Diversification Award The Farmers' Country Showdown

Across the country,

thousands of farming families work tirelessly around the clock.

Bring them up, Isabel. Well done.

Here they come!

Shake it, baby. Shake it.

But there's one day each year...

Come on, girl. Up you go.

..when they get to leave the daily routine behind.

Woohoo!

These are show days...

Welcome to the Pembrokeshire County Show.

..and they come together as a community...

Salute!

..to showcase the fruits of their labour...

Had a quick look at the competition. I'm in with a chance.

..and try to win prizes for their breed champions...

Well done. Wahey!

It's show business, folks.

..and award-winning produce.

Got first!

Had the last two jars.

There will be highs...

..and lows...

No, no, no, no.

..for the farmers who give everything to walk away a champion.

No way!

In the agricultural social calendar,

there is one night of the year that celebrates farmers' ingenuity.

Come on, little spotty.

The Diversification Farmer of the Year Award

has three outstanding finalists.

These are forward-thinking farmers who have turned the fortunes

of their farms around by bravely branching out...

This is Victor, of the famous wonky teeth.

..embracing enterprise outside of traditional agriculture.

Are you ready for this again?

This year's three finalists are...

..Simon and Jackie McCreery from East Lothian...

Come on. Up you get.

..shortlisted for the second year running,

the Nicholson family from South Yorkshire...

-Oh, that one loves you.

-Hello.

..and Johnny and Dulcie Crickmore from Suffolk.

Shall Daddy lift you up, so you can get the milk out?

This award will be recognition for all their hard work,

tenacity and passion.

Only one of them will walk away with the title at the sparkling London

ceremony, taking place in just a few days' time.

The rural heart of eastern Scotland

is home to the first set of finalists,

Northern Irish-born husband and wife team, Simon and Jackie McCreery.

The McCreery family live on Yester Mains Farm in East Lothian...

It's getting quite busy in here as well.

..where they all work together

to make a living with their 400-strong dairy herd.

Come on. Up you get.

Up, up. Just a bit unsteady yet.

It's only a couple of hours old.

My family moved here in 1992 and it was my mum and dad and my brother

and myself. And in 2000, Jackie moved across.

We first met, I would say, when you were...

I was 10, you were 12, I think.

11. There's a year between us. It's a very touchy subject.

And we got married in 2001.

After four years away studying,

Simon returned home to join the family farming business in 1997.

-All right?

-Yeah.

-Everything going OK?

But with the dairy industry in crisis,

they were struggling to make ends meet.

In the early 2000s, milk prices were really, really low and

we had no control over what price we were getting for the milk,

so I thought there would be an opening in the market.

Simon made a bold decision

to try to sell their milk direct from the farm.

But it was easier said than done.

I'm not a natural salesman.

I'm a farmer. It's quite difficult going out in the big wide world

trying to promote your product and tell them to buy locally.

It didn't come naturally to me, but over time, you teach yourself,

you know, the importance of doing it for your business.

That was quite tough for you.

It wasn't your comfort zone at all, to be out selling,

but it seems to have worked, I think.

By 2007, Simon and Jackie found themselves

with not only a flourishing fledgling business,

but also a growing family.

Our first child arrived just about the time the milk processing plant

was being commissioned, so that was a really busy time.

Looking back now, there was a lot going on.

Simon and Jackie live on the farm with their two young children.

And the rest of Simon's family who are never far away.

I do love the cottage cheese. That's my favourite.

I've never even tried it.

-We do spend a fair bit of time together.

-We do.

I mean, a lot of people wouldn't choose to work with their

family, but I think this family actually makes it work quite well.

Now they have no shortage of help

when it comes to making important decisions.

And do you think...? Do you think Daddy should wear his kilt

or his dinner suit for an awards ceremony?

I don't think he should wear his suit or his kilt.

What do you think I should wear?

Mark's stuff.

Mark's stuff!

We have a lot of kids all around the same age.

