On Saturday 14th October The Daily Telegraph devoted the front page and page two of its Weekend Section to a feature and Simon Heffer-penned comment piece on the Alliance's Best Rural Retailer competiton. Read on for Local Heroes by Christopher Middleton - Simon Heffer's comment is elsewhere on this page.

LOCAL HEROES - Christopher Middleton finds country shops beating supermarkets hands down as The Daily Telegraph backs awards in their honour

By Christopher Middleton

This year, Father Rainer has had cause to count his blessings, and so far there are at least three. First, the weather has been kinder than usual to his apple crop; normally, the damp Yorkshire mists around Ampleforth Abbey make for scabby patches on the fruit, but this year's long, hot summer has produced a practically blemish-free harvest.

Second, plans to build an artificial sports pitch on his orchard have been dropped. People from miles around positively flocked to the trees' defence when the idea was first mooted by Ampleforth School (to which, of course, the Abbey is attached).

Third, and most providentially, a shiny new independent food shop has opened in nearby Harrogate, which means that for the first time there's a local outlet that can shift all the cider and cider brandy that Father Rainer can make. Plus mountains more of produce.

It's called Weeton's, and it overlooks The Stray, a pretty patch of parkland about 300 yards down the road from Harrogate's other main gastronomic landmark, Betty's Tearooms. Not quite in the centre of town, perhaps, but not as far out as Sainsbury's, on the Wetherby road. Which means that in the increasingly bitter war being fought on Britain's streets, between the small food retailer and the supermarket giants, Weeton's has one crucial tactical advantage.

What's more, it received a huge boost to morale with the news that, despite having only been open since August 2005, it has been voted Britain's Best Rural Retailer by the Countryside Alliance. This is a competition that was held for the first time last year. It not only caught the public's imagination but has now attracted Daily Telegraph sponsorship. We're backing the newly-created Best Traditional Business category, and our associate editor, Simon Heffer, is a member of the judging panel (see page 2). The other three categories are Best Local Food Retailer, Best Village Shop/Post Office and Best Diversification.

"We started up this competition last year because we had long felt that the 'doom and gloom' stories of rural decline, while true to an extent, did not accurately reflect the spirit of rural people and the efforts of thousands to keep their communities alive,'' says Jill Grieve of the Countryside Alliance. "We had hundreds of entries from people nominating rural shop owners who as a matter of course go beyond the call of duty in the interests of their customers and the local communities.

"Most of those were food retailers, but what the expansion of the competition this year means is that we'll be able to sing the praises of people working in other sectors, too. We're particularly delighted that the Daily Telegraph is sponsoring our 'Best Traditional' section, and we are looking to people all over Britain to nominate their favourite local firms, so that we can sing their praises to the nation.''

Already it's clear that any rural retail outlet will have its work cut out matching the chorus of approval that has accompanied Weeton's first few months of life. The shop gets its name from the pedigree Weeton dairy herd owned by John Loftus, a third-generation Ribble Valley farmer. His son Andrew is Weeton's managing director, and the common consensus is that it was a good day for all Yorkshire farmers when he decided against a career in agriculture.

"I love our farm, but I never wanted to become a farmer,'' says Loftus junior, 29. "My father may have been a bit disappointed, but he was sensible enough to know that if someone doesn't really love the job, it's a bit of a prison sentence.''

Instead, Andrew chose to read law at university, become a graduate trainee with BP, then leave to set up Weeton's in a former furniture showroom. To understand why the Countryside Alliance judges gave first prize to a place that's been in business barely 15 months, you have to look not at Weeton's surface glitz (snazzy lighting, espresso bar, frisée lettuce, plates of piping-hot croque monsieurs), but at the labels.

At the point where the blurb usually reads "Ingredients of more than one country,'' or "Prodotto d'Italia,'' there are such phrases as "Made In Yorkshire,'' or "Hand-Reared in Swaledale''. And instead of having been flown in from all points between Australia and Zimbabwe, the foodstuffs have had a rather shorter journey, from places such as Ilkley, Crayke or Fridaythorpe.

