'If we're going to be champion we'd need to win the Gold Cup and the National'

It is the land Thomas Hardy called the Vale of the Little Dairies and the Tizzards have played their part in the guardianship of this bucolic quilt of green fields, hedgerows and cows. On a quiet winter's morning, away from the hum of the A30, it's tempting to believe that nothing has changed here since Leslie and Marjorie Tizzard started milking 65 years ago, then brought their baby son Colin back to live in their caravan at Venn Farm, at the edge of the village of Milborne Port – but, of course, a lot has changed.

'Hardy Country' is still mostly intact. The fields and hedgerows of the Blackmore Vale are still here – its status as part of the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty sees to that – and Colin's sister and brothers still milk over 5,000 cows between them, but the last decade has seen a concerted shift in the landscape the family inhabits. Down here at Venn, the change has been slow and steady, but into the village, those few crucial yards over the hill and across the border into Somerset, a tiny industrial revolution has taken place.

At Spurles Farm, Colin has made the quiet yet seismic shift from hunting, point-to-pointing, dairy farming son of the soil, to fully-fledged National Hunt practitioner. The tiny operation set up to provide son Joe with rides in the pointing field grew beyond recognition; the dairy farmer with a few horses evolved into a proper trainer with some cows; now the most significant event of all – both symbolically and practically – has inevitably come to pass, and the fields around here have taken on a different aspect.