Arabella and Spencer have four kids.

What do you think? Tuxedo or kilt, Lydia?

More brownies?

From having no grandchildren, David and Lynne, like buses,

they had six in one year.

As well as raising their two children,

Jackie started working on the farm full-time in 2009,

bringing with her some rather useful skills.

I am a lawyer by trade.

It's actually been really useful for us because it was

working for a rural organisation, so my roots are really in farming

and rural life, so it's worked out quite well.

Jackie always says that I'm the bigger picture person and she's

-the finer detail person, so, yeah, I think it's a good team.

-Yeah.

The success of their milk business and Simon's new-found salesmanship

inspired the family to branch out and they set about making

their very own artisan cheese.

We've got our three cheese vats here.

The big one here, that's where we make our soft cheese and our cottage

cheese. The two vats with the mechanical stirrers are our two big

mozzarella vats. And at the back,

we have our three fermentation tanks where we make our cultured

creams there. The yoghurts, creme fraiche sets there.

We are really proud of our little cheese room.

Small, but perfectly formed.

Simon and Jackie now provide over a dozen varieties of milk, yoghurt,

creams and cheeses to outlets around the UK,

all made from milk direct from their cows.

They go to hotels and restaurants, to wholesalers,

there's some of our yoghurt here, some of our luxury soft cheese,

some creme fraiche here as well.

We literally pipe the milk straight from the pasteurisation plant

into here, so it's within a few hours of the cows being milked,

it's in the vat.

I look after our cows.

I know how they are fed, with regards to their nutrition,

so I know the types of milk they are producing.

We know that we can make a really good quality cheese.

-Are you ready for this again?

-Again! Again!

Amongst all their lovingly handmade cheeses,

there has been one surprise success.

Our mozzarella actually has ended up being a much bigger part of our

overall mix of sales than we really intended or envisaged.

In fact, we have replaced one of the soft cheese vats with a second

mozzarella vat to accommodate that demand.

With exchange rates making imports of Italian mozzarella expensive

and the rising demand for home-grown products,

Jackie and Simon seem to have hit on a niche.

Restaurants in Edinburgh here have only had the option of importing

mozzarella before we started doing this,

but now they have the option of a Scottish-made mozzarella.

It's really actually quite exciting for us that our mozzarella is in

pizza restaurants all over the UK now, which is great.

With no real history of cheesemaking in their corner of the Scottish

countryside, Simon and Jackie are taking it upon themselves to train

up their staff from scratch.

All right? Is this going out with our label on? Great.

Because we are in an area that's not well known for food

manufacturing, we are tending to bring people in now and train them

up. People can see that when they join that there's somewhere to go,

so you can come in and start as a cheese packer and then train up

to be a cheesemaker.

The steadfast determination of the McCreery family has seen

the business blossom, now proudly employing over 30 people.

Nearly finished, Shirley? Last couple of blocks?

We are not a massive employer, but for this area,

we are employing quite a few people now and that's important to us.

I think we have a responsibility to the people that work for us.

Now this hard-working couple are looking forward to a well-deserved

grown-up night out.

Yeah, it was really exciting for everybody on the farm.

Exciting about what?

-The award.

-Let me come.

-Adults only.

-No, adults only.

After years of tireless endeavour and no small amount of bravery,

there's no sign of slowing down for this truly enterprising family.

Yeah, I think there's about 160

to calve in the next two or three months.

We work hard, we enjoy our work, and that has come from my parents

and my father has always led by example

and I've always looked up to him for his work ethic

-and how he goes about his work.

-Well, I'm very proud of him

and I support him to the best of my ability.

So, are there any...? Is there any yoghurt in the tanks at the moment?

Nothing at the moment, no. Just making mozzarella.

We want the dairy to be here for a long time.

That's why we need to keep moving the business or businesses forward.

We wouldn't like to say we are successful yet,

but we're hopefully heading in the right direction.

-We're not resting on our laurels.

