Richard McComb discover the farm shop of his dreams - but its future hangs in the balance.

Grace Barnes, the fourth generation of her farming family, shows me the vaulted former oat barn where civic marriages are held at Packington Moor.

It’s a lovely spot and the brick and beam building, with its minstrels’ gallery, looks ideal for the wedding snaps. You can imagine brides in big dresses floating through the cornfields to meet the love of their life at the entrance to the barn.

But all that could be about to change.

“It will come up through the field by the drive, through the wedding venue,” says Grace.

She’s not talking about the next wedding entourage – Packington will host 100 weddings this year – but rather the proposed HS2 high speed train link that threatens to devastate the tranquillity of the farm and wreck the Barnes’ family livelihood.

As I marvel at the produce on sale at Packington’s farm shop, from the deli counter and in-house baking to the pickles, cakes and soft fruits, mention of HS2 serves as a jolting reminder of the economic uncertainties faced by local food producers and retailers in rural areas. HS2 may be at the extreme end of potential threats but it shatters any complacent urban view of the countryside as a place of unimpeded bucolic pleasure.

Grace’s father John bought the farm in 2001 – they used to be tenant farmers – and it now comprises 700 acres, mostly arable with 250 sheep. The farm, taken over in 1921 by Grace’s great grandfather Septimus Barnes, had set up a small shop in the 1980s but the retail business really took off in 2009 when a former turkey shed was converted with the help of a Redundant Building Grant.

The single-storey timber construction had to stay true to the original design and the interior beams and quirky, small, high-level windows have been retained in the shop/cafe.

Grace gave up her job in magazine publishing in London to return to the farm and run the shop and its new cafe. Her brother Henry grows vegetables and soft fruits in a five-acre plot for sale in the farm shop and his fiancée, Josephine Wilson, manages the weddings and other functions for Packington Moor Events. It is a family affair and mum Rosemary is helping out in the shop when I visit, tending to the fruit and veg display. This is very much a farming business, but it is one matched for the 21st century and it has good food very much at its core.

“It is my passion. Farming is my roots,” says Grace as she talks about Packington’s commitment to selling quality home-baked products, meals and local produce.

“I still believe in British agriculture. I think it is important to show people how to eat well and where to get good food from.”

The shop makes up to 70 per cent of the produce it sells including pies, patés, terrines, sausage rolls, roast meats, frittatas, soups, ready meals and canapés. All the savoury products, including the black pudding Scotch eggs, are made in a kitchen adjoining the cafe and there is a production kitchen for the cakes, pastries and biscuits across the yard. A sign outside the shop is a statement of intent and a pledge: “If our product bears our name we guarantee it was made here from scratch.”