The Herdwick Experience is set to appear in ITV’s flagship show, Love Your Weekend, provided by gardener, presenter, and author Alan Titchmarsh.
The primetime morning show will visit Yew Tree Farm, Coniston, a renowned Lakeland hill farm, when owned by Beatrix Potter, from 9.30 am on October 16, to find out why it’s getting a new track record as the ideal place to hug a Herdwick.
Associated with the Lake District, this native sheep breed is extremely friendly, massively curious and absolutely enigmatic, as audiences will find when they meet the hill farm’s ‘Ambassador Flock’ on their own when the program joins participants as they embark on one of the farm’s ‘Herdwick Experiences.’
Yew Tree’s ‘Herdwick Experiences’ are part of a growing list of organisation diversification initiatives based at the farm introduced by Jo and Jon Watson.
The farm is likewise home to a wedding organisation, an onsite butchery and farm shop, Jo’s art company and a vacation letting home, all of which helps with the upkeep and maintenance of the historic website.
The latest addition to the business all started due to the fact that the couple had a number of unusually friendly sheep in their flock, who simply appeared to yearn for human company. Jo undoubtedly ended up being very connected to these curious animals and welcomed a number of friends round to share the experience in the stunning surroundings of the farm’s ‘home fields.’
Afterwards they told their friends and unsurprisingly word quickly got round, till the whole thing spiralled, and people started offering to pay. In the end Jo discovered it was using up lots of her time, so she took action and chose to start running ‘Herdwick Experiences’ full-time. With the outcome that visitors to the farm can now meet these guardians of the fells up close.
Jo McGrath, founder of Yew Tree Farm’s Herdwick Experience, describes: “Ideally audiences will get a sense of what this landscape has to do with and the part we play in preserving it.
“The whole idea behind the Herdwick Experience is to educate individuals about the Herdwick type and to hopefully provide a little look into the functions of traditional hill farms like ours.
“Letting them know how we work with this landscape and how we are maximizing the chances that the farm provides us with.
“Opportunities that help make sure that we can establish and keep a viable business for the future, and keep our farming customs alive, which has ended up being progressively tough in the last few years.
“All of which naturally assists farms like ours contribute to the maintenance of the Lakeland landscape that individuals understand and like.”.
A former British Military Officer, Eddie went on to study History and then Journalism at Sheffield Hallam University. A keen outdoorsman, he has co-written several books on Outdoor Survival and Wild Camping. Now living in Penrith, Ed is a keen fellrunner.