-No.

Their passion and perseverance has not only secured the long-term

future of the dairy farm, but also earned them a place

on this year's shortlist

for Diversification Farmer Of The Year at the Farmers' Weekly Awards.

Resting in the rolling countryside of South Yorkshire,

we find Cannon Hall Farm...

..set over 180 acres...

..and home to the Nicholson family...

..who are returning for a second year running to fight it out

for the coveted Diversification Farmer Of The Year award.

We are like Rocky. You know, we got there, we lost,

and we are going back for another go.

Come on, little spotty.

Father, Roger, has been tending this land since he was a boy.

We lost the farm that we used to be at.

The council took the land, compulsory purchase,

so this farm came up for sale.

When we came to look at it, it was just a bit like heaven, really.

Just here a year, we'd moved in here, Father, he had a heart attack

and died, so I was only 16 at that time and had to take the farm on

and I think, at 16, most people make mistakes and maybe that contributed

to how we struggled a little bit.

Things began to look up for Roger when he met and married his wife

of 52 years, Cynthia.

There we are. Going back nearly 50 years there.

And the couple soon started their own young family.

-That's Robert.

-Being a bit mischievous.

He was quite good at collecting bantam eggs and even selling them

to members of the public.

He was mini entrepreneur at the time, I think.

Doting dad Roger rarely missed

an opportunity to spend time with his boys.

Dad would always take a bit of time out to play football with us.

-Even though he had a lot to do.

-Yeah. He was working all by himself,

but he would still make time for us, which was brilliant.

As the children grew,

Roger and Cynthia tried just about everything to keep money coming in

on the farm.

Including pigs, sheep

and cattle. They even opened a cafe.

It just gradually grew

and that's what you have to do in diversification,

don't be put off by the small start.

You've just got to keep at it and it grows.

Encouraged by the success of their latest venture,

the Nicholsons struck upon an idea that farm tourism might just be the

answer they'd been looking for.

We started off just by borrowing a few animals, didn't we?

We borrowed a couple of goats, borrowed a shire.

-Borrowed some angora goats.

-Yeah.

It was Easter 1989 and I think we took about £140 on the Bank Holiday

Monday and that Monday was £1 and 75p for children, was it?

-I think it was...

-Some people still complained, to be honest.

Now with a wide variety of their own animals,

Cannon Hall Farm welcomes over half a million visitors every year...

-There you go, flower.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

..experiencing a range of farming and animal attractions,

from goats and alpacas...

..to lizard handling and ferret racing.

Making sure that everyone is catered for is eldest son, Robert...

A blue one. Absolutely.

..who looks after the farm's various attractions,

shops and restaurants.

I think it works really well, as long as these two accept that...

-Do as we're told!

-And as long as that happens, there's no problem.

Still very much a working farm,

youngest son David is responsible for looking after the animals.

As well as anything else that needs doing.

Every day's different. Some days you're working the animals.

Other days you're more with the public, tractor rides, that kind

of thing. If there's a job needs doing, you know,

you've just got to get stuck in and get it done, really.

You wore an animatronic dinosaur suit, didn't you?

They were short staffed, so I had to step in.

I'm going to put it on my CV.

That'll do.

Although his sons have taken on much of the day-to-day graft on the farm...

..Roger finds he just can't stay away.

My job is to sort of oversee the health and everything of the

animals, so... And I'll muck in if the sheep need vaccinating,

and things like that.

We're still sort of working in a fairly old-fashioned way

with the animals, really.

Almost 30 years after Cannon Hall first opened its gates, Roger's

dream of continuing the family business is very much alive...

That goes into there. How's it been going?

-All right, actually.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

..in the form of 24-year-old granddaughter Katie.

It is really important that the next generation, to my mind anyway,

that they carry on and hopefully see

the business through to another generation.

It's nice to be so close with my family,

keep in touch all the time with my uncles, my dad, my grandparents,

-my mum.

-And who's your favourite uncle?