Even the label-less food has a clearly identifiable provenance. Ask the man behind the butcher's counter where the beef in the Malaysian beef rendang comes from, and he can point you straight to George Marwood's herd at Harome, while the fresh lamb is from David Greenwood's heather-fed flock up on Swaledale.

"Right from the start, our aim was to provide local producers with a chance to reach local consumers,'' says Loftus, who runs the business as a joint venture between two farms, the first owned by his own family, the other by their friend, the Labour peer Lord Grantchester, in Cheshire. "And although some our stuff is more expensive than in the supermarkets (a 1.5 kilo bag of "gourmet'' potatoes from Tiptoe Farm, in Northumberland, for pounds 4.55), there are stacks of other things that aren't.''

This is demonstrated by the blackboard on the Weeton's wall, which rather cheekily compares per-kilo prices for rib-eye steak ( pounds 17.50) and vine tomatoes ( pounds 2.60) with those at Sainsbury's down the road ( pounds 19.69 and pounds 3.56 respectively). But it's not just in terms of prices that Weeton's can show a clean pair of heels to the supermarkets. As recent, unflattering publicity has shown, big chains such as Tesco (latest half-year profits, pounds 1.09 billion) don't just leave a heavy environmental footprint, they've also got a record of putting the boot into traditional high streets, either deliberately or by indiscriminate price-cutting. Not to mention cutting farmers' profit margins to the bone.

Another big criticism levelled against supermarkets is the immense number of "food miles'' their products clock up, as produce travels back and forth across the country, from producer to distribution point to point of sale. By contrast, Weeton's transport costs are minimal: half the food in the shop (totalling some 1,000 different lines) comes from within a 40-mile radius, and of the remaining 50 per cent, approximately 40 per cent is British.

For most of the 45 local farms whose products appear on the shelves, Weeton's is the biggest customer by far. This means that businesses that began as small-scale, kitchen-table enterprises have turned into much larger, commercially viable concerns. "In our first six months, we only processed about 8,000 litres,'' says organic dairy farmer Angus Gaudie, who, with his Cornish wife Sue, makes Yorkshire clotted cream at the couple's farm just outside Northallerton. "That was back in 2003; this year, the total's going to be around 120,000 litres. Before Weeton's came along, there wasn't sufficient regular demand for us to be able to grow. Now, though, we've been able to increase our production to such a point that we're supplying our clotted cream to Betty's Tearooms.''

And if you're a Yorkshire dairy farmer, it doesn't get any better than that. However, that's not the end of the story; for when Weeton's let it be known earlier this year that they were looking for a supplier of organic cow's yogurt, Angus and Sue dived straight in. "We know that clotted cream is up at the luxury end of the scale, and is only ever going to be a weekend sort of product,'' says Sue, who in the early days was constantly phoning her grandmother in Cornwall for cream-making tips. "So we've been very keen to diversify into yogurt, which is not only a more everyday product, but also gives us a use for the milk that's left over after the cream has been made.''

So far, the Gaudies concede, they haven't got their yogurt packaging quite right. It currently comes in an anonymous white plastic pot, with a rather uninspiring sketch of their farm on the front. Help is at hand, though, from Deliciously Yorkshire, an advisory wing of the Regional Good Group for Yorkshire and Humber, which offers help with presentation, marketing and "speed networking'' evenings, at which local farmers and retailers are introduced to each other.

It's an initiative that has born fruit all round the county; literally, in the case of Father Rainer, who until recently was growing 49 different varieties of apple (from Lord Lambourne to the local Ribstone Pippin), for a very limited local market. Now, though, you can buy Ampleforth cider at Harvey Nichols, in Leeds.

In the same way, deer farmer Nigel Sampson's venison steaks have been leaping a lot more readily off the shelves since the arrival of Weeton's. In fact, says Sampson, it's been a good year all round, what with a 300 per cent sales increase during the World Cup (venison proved the banger of choice on Yorkshire barbecues). On top of this, he and his wife Miranda have seen interest take off in their deerskin country accessories. While their steaks sell for pounds 1.99 a pair, their hand-made cartridge cases and shotgun sleeves fetch around pounds 200 a time.

