This is where it all starts
The Taylor family farm sits just four miles from the historic market town of Penrith, in the green and glorious Eden Valley. Nestled between the Lake District and the Pennines, this is a landscape of rolling fields, winding rivers and traditional villages – and it’s where the Eden Yard story begins.
We’re a working family farm first and foremost. Over the years, we’ve found new ways to make more of what we grow, shorten the journey from field to fork and connect people more closely with where their food comes from. What started in the fields has grown into cold-pressed rapeseed oil, stoneground flour, collaborations with other Cumbrian producers and, most recently, our own farm shop. But everything still comes back to the same place.
800 acres. Plenty going on.
Across around 800 acres, arable crops, permanent grassland and livestock all form part of the farm.
Our free-draining, fertile soils support a varied rotation of arable crops, while our grassland provides grazing for more than 400 breeding sheep and our herd of native Hereford cattle.
It’s a mixed farming system where different parts of the farm work together.
Livestock graze the land and crops through the seasons, returning valuable organic matter to the soil. Arable rotations allow us to grow everything from oilseed rape to grain, while permanent pasture provides an important home for our livestock.
It means no two days – or seasons – look quite the same.
There’s planting, lambing, grazing and growing. Yellow fields in spring. Combines rolling through crops in summer. Sheep and cattle out on grass. And then, eventually, the things grown here finding their way into kitchens.
A working Cumbrian farm in every sense.
Looking after what looks after us
For a farm, sustainability starts with the land.
Healthy soil is fundamental to everything we grow, so we’re continually looking at how we can protect and improve it for the generations that come next.
We use techniques including minimum tillage, crop rotation and nitrogen-fixing cover crops to help improve soil structure, reduce erosion and return valuable nutrients to the ground.
Livestock form part of that cycle too, helping return organic matter to our arable land.
Above ground, we’re investing in the wider farm environment through initiatives including hedge planting. Hedgerows are an important part of the Cumbrian landscape, providing habitats and food for wildlife while creating valuable corridors across farmland.
It’s not about one big gesture. It’s about making better decisions across the whole farm, year after year.
That approach has also been recognised with a recent sustainability award – something we’re incredibly proud of, but also something we see as encouragement to keep going.
From seed to oil.
Where Eden Yard really began.
Eden Yard started with a crop we were already growing – oilseed rape.
Rather than sending it into a larger supply chain, we decided to keep things closer to home. The tiny black seeds are planted in late summer, nurtured through winter and burst into their familiar yellow flowers in spring, providing an early food source for bees and other insects.
By summer, the crop is ready to harvest. The seeds are cold pressed, filtered and bottled here on the farm to create our naturally golden, slightly nutty rapeseed oil.
Even what’s left has a purpose – straw can be used for animal bedding and the protein-rich seed meal as animal feed.
Grown here. Pressed here. Bottled here.
From grain to flour.
A Cumbrian collaboration.
Oil got us thinking. If we could shorten the journey between our fields and the kitchen with rapeseed, what else could we do?
Grain was a natural next step. Working with Cumbrian artisan bakery Lovingly Artisan and the restored water mill at Warwick Bridge, we’ve been exploring the potential of heritage grain varieties, such as Spelt, Einkorn and Emmer, grown right here on the farm.
Once harvested, we dry and clean the grain ourselves onsite – another important part of the process we’ve brought in-house. From here, it can travel directly from our farm to the traditional stone mills, keeping the journey short, traceable and firmly rooted in Cumbria.
Together, we’ve been learning how these heritage varieties perform in our fields, through the mill and ultimately in the bakery. The result is locally grown, stoneground flour with a genuine connection to the land it came from.
It’s a collaboration built around a shared belief that everyday ingredients don’t need anonymous supply chains.
Field. Farm. Mill. Bakery.
From Cumbrian soil to exceptional bread, with remarkably few miles in between.
From our community. For our community.
The newest part of Eden Yard brings everything together. Our onsite farm shop is home to our own cold-pressed oils and stoneground flour, alongside produce from the wider farm including potatoes, honey, Hereford beef and Suffolk lamb.
Then there’s The Veg Patch – our market garden bringing freshly picked, seasonal vegetables into the shop as they’re ready to harvest.
But the shelves go well beyond our own produce. Everything we stock comes from a Cumbrian producer. That means food and drink from farmers, growers, bakers, makers and independent businesses from across the county – all carefully chosen and brought together in one place.
For us, that’s an important part of what the farm shop can be.
Every pound spent on those products helps support another local business, local employment and the wider Cumbrian economy. It keeps money circulating closer to home and gives brilliant independent producers another place to put their products in front of people.
Shop Eden Yard
Grown here. Made here. Delivered to your door.
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