Well, that's not fair!

Having come so far together,

this close knit family

are no strangers to the Farmers' Weekly Awards.

As finalists in last year's diversification category,

the Nicholsons were pipped at the post.

The Richards family.

We congratulate the winners

and the story runs on and we go again next year.

Over the past 12 months, the Nicholson family have forged on.

And middle son, Richard,

is passionate about sharing their farming story with the public.

In the past,

people were much more engaged with the countryside.

Now less and less people are engaged in working on the land,

so it's so important that we know where our food comes from.

The family have embraced modern technology and are broadcasting the

family's love for farm life beyond the gates and out into the world...

..through streaming their experiences live on the internet,

via social media.

This is Victor, of the famous wonky teeth.

Going live on social media has been one of the most sort of remarkable

aspects of this latest year.

-Oh, that one loves you.

-Hello.

Really simple, even an idiot like me can work it.

You just press the button and start rambling on and people seem to...

-You do ramble very well.

-Yeah.

Lauren Walker says, "Hi, Lottie."

Julie Renfree says, "Good afternoon, Farmer Robert, kiss."

That's very nice, thank you.

We've had some incredible sort of statistics come through.

We've had one week, we had 2.5 million people.

Roger and his sons now have fans across the globe.

And have become sought after celebrities on their own farm.

They want a photograph taken and that sort of thing.

A selfie, as they call them these days.

Oh, I can't understand it, really.

Whoa, girl.

And people have seen him for what he is, a hard-working, humble,

good person.

We get all these comments coming in.

-"Ain't your dad lovely?"

-Robert starts to bully him a little bit too much.

He gets a real telling off. Yeah.

For the family who started with nothing,

what they've built is a tribute

to their unfailing passion and determination.

My father bought it with that

intention that we carried on as a farm.

And I wouldn't have sort of given up.

But it was getting quite difficult.

So I'm well pleased that it's worked out as well as it has, really.

Our dad is, he's a bit of a hero to us.

He saved the farm with his idea.

And we all owe our livings to him, really.

To look back and see what we've sort of moved from,

yeah, you can't help but be proud, really.

Embracing new ideas has saved the farm.

And their dedication to sharing their farming experience with the

public has seen them nominated once

again for the Diversification Farmer Of The Year Award.

Nestling in the Waveney River valley in Suffolk is Fen Farm,

home to our final contenders

for the Diversification Farmer Of The Year Award...

..Johnny and Dulcie Crickmore.

Like the McCreery family,

they too have trod the long and risky path from milk production

-to cheese making.

-Let's go down this way.

Do you want to be the leader?

Johnny's family have been dairy farmers for three generations.

I've been a farmer all my life.

My father got me in the milking parlour when I was five,

letting the cows in, and I learnt to count via cows' brand numbers.

This one here, do you think she's looking for some hay to eat? Yeah?

I'm not at all from a farming background,

although I did grow up in the countryside,

so it wasn't completely alien to me.

So, we met in... Where did we meet, actually?

-We met in the Green Dragon.

-We met in the Green Dragon in Bungay.

In the pub. It's glamorous, isn't it?

Johnny, along with his parents,

looks after a herd of 280 cows across almost 1,000 acres.

Life on a dairy farm is a dawn to dusk affair.

It's the break of day and we're halfway through milking.

We milk our cows two times a day.

Early morning and kind of mid to late afternoon.

Those ones want doing tonight.

196 and 2651.

The farm business is all-consuming, isn't it?

It needs a lot of attention.

It took a bit of acclimatisation to start with.

Getting used to farming life.

We pass like ships in the night sometimes, don't we?

Well, most times.

-I've put milk in your Earl Grey.

-That's fine. I like milk.

It takes the support of the whole family to keep

-everything going.

-Thank you.

He does really work hard and Dulcie and my husband too.

-Mustn't forget Dad.

-Mustn't forget my lovely husband.

He's a bit camera shy, isn't he?

