Inside Yorkshire

Welcome to the Inside Yorkshire Podcast, a podcast full of stories and tales from the people of Yorkshire. In todays episode Susan talks to Janet Phillips about how Fleece started and explores what makes it such a special place showcasing artists work.

Key Takeaways:

• A cooperative, operating as a not for profit business, showcasing work from a variety of talented dales designers,makers and artists.
  
  • The selection process involves all 5 founder members deciding which works to display 
  • Several of them had previous experience of working in cooperatives and bring their best ideas into running Fleece.
  • In order to keep costs down they all pull together taking turns to run the shop. 
• The Threshing Barn and a Hong Kong gift distribution business
  • Janet touches upon her previous extensive business success running an international distribution centre and establishing a craft centre in a converted threshing barn
  • We also hear what decided her to move to Yorkshire

Valuable Resources:

https://www.fleece.org.uk

Fleece, Literary Institute, Reeth DL11 6TE

Telephone: 01748 884010

https://www.threshingbarn.com

The Threshing Barn, Reeth Dales Centre

Telephone:01748 884025

About the Host:

Susan has been living in Yorkshire for over 30 years. She is passionate about the county she has adopted as her home and she never ceases to be amazed at the wealth of talent ‘Inside Yorkshire' and the tales that people have to tell.

About the Guest:

Janet Phillips is one of the 5 founding members of the Fleece cooperative. She has extensive business experience having run a successful international gift distribution company in Hong Kong and also a craft centre in a converted threshing barn. This led to the naming of her current business in Reeth Dales Centre.

Contact Method for Inside Yorkshire 

Susan Baty-Symes

• www.insideyorkshire.co.uk
• [email protected]

This show was brought to you by Progressive Media

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Inside Yorkshire Podcast, a podcast full of stories and tales from the people of Yorkshire. On today's episode, Susan talks to Andy Swinscoe about his passion for making cheese and doing it in a way that supports local, sustainable farming. He talks about the awards that The Courtyard Dairy has won and says that they've won the awards because he loves cheese so much and gets it from farmers who love it just as much as he does.

Key Takeaways:

• Andy and his wife Kathy run The Courtyard Dairy. Andy has a long history working in the cheese industry.
  • He gained a lot of knowledge and experience working with cheese in France but was very interested in coming back home and tapping into the local potential for cheesemaking.
  • He and his wife then started the business from scratch as a two-person business for two years. They championed small producers and rural farms.
• Even in the early days, The Courtyard Dairy began winning awards.
  • Within their first year, Andy won Cheesemonger of the Year in the World Cheese Awards. This gained them a lot of national press and helped grow the business.
  • This past year, they won the Countryside Alliance Rural Oscars, which is awarded to businesses that support rural enterprise and rural communities.
  • They've also won the British Cheese Awards, the Farm, Shop, and Deli Awards, and been listed as one of the best cheese shops in not just the UK, but the world.
• Andy views the cheese business as a way to support small, sustainable family farms and keep the rural economy going.
  • Andy says the product is good and wins awards because it's made on such a small scale with care and attention to detail.
  • Proper farmhouse cheese is an expression of where it's made.
  • But it can be hard when the farmers have to deal with a low yield season.
  • Andy says their ethos is always going to be farmhouse and traditional first.
• Along with the cheese shop, The Courtyard Dairy also has a cheese museum.
  • Andy thinks it's important not to let people get too far divorced from where their food comes from and wants to show people the local history of cheese and cheese-making, how it's made today, and the differences between industrial cheese and farmhouse cheese.

Best Moments:

• “In those days, in fine dining, if you ordered a cheeseboard, you'd have cheddar and Stilton from England and everything else was French.”
• “The initial shop was the size of most people's kitchens.”
• “What I like doing is I like selling cheese. I love championing small farmhouse cheesemakers, and that's why we win awards.”
• “It's not just about the cheese for me, it's about jobs and rural economy.”
• “My opinion is that people are so disconnected from their produce and where things are from and how the product is made and we want to not just sell cheese but actually to tell the story of the history of cheese in this area.”

Valuable Resources:

https://www.thecourtyarddairy.co.uk

About the Host:

Susan has been living in Yorkshire for over 30 years. She is passionate about the county she has adopted as her home and she never ceases to be amazed at the wealth of talent ‘Inside Yorkshire' and the tales that people have to tell.