"The thing that gives me the most satisfaction is that although we're only a 110-acre farm, we employ 28 people,'' says Sampson. "That's about the number you'd expect on a farm 10 times the size.''

Not that they're all working on the land, of course. Rather than tilling the soil on the Sampsons' 400-deer estate at Thorpe Underwood, near Knaresborough, most of the Holme Farm employees are based in the meat-processing unit down the road. So mechanised has modern agriculture become, that rural employment is no longer measured by bums on tractor seats, but by the amount of salaried livelihoods a farm can sustain.

Take Holme Hall Farm, near Scunthorpe. When its owners, Andrew and Sally Jackson, went organic in 1999, they started selling their produce (eggs, vegetables, pork) off a little trestle table at the end of the lane. Now, seven years later, that trestle table has become Pink Pig Organics, a seven-days-a-week farm shop selling not just what the Jacksons grow, but produce from organic farms throughout the North Lincolnshire area - anything within a 24-mile radius.

And whereas it used to be just Sally and a kitchen chair, there are now 20 paid staff in pink uniforms manning a mega-shed food hall with a 90-seater restaurant and family farm trail attached. There are regular potato and sausage tastings, and along with piles of natural produce, visitors can try home-made Pink Pig specialities such as delicious beetroot cake, or parsnip and caraway seed cake.

"On the one hand, my husband doesn't have time to do much farming any more,'' says Sally. "On the other, what we've achieved here means that he's been able to stay on the land which his family have farmed for the past 80 years.''

This year, the Pink Pig has had a big pat on the back in the form of a Highly Commended award in the CA's Rural Retailer of the Year competition (the Jacksons narrowly lost out to Weeton's). Presentation of those awards took place at the House of Lord's, which was a bit of a break in routine not just for the Jacksons but for fellow shopkeeper and award nominee David Carr, the winner of the north-east section. As sole proprietor of a roadside corner store at Longframlington, near Morpeth, he's not at all used to taking days off.

"I bought the shop in 1978 and since then I've only been off once, for pneumonia,'' recalls Carr, whose Tardis-like emporium stocks 11,000 different lines. "I used to run the store for a grocery chain, but they made me redundant on Christmas Eve. They gave me seven days to raise the money to buy it.

"Now I get up at 4.30 every morning to receive the milk delivery. At 5.15, the bread arrives and I start making the day's sandwiches. The usual closing time is 6pm, after which I've got another couple of hours' paperwork.

"It's hard work, but there again a lot of local people depend on me.''

YOUR CALL

This year, The Daily Telegraph is joining the Countryside Alliance to sponsor the newly-created Best Traditional Business category in an expanded series of Best Rural Retailer awards - and we want your nominations.

There are four categories:

1. Best Local Food Retailer
2. Best Village Shop/Post Office
3. Best Diversification
4. Best Traditional Business

Please make your nomination online as soon as possible at www.bestruralretailer.co.uk. The deadline for receipt of nominations is Friday, October 27.

TOP SHOPS

Weeton's, 23-24 West Park, Harrogate, Yorkshire (01423 507100, www.weetons.com).

Ampleforth Apples, Cider and Cider Brandy, Ampleforth Abbey, nr Helmsdale, Yorkshire (01439 766899).

Stamfrey Farm Clotted Cream and Yogurt, West Rounton, nr Northallerton, Yorkshire (01609 882297, www.stamfrey.com).

Holme Farm Venison and Deerskin Products, Thorpe Underwood, Yorkshire (01977 686440, www.hfv.co.uk).

Pink Pig Organic Farm Shop, Holme Hall Farm, nr Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire (01724 844466, www.pinkpigorganics.co.uk).

David Carr's Corner Shop, Longframlington, Northumberland (01665 570241).