NORTH Perrott Fruit Farm has been featured in a national television programme looking at the history of agriculture.

Archive film footage of the family farm, near Crewkerne, was shown in Mud, Sweat and Tractors: The Story of Agriculture.

The BBC4 programme charting changes in the way fruit and veg has been grown, picked and sold since the early 20th Century.

Jonathan Hoskyns, who now runs the farm along with the farm shop and garden centre with his wife Anwen, said: "The production company carried out some research to find archive footage of farms and they came across some of our farm stored by Trilith, a charity that archives and preserves family cine film.

"It was from 1952 about a year of the life on the farm."

It is believed the footage was shot by the Government department responsible for food and rural affairs at the time.

A copy is going to be given to Crewkerne & District Museum.

Mr Hoskyns had not seen the film before and said it was very interesting to see the farm in the past and people working on it who are still alive now.

The production company visited the farm several times last year to see it at work and obtain home movie footage taken in the 1930s by Jonathan's grandfather, Henry Hoskyns.

Jonathan said: "I was very happy about the bits they choose to use.

"The footage of the farm put colour to the stories I have been told about. You could recognise the buildings, the orchards and fields and how much they have changed in 60 years."

For Jonathan there have been major changes in the production of apples since the farm was set up by his grandfather in 1930.

He said: "We plan a lot more. Everything is picked from the ground, rather than higher trees, to reduce labour and improve quality.

"The apples are still picked by hand and it is still hard work. The other side is the marketing, storing and grading. It used to be done on the farm but when we joined the Common Market the price of apples dropped through the floor.

"My father joined a cooperative in 1975. It shares our storing, grading and marketing with 12 other farms based in Ledbury in Herfordshire."

The farm now sells 60,000 bottles a year and up to 300 tonnes of apples a year from its 75 acres of orchards.