About the Guest:

The Courtyard Dairy is a unique, specialist cheese-shop and cheese-maturer, owned and operated by Andy and Kathy Swinscoe. In 2017, the shop expanded into new premises, and at the same time, a museum telling the history and story of farmhouse cheese, a café serving cheese-based dishes (and, of course, coffee!), and a cheese production room were added, alongside plenty of free on-site parking.  The shop itself has become a renowned destination shop, where regulars and visitors alike enjoy the opportunity to sample and purchase some of the finest cheese to be found in Europe, whilst benefiting from Andy and Kathy's comprehensive and entertaining cheese knowledge.

Contact Method:

Susan Baty-Symes

• insideyorkshire.co.uk
• [email protected]

This show was brought to you by Progressive Media

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Inside Yorkshire Podcast, a podcast full of stories and tales from the people of Yorkshire. On today's episode, Susan talks with Ben Dave about his incredible Yorkshire run, the challenges he faced, and the desire to raise money and awareness for mental health that kept him going even as he faced Yorkshire's formidable terrain.

Key Takeaways:

• Ben Dave circumnavigated Yorkshire on foot, running more than 495 miles in 18 days.

• Prior to this, Ben says he's only been running seriously for three or four years and didn't run his first real marathon until 2016.
• During this challenge, he was essentially running a marathon a day.
• His longest day was 37 miles, his shortest was 13 miles.

• Ben says the hardest part of the journey was tackling all the different types of terrain.

• His route included the tallest mountain in Yorkshire and the highest pub in England - in the same day!
• He would have to run through bogs and marshland, carefully picking his way across the treacherous ground with only a backpack of the bare essentials.
• About half the time he had people running with him, but for much of the run, he was all on his own.

• The aim of the Yorkshire run was to raise awareness and money for CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).

• After struggling through a period of depression that left him feeling isolated, Ben wanted to create a wide platform for telling his story and starting conversations about mental health.
• Over the course of his run, Ben has raised over 26,000 pounds so far for CALM.
• He's already prepping for his next marathon.

Best Moments:

• “The officials' last count was 495.6 miles, I kinda wish I'd found another four miles from somewhere.”

• “I knew it was certainly achievable, from looking at what other people have done.”
• “You sort of quickly learn about the different grasses and the different reeds and where you can't put your foot and where you can.”
• “At the time it felt incredibly lonely and isolating and it kind of felt like I was the only one that was going through it. And I wanted to do something to sort of publicly say that I've been through it because I kind of knew it would help people.”
• “It's only when you open up yourself that you realize that a lot more people have trouble than own up to it, and I think the more of us that can be open about it, the less of a social stigma it is.”

Valuable Resources:

https://www.thecalmzone.net/

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/runningyorkshire/

About the Host:

Susan has been living in Yorkshire for over 30 years. She is passionate about the county she has adopted as her home and she never ceases to be amazed at the wealth of talent ‘Inside Yorkshire' and the tales that people have to tell.

About the Guest:

This young man decided to raise awareness of men's mental health issues by running around the boundary of Yorkshire in an effort to raise funds for mental health charity CALM. Ben is a keen runner, having run several marathons already, but had not taken into consideration the huge variety of terrain that would be involved. He set off on Yorkshire day, 1st August, and ran for 18 days - almost 500 miles in total. This is his story of one man's epic achievement raising funds for a charity dear to his heart.

Contact Method:

Susan Baty-Symes

• www.insideyorkshire.co.uk
• [email protected]

This show was brought to you by Progressive Media

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Inside Yorkshire Podcast, a podcast full of stories and tales from the people of Yorkshire. On today's episode, Susan sits down with Stuart Miller, the landlord of the George and Dragon pub. The pub is community-owned and has won a good deal of awards, as well as national publicity and attention. Stuart and the employees and volunteers who keep the pub and connected shop running are full of passion and community spirit.

