ONE of the region’s most successful farm shops is celebrating its tenth anniversary.

Mainsgill Farm Shop and Tea Rooms stands four miles west of Scotch Corner beside the A66.

It has won numerous awards and accolades, has many loyal local customers and a roaring passing trade.

What started with four varieties of sausages made on a kitchen table has turned into a thriving business employing 45 mostly full-time staff, including six butchers and four bakers.

But it was only grim determination that got Andrew and Maria Henshaw through the early days.

They moved to the-then 57-acre farm from Lancashire in 1995 to fatten pigs and rear beef cattle and dairy replacements.

BSE hit the dairy sector and Blue Ear the pig sector. “But we were not going to fail and go back to Lancashire,”

said Mrs Henshaw.

To earn extra income, they began making sausages – farmhouse pork, pork and apple, pork and leek and Cumberland – and literally knocked on doors asking people to try them.

They and the beef proved so successful that the couple decided to open a farm shop.

But the builders had only just begun work when the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak swept the country.

Mrs Henshaw said: “It could not have been worse – we carried on building, but kept the public out. By June we just had to open and put bio-security measures in place.”

The rest is history.

The farm has grown to 480 grassland acres with all livestock supplying the farm shop and seven farmers markets they attend.