Well, he's really got a lot to do today as well.

I mean, he's so dedicated to the farm.

Like hundreds of other dairy farmers across the country,

the pressure of falling milk prices put Johnny and Dulcie's livelihoods

under threat.

It's a tough industry to be in at the moment.

It has been for a long time.

It's, you know, liquid milk is a commodity product, which means

that as a dairy farmer you're at the mercy of the current milk price.

Come on, girls.

Come on, ladies. Out you go.

Johnny and Dulcie needed to find another source of income.

With all that milk, an obvious solution was to make cheese.

Committed to making it work, their meticulous research began.

One of the most important things with making good quality cheese is

you have to have the right kind of cows to produce the right sort of

milk to make that cheese. With some advice from a French cheesemaker,

we found ourselves searching for these cheesemaking cows

in the Swiss-French border.

We bought in a small herd of Montbeliard cows from France and

from that point onwards,

we've been breeding everything from Montbeliard.

The second largest dairy breed in the whole of France,

this famously fromage-friendly cow

has been providing milk to cheesemakers for over 200 years.

We wanted to have a cow which was better grazing than a Holstein

and the cow is fantastic,

her milk quality is fantastic for cheesemaking.

These grass-loving cows thrive on pasture.

And luckily on this farm, there's plenty to go round.

Now Johnny has to make sure it's top-notch.

Once a week, I walk over all the pastures,

so I cover about six miles of walking and this little contraption

measures what the cow's going to eat in the course of the day.

Probably something which I've done for so many years that I kind of

know when a cow likes grass and when she doesn't like grass.

It's hard to describe it, but it's just, it looks tasty.

You know, if I was a cow, I'd be liking this right now.

With a brand-new herd of crossbred cheesemaking cows on the farm,

and acres of perfect grass...

..Johnny and Dulcie have now built a thriving cheese dairy...

..with five dedicated staff

producing over 35 tonnes of cheese a year.

All right, guys?

-Cheese going all right?

-Yeah, yeah, all good.

But not a couple to take the easy road,

they've chosen to make one of the most difficult cheeses to produce,

a raw milk brie.

The reason we made that cheese is because nobody in the UK was making

a raw milk brie and it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.

We did find out quite quickly why nobody else was making this cheese.

-It's really difficult to make.

-It's quite a challenging cheese.

It's been a long few years.

It's so sensitive to even the slightest change in conditions

that it's taken Johnny five years to perfect this cheese.

Very easy to get it wrong.

But gradually, over the last few years, we've been

gradually getting it more consistent.

With Johnny finally making progress, change was afoot at the farmyard.

This was where the two bulls' pens were and they had to make way

for Mark and Dom. Equally, two, you know...

Handsome bulls.

The family's persistence in mastering this cheese

is now beginning to pay off.

Probably never imagined four years ago quite the growth of our cheese

sales were going to become.

We really are at a maximum of what we can make in here now.

Because they fought on where others failed,

their cheese has found its way into high-end outlets across the country...

..retailing for up to £75.

It's going into many outlets in London, Harrods food hall,

events like Wimbledon, Royal Ascot.

It's been a bit of a manic year, really,

but really exciting as well to see it spread out across the country and

we've even started selling to Paris this year as well, which is the

-final frontier.

-When I go to bed at night, I read a book on cheese.

When I wake up in the morning,

I eat cheese and then I go to work and look at cheese.

Bottle. Yeah.

On top of their incredible success with their cheeses...

..the family has also pioneered a new way to diversify that doesn't cost

a fortune to set up.

Selling raw, unpasteurised milk

from a vending machine direct to the public.

We were the first people to have a raw milk vending machine

on a farm in the UK.

Come on.

Its success motivated them to help other farmers trying to break away

and diversify.

We then started importing vending machines from Italy

and selling them to other dairy farmers,

kind of giving some of our knowledge and experience to fellow dairy

farmers. They have now set up their own machines, selling their milk.

