My name is Mark Lee and I farm here with my wife Jenny.
We are at Park House Organic Farm.
We milk 130 Friesian Jersey cross cows
who are outside on grass for 300 days a year.
And we use the milk to produce our own cheese and butter.
Having sprayed a field
back in 2016 to get rid of some weeds and one of the nozzles
in our sprayer blocking, the field was striped
and we realized the cows are grazing the bits that hadn't been sprayed.
So that was our light bulb moment where we thought,
Well, what are we actually doing by spraying the fields?
And then we took the next step, which was becoming organic
and thinking more about the soils and the grasses
that we grow so that we had full control over what the cows were eating.
We became 100% PFLA certified,
so we just feed the cows pasture because we don't use chemical fertilizer,
we don't spray, we don't use any pesticides.
We're trying to farm with nature rather than battling against it constantly
because it is only ever going to be one winner.
We work closely with our relationship manager at Barclays.
We really value having that personal, traditional touch.
This is a third generation farm, and my dad and my granddad
both banked with Barclays and they have seen many changes on the farm
and they're always there to discuss any changes, any new ideas we have.
When you make fundamental changes to the way that you farm, it comes at a cost.
So we needed to partner up with a bank that we could trust
and a bank that we knew would deliver for us.
We produce cheese and butter
for over 20 different outlets locally within Cumbria.
We're producing and selling milk directly to six coffee shops,
and we're reducing the amount of plastic in that supply chain.
It's really important in terms of a connection for people to understand where their food’s from
and it gives us a great opportunity to explain how we farm and why we farm
and how that product is directly related to where they live.