FARMERS' Cart, the award-winning farm shop and caf, is to grow a bigger and better, adding a classroom to its chalet-style building at Towthorpe, near York.

Hundreds of children take school trips to Farmers' Cart - which was the 2003 supreme champion of the Evening Press Eat Local competition - but have had nowhere to shelter, after learning that potatoes and carrots do not grow on trees.

But now Geoff and Margaret Sykes are investing £120,000 to extend their popular fresh food emporium.

Work is now under way, staggered to ensure that the venture remains open.

By the time that the building is finished in the late spring the caf will have doubled in size to serve 70 people, the farm shop will be a third larger, the kitchens will be more extensive and, at the insistence of Margaret, a former teacher, the classroom will be ready. "It will be a place where teachers will be able to formalise all that the children have learned in our fields. It might also double for children's parties or for use as conference facilities," said Geoff.

The prospect of bringing farming closer to the consumer was what drove the couple to set up the business in June 2002, with the help of a Rural Enterprise Scheme grant from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Previously, the Sykes family ran a pig farm at Church Fenton, near Tadcaster, where they also harvested lettuces and strawberries for commercial use.

But faced with competition from cheaper, imported pork, they moved to their Towthorpe farm, which grows and sells most vegetables for their shop and caf.

It also has sheep and a herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle.

Geoff Sykes said: "We will resume raising a small herd of pigs just to supply the shop."

Updated: 09:38 Tuesday, January 25, 2005