haired and softly spoken, is a third-generation farmer who left school at 14 to work on the land. He had no plans to do anything else - until a series of disasters hit the industry. First came the BSE epidemic in the Nineties. The Strachans had one suspected case, so they endured a heart-rending cull of their cattle. Katherine, who had been handling the animals in competition since she was three years old, took it particularly hard. That's one of my worst memories, having to lead my cow out to be valued, knowing she was just going to be killed. People don't understand how much that hurts a farmer. They think you've just got animals, but they are your livelihood and you get to know them, especially the girls that you show. When something happens to them you're just distraught. The farm had been producing milk to sell to a big processor, which folded in 1996 owing them money, "another kick." David had been working in partnership with his brother, but they decided to go their separate ways, which meant buying him out - more financial outlay. On top of that the Strachans, like all milk producers, had to buy their milk quota, a licence to sell a set amount of milk, which cost a staggering £750,000. Quotas are due to expire in 2015. Then in 1999 came the killer blow. The milk price dropped by 40 per cent. It threw everyone into turmoil. You can't survive on that," recalled David. He was also fed up with a system that "brought milk here from Wales and sent our milk who knows where." Katherine explained the dilemma. We either sold up or invested a lot in the farm and got a lot more cows - but we didn't want to go that route, and we didn't have the money anyway. Or we diversified, so that's what we decided to do. In March 2002 they opened the doors on the new milk processing factory, built during the worst of the foot-and-mouth crisis, which thankfully their part of Suffolk avoided. None the less, the Strachans were wary, and chose a site a few miles away from their farm. This way, if there was an outbreak of foot and mouth we could still carry on doing something, whereas if it was on the farm you'd have to shut your gates completely, as you couldn't have vehicles coming in and out all the time. All the produce is sold locally in East Anglia, as the Strachans believe that transporting milk long distances "bruises" it, affecting the texture badly. No chance of me picking some up in my home town of Bristol then? "It wouldn't be as good," explained Collette. Think what happens when you take a pint of milk and shake it for long enough - it eventually separates into butter and whey. The Strachans started by simply processing milk, but then Collette, who studied dairying at college , looked up a recipe from her old notebooks and started making yogurt in the farmhouse kitchen. Production moved to the dairy just two years ago. Even now, business is not easy and the dairy industry continues to struggle despite the rising price of milk. "We could do with another couple of farms supplying us," said David, tucking into a bowl of his yogurt, "but so many have sold up around here." According to the industry organisation, DairyCo, the number of milk producers in England and Wales has dropped by 214 in the past year alone. Once famed for its dairy produce, Britain now imports milk, which as Katherine pointed out, "is a shame as we have the capability to produce enough." Maybe there is a glimmer of hope in the fact that more and more dairy farmers are taking the initiative and selling their milk, cheese, yogurt and ice cream locally. So most of us should be able to find our own Marybelle-style producer, selling great quality, unfussy food. After all, who needs an after-dinner-mint-flavoured yogurt? Marybelle