LINGERIE and wedding dresses are hardly the kinds of things you expect to find for sale on a farm, but an innovative diversification idea has taken one Eden Valley farming family into that unlikely territory, writes Farming Reporter Justin Hawkins.

"I like to do things a bit differently," explained Tina Strong, as she described how she came up with the idea for The Wedding Barn business at Street House Farm, Bolton, near Appleby, which offers a full package of wedding services from dresses, suits and cakes, to videos, cars and stationery.

For the previous five years, Tina had been running a wedding car business, providing brides with cars and exclusively female chauffeurs for their big day.

"Female drivers can get away with things men can't," she said. For instance, a female driver could help a bride with a showing bra strap, brush some fluff from her bottom or organise her skirt. If a male chauffer did that, he's get slapped," said Tina.

From the experience running the wedding car service, she realised there was a gap in the market for the right person to offer the full service based along similar lines.

"It was a natural progression really," she said.

But it was foot-and-mouth which finally spurred Tina into action.

The family had only moved the farm to fix it up and run in November 2000. A little over three months later, the foot-and-mouth epidemic struck.

They lost their sheep in a cull in April 2001 and by May the disease struck the dairy herd, forcing the family to think hard about the future.

Tina said her husband did not want to give up farming: "That would be like asking him to give up breathing," she said. So Tina dreamed up The Wedding Barn.

"I have had a lot of training in the past and all that knowledge and experience was just sitting there idle," she said. "I decided it was time to put it to good use. We had this barn attached to the house and doing nothing, just sitting there saying convert me'."

With the help of entrepreneur advisor Joanna Elwen from the Rural Women's Network, Tina put together a business plan for the Wedding Barn and applied for a Rural Enterprise Grant from DEFRA to help get the business off the ground.

Although the official launch of the Wedding Barn is not until May 1, the business is up and running already.

Tracy McDonald, from DEFRA's Rural Development Service, said: "This is an excellent example of someone thinking creatively and using their premises to create a second income which is unconnected with farming but which can work alongside the farm business."

Tracy said that Tina's Wedding Barn was the most unusual diversification scheme she had worked on, but added that the Rural Development Service was willing to consider funding almost any realistic business idea no matter how unrelated to farming it was as long as it counted as diversification of a farm business.

To contact DEFRA's Rural Development Service in Cumbria, call 01768- 860700.

The Rural Women's Network can be contacted on 01769-210997

The wedding barn can be reached at 01931-714434, or visit the website at http://www.theweddingbarnltd.co.uk

April 11, 2003 09:30