Key Takeaways:

• The George and Dragon is the first community-owned pub in Yorkshire
  • After the original pub closed down in 2008 and no one was buying the property, the villagers decided to band together and buy the pub themselves.
  • It opened in 2010, along with a connected shop staffed entirely by volunteers that also includes a small library service.
• The pub has enjoyed great success as it has grown.
  • The Geroge and Dragon won National Pub of the Year in the first year they qualified, and have also won Yorkshire Pub of the Year for three years in a row.
  • The pub has been listed in The Guardian's, “50 Best Places for a Sunday Lunch.”
  • Prince Charles has also paid a visit to the pub.
• Stuart emphasizes a focus on quality and community connection.
  • He's very picky about choosing high-quality beers and having a well-curated selection. He's also working on creating his own microbrewery.
  • It's also important that the staff know the beers well so that they can help explain the different types to customers and steer them towards a beer they'll enjoy.
  • The pub has hosted the village's Beer Cider and Cheese Festival for several years now.
  • People who are interested can still invest in the pub and buy shares although there is a bit of a waiting list now after all of the publicity it has received. 

Best Moments:

• “The villagers got together and decided that it was a shame that the heart of the village wasn't there anymore...and they got together and decided they wanted to buy it as a community.”
• “Yes, I think that is one of the blessings of living around here, the community spirit.”
• “You need to be visible, especially to the community, so we want to be able to have a very welcoming sort of taproom where people can just pop in and try the beers.”

Valuable Resources:

www.georgeanddragonhudswell.co.uk

About the Host:

Susan has been living in Yorkshire for over 30 years. She is passionate about the county she has adopted as her home and she never ceases to be amazed at the wealth of talent ‘Inside Yorkshire' and the tales that people have to tell.

About the Guest:

This week we talk to Stuart Miller, the landlord at the George and Dragon pub. This pub has achieved notoriety for all the right reasons. It is the first community-owned pub and has attracted a lot of publicity as a result. Stuart explains how the pub was reopened in 2010 after funding was raised by locals to form an IPS Cooperative, for the benefit of the community.

Contact Method:

Guest Contact:

[email protected]

Host Contact:

• www.insideyorkshire.co.uk
• [email protected]

This show was brought to you by Progressive Media

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Inside Yorkshire Podcast, a podcast full of stories and tales from the people of Yorkshire. On today's episode, Susan explores the whimsical world of Graculus Sculptures inside artist Michael Kuszs studio. Together they discuss some of his most well-known creations, what inspires him as an artist, and how he ended up with a very chatty “apprentice” named Joe the Crow.

Key Takeaways:

• Michael is the artist behind Graculus Sculptures and works on massive sculptures made of recycled scrap copper and other materials.
  • As a child, Michael was fascinated with two things: taking things apart to learn how they work and watching rooks from a nearby rookery fly through the air.
  • He taught himself how to weld and work with metal over the course of 14 years working at the crash repair department of a garage.
  • He now makes rooks, bats, owls, dragons, spiders, and more.
• Michael's apprentice is a mischievous crow named Joe.
  • Joe was abandoned from his nest as a chick and rescued by a group of children who tried to raise him before Joe was handed off to Michael, who had nursed injured crows before.
  • He's now had Joe for five years and he keeps Michael on his toes, occasionally engaging in mischief like stealing Michael's glasses and hiding them in his nest.
• Some of Michael's sculptures are so massive and intricate that they can take weeks or even months to build.
  • Michael crafted a massive metal tree sculpture for the Richardsons Community Hospital in Barnard Castle that took him over a year to complete.
  • Due to the nature of copper and the other materials he works with, none of Michael's sculptures are copies, every single one is unique.
  • Many of them also have fully articulated and adjustable heads and limbs.

Best Moments:

• “I was absolutely fascinated with how things worked, and I really wanted to know how things were made.”
• “It's been a very interesting experience studying a corvid at very close quarters, and really what I've always seen in them is what you get. They are incredibly mischievous and do have a lot of fun.”
• “I had to learn how to sell my work, and that was a very steep learning curve.”
• “It's almost as if I got my wish, that the rooks that I make that actually fund my being here, are my Graculus.”
• “I've got rooks in Australia, New Zealand, quite a large piece in Singapore, spiders in Barbados, a bat in Moscow, and I recently sent a rook out to California.”

Valuable Resources:

www.graculus.co.uk

About the Host:

Susan has been living in Yorkshire for over 30 years. She is passionate about the county she has adopted as her home and she never ceases to be amazed at the wealth of talent ‘Inside Yorkshire' and the tales that people have to tell.

