A site for 100 Dartmoor farmers: copy, video, and a brand story

What the site is

Dartmoor Farmers is the website for the Dartmoor Farmers Association, over 100 farmers across Dartmoor. The site tells the story of Dartmoor farming, from the heritage of commoning and conservation to the farm-to-fork journey of Dartmoor beef and lamb. It showcases partnerships with Goosemoor (wholesale distribution) and Educatering (school meals), profiles individual farmers, and highlights environmental stewardship work.

The challenge

The association needed a site that could show what Dartmoor farming really involves to several audiences at once: consumers, partner organisations, schools and policymakers. The content had to be written from scratch, the site needed to feel warm and grounded rather than corporate, and the project included a full video production component: filming on working Dartmoor farms and producing professional videos for the site.

What I built

Full site design and build. Designed and developed pages for Our Story, Meet the Farmers, Nature on our Farms, Goosemoor & Educatering, Farm to Fork, and Contact.

The partnership sections alternate left and right down the page, with each photograph running to the edge of the screen, so two quite different relationships get the same amount of room without the page turning into a list.

Copywriting. All website content written from scratch, working directly with the farmers to capture their stories accurately.

The association’s origin story is a group of Dartmoor farmers going to Lenk in Switzerland in the early 2000s to see how upland farming and tourism worked together there. That isn’t something you can write from a brief. It came out of sitting down with the people who went.

Video production. For the first round of films I produced, edited and directed everything myself: filming on three working farms across three seasons, then editing, post-production and publishing. They sit together on Meet the Farmers, each film paired with that farmer’s own story.

Spring at Greenwell Farm with Mat Cole, summer at Callisham Farm, autumn at Great Dunstone Farm above Widecombe. Driving up onto the moor with a camera, then writing the profile that sits under each one.

Mobile optimisation. Full responsive design with particular attention to performance on mobile devices.

Hosting and migration. Site transfer to SiteGround, plus DNS and email configuration.

Why it matters

This is what “local” looks like in practice: driving up onto Dartmoor with a camera, sitting at kitchen tables, learning enough about the farming year to write the copy without sounding like a brochure. It helps that I come from a Dartmoor farming family myself, so the subject matter wasn’t new to me.

Who holds the camera now

These days I work with a dedicated videographer and photographer rather than holding the camera myself. It’s the same logic as hiring a web developer instead of doing it yourself: a specialist turns the work round faster, and that saves the client money. They’re available to any of my clients who want professional photos or video for their site.