ONE of the oldest sayings in the countryside is that "you are what you eat" and this is especially true of the livestock we all need to eat in order to live.

This is more so in today's world when food is transported long distances from sources where food and hygiene standards as we know them in this country are often non-existent.

But even here in the UK, purists find it very difficult to find good wholesome food, which has been reared in the open air and fed simple old-fashioned food.

Even organic food is seldom as good as it should be and often lacks that extra taste which is very hard to define.

With these rather cynical thoughts in my mind, I went to Harome this week to look at a rather different poultry enterprise which has been set up to meet the demands for good free-range oven-ready poultry.

Today, this is being produced by Loose Birds Harome Ltd, which is a partnership set up by farmer Ian Rooke and Dr Paul Talling, who both live in the village.

This new venture has been established at Harome because Paul's wife was very concerned about the way chickens were reared for the table even in this country and refused to serve them in her kitchen.

Paul told me he loves chicken and decided that he would rear his own poultry in order to satisfy his wife that his birds were properly reared in environmentally-friendly conditions and, in the process, discovered that the taste of his own chickens was a great improvement on birds from the shops.

Friends and neighbours heard about the special qualities of his chickens and the new venture at Harome has grown, and today they are rearing and processing 10,000 oven-ready chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks a year.

The geese are all bred and reared on the holding but all the rest of the livestock are bought in as day-olds from specialist breeders and are from old-fashioned strains of the breeds which were originally developed to be reared out of doors during the early part of the last century.

But as well as being specially bred to provide quick growth and good carcases, these birds are also fed on a special diet formulated by Paul, which includes barley and wheat, dried grass and maize, all good, wholesome feeding stuffs, which in turn provide that flavour which has been lost in modern day mass-produced birds.

Because they are unable to purchase organic feeding stuffs which will give the growth rates and quality they need, these birds cannot be sold as organic, but the free range system they adopt, coupled with a very low stocking density per acre, gives the birds a very friendly and stress-free environment.

The day-old chicks are reared in brooders and as soon as the young birds are old enough to live without heat, they go outside into huts in grass paddocks on free range with access to food and water and lots of space and fresh air.

This cuts out the stress, which is a problem on large-scale rearing units.

Foxes are normally the bane of free-range poultry units, but the birds are well fenced in with the added security of a six-strand electric fence, which will deter all but the most determined fox.

The birds are all killed and dressed on the farm, cutting out the stress of travelling and are all distributed locally either direct to customers or through local marketing organisations like Moorsfresh, as well as farm shops and traditional butchers, pubs and restaurants in our part of North Yorkshire.

In addition to the reared poultry, the partners also pluck, dress and sell all kinds of fresh game from local shoots and also sell wild deer all jointed and packaged ready to eat.

This is a very interesting new venture here in the heart of Ryedale producing poultry and game in an oven-ready form which is not only reared in the way Grandma used to rear her Christmas poultry, but also manages to recapture those old-fashioned flavours which we all thought had been lost forever.

As well as this, Paul and Ian also maintain old-fashioned standards of quality control and hygiene which today are known as "farm-assured", a standard which is always applied on the best farms and leads to repeat orders from their customers who like good food.

Updated: 12:07 Wednesday, December 17, 2003