Johnny and Dulcie's innovative spirit pulled their farm through

hard times and they are dedicated

to helping other struggling farmers do the same.

That's a real passion for me now,

is that we could potentially make a change in a bigger way by hopefully

other people seeing what we do and getting

some confidence and encouragement to do the same themselves.

You know, to feel like we're part of a movement, really.

Hopefully, shaking things up a little bit.

Trying to give other farmers a helping hand

just to do the same thing, really.

Putting moving and shaking briefly on hold,

Dulcie turns her mind to the big night ahead.

It's not very often that we get to dress up, is it?

You do have one suit. I'm sure we can dust it off.

-Yes, we're going to look silly, aren't we, on the night?

-Aw!

For this hard-working and revolutionary couple,

spreading the word has secured them their place on this year's shortlist

for the Diversification Farmer Of The Year Award.

These three farming families

have fully embraced the spirit of innovation.

Their passion and ingenuity has ensured the survival of their farms

through extremely challenging times.

And tomorrow night at the Farmers Weekly Awards,

one of them will walk away

with the title of Diversification Farmer Of The Year.

You've always looked at the Farmers' Weekly Awards as the sort of

thing, you know, the Oscars of the farming industry.

To think that we would ever be nominated, never mind be a finalist,

it's a real surprise for us to be up there with them.

I wouldn't want to live in London, but I do enjoy going to London.

And it's a bit special, and that's what I'm looking forward to.

Well, I think your quote last year was, "Win or lose, have a booze."

I don't know.

If we won, I think it would obviously make us feel very good.

You'd probably let everybody know, wouldn't you?

-You'd do a little skip.

-I might do a skip, yeah.

The 13th annual Farmers' Weekly Awards are being held in the heart

of London's Mayfair.

Tonight, this illustrious event will host over 500 farmers

and their families from all over the British Isles.

Coming together to celebrate

the exceptional endeavours within their industry.

Finishing touches for a magnificent evening are being made,

setting the scene for a night of well-deserved celebration.

The awards themselves are by a long way the biggest awards in the industry.

It means a huge amount to the farmers to win these awards,

partly because it's recognition of their peers that they are the best

of the best.

Our judges have spent 10,000 miles visiting and inspecting all of our

finalists. It's a very, very thorough process, so to win

here really means you are right at the top of the farming tree.

Right, we are nearly ready now.

As the ceremony approaches,

the Nicholson boys spruce themselves up for the occasion.

So, in your absence, who's looking after the farm?

-I don't know.

-Who's looking after the farm?

It's a rare opportunity to forget

the day-to-day graft on their busy open farm.

And let their hair down.

-Was that last year?

-It's a boys' night out and we're going to have

a good time. We can work hard and then party hard as well.

Well, not as hard as we used to.

Having travelled the 400 miles from East Lothian in Scotland,

dairy owners and artisan cheese makers Simon and Jackie get ready

for a night out to remember...

-OK.

-All done.

..swapping their boots for bow ties and hair nets for heels.

When you're dressed up for an occasion,

it really gets you up for the occasion.

You enjoy it more, so yeah, we're both really,

-really looking forward to it.

-Very exciting.

Feels a bit like Christmas Eve mixed with the Oscars or something.

-Are you ready?

-Yes. Let's do it.

-OK.

Oh, my shoes are so high!

As the light fades and the other finalists head to the bar,

luxury cheese making farmers Johnny and Dulcie are cutting it fine.

I'd have been much more happy coming in my rubber boots.

They are more comfy than these nasty black shoes.

I'm not sure they'd let you in in your rubber boots.

-Bit smelly.

-Oh, I don't know.

And there's not a welly boot in sight,

as the farmers begin to arrive.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Drinks are served in the Rink Bar.

These hotly contested awards are judged by experts from across

the farming industry.

Thank you very much. Cheers.

The judges had the daunting task of shortlisting just three

from the 30 entrants in the diversification category.

