A RURAL home-based enterprise is defying the recession by seeking to expand into new premises.

Fryton Catering was the brainchild of mother-of-seven, Linda Dickinson, who set it up in the kitchen of her farmhouse in Fryton after obtaining a degree in hotel and catering management and working in top hotels in Harrogate, York and Torquay.

Linda said: “I wanted to use my skills after having my children and my husband, Gawen, has a smallholding keeping rare breeds, so it all came together very well.”

Word quickly spread of her culinary skills, and she found herself catering for as many as 600 for one recent function, and 2,000 over a weekend, with regular wedding parties of 200.

But despite having a state-of-the-art kitchen, Linda says her business has outgrown it, and she is now looking to expand the company and have a permanent centre away from the family home.

Gawen, who is also a Ryedale police sergeant, has expanded the number of livestock he keeps on the 15-acre smallholding, with the result that it and its large vegetable garden, provides Fryton Catering with much of its produce.

“We have two sows, which have two litters of about 15 piglets a year so we had to ask ourselves what we did with them,” said Linda.

As well as running a thriving family business and doing all the cooking herself, Linda also provides part-time employment for several local people in roles of waiters and servers.

Her clients include many Ryedale families wanting catering for wedding and Christening parties, funeral wakes, dinner parties, birthdays, and hampers for Castle Howard functions.

Meals are prepared from the Gloucester Old Spot pigs and Dexter beef, together with eggs from the 50 hens, produced on the smallholding.

“I was concerned about the credit crunch, but things seem to have gone from strength to strength despite it,” said Linda.