Bungay farmer Jonny Crickmore acquired what was the Two Magpies Bake School at Darsham, near Yoxford, last autumn with the aim of creating his biggest farm shop to date.

The shop - which is currently being revamped and fitted out ready for opening around June - lies opposite the Two Magpies café and bakery at Darsham.

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Dairy farmer Jonny Crickmore of Fen Farm Dairy at the 2025 Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival (Image: Sarah Chambers)

Jonny started with an "honesty" shop on his farm selling his raw, unpasteurised milk from a vending machine.

More recently, he launched a small manned shop on the A140 at the Roy Humphrey Industrial Estate at Eye Airfield.

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The latest shop will still be small but at 8m by 6m about twice the size of his Eye venture.

Around half the space will be for storage and he envisages operating it on the same automated "honesty" basis as the Bungay farm shop with a member of staff on site.

"The theme of having a farm shop along a busy road is continuing with Darsham," he said.

"We saw the opportunity - the building came up for sale and I guess our brands align quite nicely - we thought it could be a really good spot."

He is keen to continue the trend of keeping his farm shops small. It will stock his raw milk, cheeses, butter and other dairy products along with some deli items and other foodstuffs, he explained.

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Jonny Crickmore of Fen farm Dairy, Bungay (Image: Nick Butcher)

His latest product - keffir milk - which is due to launch in the next few months - will also feature.

"We don't do big ones," he said. "The shops are more like a farm shop express - they are not designed to offer you a crazy amount of choice."

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It won't have a cheese counter, a deli counter and convenience goods like larger farm shops and isn't designed for your weekly shop, he said.

"What it's there for is to showcase our own stuff but really tasty local food that you could make a meal of. It's easy to swing by and get your dinner," he said.

"The Suffolk coast has no raw milk available so that will be first for that area and obviously our cheeses but also we do where we can support local producers."

He added: "We are going to collaborate with Two Magpies on some of the products but we don't want to be in direct competition."

The Eye shop is coming up to its third anniversary in April. At first he wasn't sure what he was doing he admitted, but "what we have kind of done without realising it is created a quick grab-and-go good quality grocery store".

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"It's done well. The first year it struggled a bit because people didn't know it was there," he said.

"It really frustrated me driving down that stretch of the A140 - there was nothing nice - you had the usual garage food but there was nothing like local food and good quality food. That was the intention - to put good food on a local road."

By contrast, there are good offerings along the A12, he said. His aim is to have "more of a presence on the coast"

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The former Two Magpies Bake School at Darsham (Image: Google Maps)

Jonny became chairman of the annual Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival at Snape Maltings last year.

Two Magpies owner Steve Magnall has also been a regular at the festival for a number of years and has known Jonny for a long time.

Thirteen years ago, Fen Farm diversified from producing milk to making cheese produced on farm.

Baron Bigod is a Brie-de-Meaux style cheese from his herd of Montbéliarde cattle and Raedwald is a washed-rind soft seasonal cheese.

The factory employs around 55 people and produces 180 tonnes of cheese a year which is sold all over the world including the US.

Dairy farmer Jonny Crickmore of Fen Farm Dairy at the 2025 Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival (Image: Sarah Chambers)

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