About the Guest:

Michael is based in the Yorkshire Dales where he creates unique sculptures from recycled materials, mainly copper. He grew up in industrial South Wales, with access to all sorts of old tools and materials, which helped nurture his creativity. His exploration of materials and processes then set solid foundations for his current work.

He identifies with rooks on a personal level, recapturing the essence of childhood. They are gregarious, mischievous and demonstrate a clear sense of freedom and fun, everything he wants his artworks to express. He is aided and abetted, and on occasions hindered, by his mischievous apprentice, “Joe the Crow”!

Contact Method:

Susan Baty-Symes

• www.insideyorkshire.co.uk
• [email protected]

This show was brought to you by Progressive Media

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Inside Yorkshire Podcast, a podcast full of stories and tales from the people of Yorkshire. On today's episode, we talk to Phil Alderson, the Watch Manager at Reeth Fire Station. Phil explains the ins and outs of a retained fire service and how it differs from those in bigger cities.

Phil talks about the many different challenges involved in being on-call 24/7 to not only fight fires but also respond to accidents, and perform rescues with a limited crew of men. At the end of the day though, the only part of the job Phil wishes he didn't have to deal with is the paperwork!

Key Takeaways:

• Reeth Fire Station is different from those in most cities and towns: Instead of having a full-time team, it has a service of retained firefighters.

○      These men are on-call 24/7, 365 days a year, and are required to live within four minutes of the fire station so that they can respond quickly to emergencies.

○      Unlike full-time firemen, who work in regular shifts, retained firemen like Phil have no idea when they might get the call, and they often have to suddenly leave their regular day jobs. (Recent guest Stu Price is also a retained fireman).

• Phil has worked at the fire station for 17 years and is now the Watch Manager:He jokes that he didn't have a choice in the matter and that the men in his family have always been part of the fire service.

○      In order to join, you must pass a fitness test and an aptitude test, followed by two weeks of training.

○      After that, it's “learning on the job,” along with weekend or week-long courses on skills like using a breathing apparatus that have to be done within your first year of service.

○      According to Phil, it takes about two years to get fully competent as a fireman. He says that training is hard, but that he'd prefer it to paperwork any day.

• Working in a large rural area can present unique challenges: Phil and the other firemen don't just fight fires, they also respond to road traffic accidents, animal rescue, flood rescue, and more.

○      It can be difficult finding access to a decent-sized water supply in some areas.

○      Other times, a fire will be far off road and they have to abandon the fire engine and walk miles to get to it and try to beat it out.

○      One of the hardest parts of working as an emergency responder in a small community is how often the emergency might be happening to someone you know.

• Rural fire stations like Reeth are struggling to find new recruits.In these more sparsely populated areas, more people are retiring than there are young families moving in who can join up and take their place in the fire service. Phil asks that anyone who is interested to reach out and apply.

Best Moments:

• “It's hard work and you're out of your comfort zone, but I mean, who doesn't want to run into a burning house with a breathing apparatus on? You've got to take it with a pinch of salt and try to enjoy it as well.”
• “If there's an RTC [Road Traffic Collision] then, generally, it could be someone that you know, and that is the last thing that you ever want to happen to you, but we like to think that it's a job and you get on with it and you deal with it afterwards.”
• “You can't be risk-averse, not in this job.”
• “We all have our own jobs to do but we all help each other out as much as we can.”

Valuable Resources:

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service

www.northyorksfire.gov.uk

01609-780150   

About the Host:

Susan has been living in Yorkshire for over 30 years, and has had some fire training of her own! She is passionate about the county she has adopted as her home and she never ceases to be amazed at the wealth of talent ‘Inside Yorkshire' and the tales that people have to tell.

About the Guest:

Phil Alderson is the Watch Manager at the Reeth Fire Station, where he's worked as a retained fireman for nearly 20 years. Phil jokes that he was “press-ganged” into the job as working in the station has long been a tradition in his family.

When not fighting fires, responding to traffic accidents or rescuing all the manner of animals, Phil can be found working at Reeth Garage, always at the ready in case of an emergency.

Contact Method:

Susan Baty-Symes

• www.insideyorkshire.co.uk
• [email protected]

This show was brought to you by Progressive Media

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.