FOOD and drink produced by small, family-run businesses in Craven are key to Skipton's new Keelham Farm Shop - and it is keen to welcome more into the fold.

Not only will the farm shop, which opened on Wednesday, be sourcing meat from next door Skipton Auction Mart, but the family owned multi-award winning business has made a point of going to small Craven-based producers.

It will be the first in the country to sell British made skyr - an Icelandic yoghurt type product, now being made at Hesper Farm, Bell Busk.

Farmer Sam Moorhouse travelled to Iceland to study how to make the product, which is naturally fat-free, and now produces it from the family farm. Sam, 22, has developed his own skyr recipe, using milk from the farm's 180-strong herd of pedigree Holstein Friesians.

Carole and Richard Eyton-Jones, who run the Dark Horse Brewery in Hetton, will be supplying their Hetton Pale Ale and rose-water infused Rosed Ale to Keelham – adding to more than 20 small breweries that will be stocked by the Skipton shop.

Richard has more than 25 years of commercial brewing experience and set Dark Horse up in 2008.

The team brews 6,000 pints every week from their purpose-built facility housed in a 200-year-old laithe, drawing water from a 150-foot borehole on site which is used in the brewing process.

As well as forming new partnerships, Keelham will welcome a number of its tried and tested suppliers to the new shop.

Milk will be supplied by Grassington-based Dales Dairies, a milk producer, processor and distribution business, which runs alongside a working dairy farm. The business was established in 1938 by dairy farmer William Oversby and is now run by third-generation David Oversby who has grown the operation to offer milk wholesale across the region.

Husband and wife farming duo Sharron and Ed Parker will stock the shop with the award-winning Yellison goat’s cheese and goat’s milk from the family’s Sire Bank Farm near Bradley, having acquired the award-winning Yellison brand in 2014.

The Parkers currently milk 72 goats to produce 600 litres of milk and 180kg of cheese per week.

Meat will be bought from Skipton’s auction mart, just next door to the new farm shop. Craven Cattle Mart, which runs the auction mart, has being going for more than 130 years and Keelham has a long-standing relationship with the company, which has supplied its Thornton shop for more than 40 years.

The meat, carefully selected by James Robertshaw at the weekly auction, will be hung, boned, cut and prepared in Keelham’s state-of-the-art butchery facilities at the new shop to ensure customers receive the best, freshest cuts of quality meat.

Producers and farmers of every size, working in the area, that would like to supply to the Skipton shop should contact help@keelhamfarmshop.co.uk