Skipton Farmhouse Fare: ‘We have been selling sausages and pies for over 50 years and we've never changed our recipes’

Skipton Farmhouse Fare began selling pies and sausages in 1975 and has been going from strength to strength while staying true to its original recipes.

Skipton Farmhouse Fare was founded by Ted Lee when he decided to make a career change from selling farm feeds.

Its original location was in a shop on Keighley Road, Skipton, opposite the bus station. After many of the shops closed 15 years later and fewer people visited the area, the business moved to the high street.

The business has now passed to Ted’s daughter, Janet Green, 64, and she hopes to keep it in the family.

“We've been doing this for 50 years so it's quite an achievement,” Janet said.

“We still bone our own meat as well which is very rare in this day and age, a lot of butchers buy all boned-out meat these days, but we still buy the pigs in and do our own boning-out so that we keep the quality up.

“We are mainly pork butchers; we do a little bit of beef but not on a big scale. But we offer about 15 different flavours of sausages as well.

“We do like pork and apple, pork and black pudding, pork and stuffing, pork and chilli, pork cheese and pickle.

“If you've got a good recipe, why change it?”

The business has since won the Great Northern Pie Competition five times between 2010 and 2015.

Out of the products it sells, pork pies are the main sellers.

“We make other pies besides meat and potatoes and steak and onion,” Janet said.

“We do a vegetarian pie, quiches, we do our own cooked meats, we do ham, pork and beef, we also do cheeses.

“We sell around 500 pork pies a day or 750 a day if you include all the pies. Sausages can vary day by day, but we sell around 400 a day.”

The business attracts visitors from all over the country.

“A lot of people come up from London; I've had one or two come from Kent. Even people from Scotland are buying pies and taking them back to Scotland.”

Janet is hoping to pass on the business to her family.

“I'm 64 now so I want to take a backseat,” she said.

“My daughter and my nephew are in the business and we're hoping that they're going to take it over.

“Unfortunately my mum and dad died quite a while ago and I've been running it since. We keep it in the family and we’ve never changed any of our recipes.”