-Dad.

-I'm in, yes.

The Nicholsons at Cannon Hall,

the things they're doing on Facebook live is stuff that farmers across

the country should be doing.

And this is Dad with two glasses.

-He's always got...

-He's Two Glasses Roger.

They are doing an amazing thing.

They've got a farm shop, they've got a visitor attraction.

They're getting the public out on to the farm and they're educating them.

You scrub up well.

The McCreerys at Yester Farm Dairy up in Scotland,

we were really interested and excited to see how a family could

really approach the food sector and champion farmers doing it directly

to the food businesses.

Meanwhile, in the London gridlock...

We don't get traffic like this.

No, I can get to work in two minutes and 48 seconds normally.

Johnny and Dulcie Crickmore at Fen Farm Dairy are a great example

of how a small family farm can not only create those amazing products with their cheese

and butter, but actually lead a bit of a revolution in selling raw milk

and helping other people in the process as well.

If all else fails, we can always get an Indian, can't we?

If we can't make it.

Let's hope the traffic clears...

..because the spectacle has already begun.

Thankfully, they arrive just in the nick of time.

So, we made it by the skin of our teeth.

We are here. It's pretty exciting.

Pretty amazing in here. A huge amount of people here tonight.

Lots of wine. So yes, hopefully it will be a good night.

Time for these hard-working folk to be pampered,

wined and dined in style.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome your host for the evening, Gyles Brandreth!

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

You are by a wide margin the biggest,

most important contributors to the UK economy.

You people! Feel good!

Stirring stuff, but when you get a group of British farmers together

under one roof, all they really want to do is talk shop.

Yes, we finished combining. Like, we are mostly dairy.

I don't know where you draw the line with "young farmer".

If you are a dairy farmer, then if you're in your 50s, you are young.

And the winner of the Young Farmer Of The Year is...

..James Farley.

Over the course of the evening, 18 awards will be presented,

in categories ranging from Young Farmer Of The Year...

Lord Curry of Kirkharle.

..to Lifetime Achievement.

Sean Watson.

With people all around them picking up plaques for their achievements,

it's a nail-biting time for our farmers, as they await their fate.

We're having a wonderful night.

We feel quite nervous, but I'm really excited.

-Good, excited.

-Yes, a couple of glasses of wine really help settle the nerves.

No hope. No hope at all.

Hiya, folks. I hope you can hear me. Our award is the next one.

Finally, the moment arrives.

And ladies and gentlemen, here is the diversification shortlist.

From Fen Farm Dairy in Suffolk, Johnny and Dulcie Crickmore.

From Yester Farm Dairies in East Lothian, Scotland,

Simon and Jackie McCreery.

And from Cannon Hall Farm near Barnsley in South Yorkshire,

the Nicholson family.

To get here, all our farmers have proved themselves exceptional,

through their hard work, determination and ingenuity.

But tonight, only one will come out on top.

And the winner is...

-..Jonathan and Dulcie Crickmore.

-APPLAUSE

Well done, you two. Brilliant.

-Not to be, I'm afraid, guys.

-I'm a little bit disappointed,

but I'll be better in about ten minutes' time.

We didn't quite get there. Rocky did bring four films out,

so who knows, we might give it another year.

-We said all along we didn't expect to win, but we did hope to win.

-There's a wee split-second when

you're up there on the screen and you thought, "Oh, maybe we will win,"

but it's like nothing we've ever been to before, so it's been really amazing.

The highlight of my evening was seeing my wife looking so well.

Oh, yeah, well done. I paid him to say that.

A bit surprised. I really wasn't expecting to win at all.

I've read Farmers' Weekly magazine ever since I was a little boy,

looking at cows and tractors, so,

yes, I don't think it'll probably sink in for a few days.

I think winning tonight will help us push on to trying things out which

are even more daring, but equally,

I think this also goes out to all of the people back at the farm.

I was just thinking, where are we going to put it tomorrow?