BOLTON’S only farmer to bottle and sell his own milk proved he is the “cream of the crop” by scooping top prize at the country’s premier agricultural event.

Michael Partington, who runs Dearden’s Farm in Over Hulton with his wife Anne-Marie, was presented with three first prize awards for his milk, including the prestigious best overall dairy product at the Great Yorkshire Show in Harrogate.

Completing a highly successful day for the Partington family, his daughter, Laura, aged 14, achieved a second place for showing a heifer in her class.

Mr Partington, who lives at the farm with his wife and five children, said he was delighted to bring home first place prizes for the best pasteurised whole milk, the best milk from an individual cow and the top overall dairy product award.

He added: “It felt absolutely brilliant to win the awards, really superb.

“The Great Yorkshire Show is a really big deal in the farming community and anyone across the country can enter.

“We are the only farm to personally bottle and sell our milk in Bolton and we hope these prestigious awards will encourage people to buy our product — they will know it is ours because all our milk has a distinctive white top on its bottles.”

The 51-year-old took over the running of the farm from his parents in 2005.

Next year will see the 60th anniversary of the Partington family’s involvement with the farm in Manchester Road.

He sells the milk through his own farm shop and local newsagents, as well as supplying the larger dairies.

Mr Partington said: “I was really pleased to win the first two awards and then got told that our milk, from one of our Ayrshire cows, had qualified to challenge for the top dairy product prize, which involved about 70 different entries — I couldn’t believe it when we won that outright as well.

“It was great to see Laura do really well with the showing of the heifer as well.”

The experienced farmer will not be ‘milking it’ for too long — as he insists he wants to go and win the same award at next year’s show.