Making jams and preserves began as a necessity for Lesley Kettlewell when her son was diagnosed with a severe additive allergy.

But it soon grew into an award-winning business, which keeps her very busy indeed.

WHILE she was talking to us, Lelsey Kettlewell actually sat down for 45 minutes, something she rarely does. As well as being a farmer's wife, mother to three sons and helping her brother run their family business - the well known Elijah Allen's grocer and delicatessen in Hawes - Lesley makes jam, chutneys and pickles.

Not surprisingly, she often works an 18-hour day and, like Margaret Thatcher, can survive on four hours sleep - very useful at lambing time.

But she is becoming best known for Raydale Preserves, a flourishing range, which regularly wins top awards, including a gold medal from the Guild of Fine Food Retailers for its marmalade.

Always an enthusiastic cook, she did even more when her middle son, Andrew, developed an extreme allergy to additives.

"I baked all his food and made all his jams. Any we didn't need, I just put for sale in the shop," she says.

Soon she could hardly keep up with demand. The preserving pan was never off the stove in the kitchen. "It got to the stage where we just couldn't produce enough."

The next step was to convert an old barn next to their house in Stalling Busk into a professionally equipped jam-making kitchen. (Not as quick and easy as it sounds - never mind the builders, it took around 18 months of paperwork) and now the business is going from strength to strength and is very much a family concern.

Oldest son Richard now runs the farm, so father Derek can help with the jam business and as well as two employees, younger sons Andrew and Mathew get roped in too.

But it's still true to its original idea of everything being as pure and natural as possible.

"I like to know where all the ingredients come from, " says Lesley, "So we get all our soft fruit from a farmer friend near Thirsk. Our damsons come from Kirby Stephen. Some ingredients, such as blueberries, have to come from further afield but we check them out as much as we can."

The recipes are a mixture of her own, family favourites and others given to her. "A lady from Bradford has just sent me a recipe for a gooseberry sauce, which looks interesting," she says.

Others never quite made it - Raydale Preserves sell well in the Castle Museum in York and the curator sent Lesley some 18th century recipes to try.

"Some of them used a pound of salt, which they were very keen on in those days. You just couldn't do that now."

While older customers tend to prefer the traditional varieties - lemon curd, strawberry and damson - younger customers are more adventurous.

"I've recently developed a pickle that I've called Hellish Relish, " says Lesley wickedly. "It takes 48 chillies to every 4lb of tomatoes. Everyone hates making it but it's flying off the shelves. Youngsters love it."

Now the aim is to extend the range of the preserves and the number of stockists. At the moment you can buy their range at farm shops, delicatessens throughout the region, as well as at the Castle Museum in York and York Farmers' Market. They also regularly visit food fairs and, this weekend, will have a stall at the Dales Festival of Food and Drink in Leyburn.

So it could be some time before Lesley gets to put her feet up...

* The Dales Festival of Food and Drink, a celebration of food, drink and farming in the Yorkshire Dales, takes place in Leyburn tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, 10am -5pm.

More than 70 exhibitors will be selling the best of local produce - everything from cheese to chocolate, meat to marmalade, beer to bacon and pies, puddings and plants.

As well as stalls selling produce in the main marquee, there will be a full programme of demonstrations of cookery, cheese making, chocolate making and flower arranging, WI Market, farming display, Real Ale Trail, Tea Shop Trail and more.

Adults £2, Under 16s free, Free park and ride. www.dalesfestivaloffood.org

BY buying some Raydale jam or chutney, you could be helping to rebuild a dry stone wall, uncovering a medieval monastic sheepwash or funding a footpath to a Bronze Age settlement.

When the Kettlewells first started selling their jams in a small way, they decided to put the money towards conservation on their 450 acres.

"For farmers these days, conservation is a luxury, not really something you can do in the ordinary run of things, " says Lesley, "When Derek's father took the farm over it was very run down and at a really bad time for farming and he wasn't able to do much, and we've always wanted to do what we can."

So far, the jam money has paid for a thousand trees, fenced an ancient wood and paid for 1,000 metres of dry stone walling. - there's a team almost permanently on the farm.

Now the dale is quiet, Stalling Busk is literally the end of the road, with only 12 houses, six of them permanently occupied and with the Kettlewells the only family locally born.

"But it's had a thriving population in the past, from Bronze Age settlements, the Roman road, drovers' roads to more recent times when the dale was entirely self sufficient and there were more than 60 children at the school. In the 14th and 15th centuries the great monasteries kept their sheep here. It was big business."

Among the next projects the Kettlewells want to use the jam money for is to uncover a medieval monastic sheepwash and sheepfold. They also want to put in three permissive footpaths, enabling walkers to come and see the history of the dale and its landscape.

"We have some wonderful waterfalls on our land and it seems wrong to keep them to ourselves, " says Lesley, with remarkable generosity. "We firmly believe that you can never really own land, you're just custodians for future generations and we want people to be able to share it."

Eat jam and conserve the countryside - has to be worth a pot or two.