The view from Juliet Rogers' office window is across moorland, pastureland, undulating hillsides and high, wide skies. Closer to home, every species of bird seems to be thriving in her garden - well-fed and predator-free - and a few sheep chew away lazily. We are a mile from Whitley Chapel in Northumberland, over the fells from Hexham. Quiet it may be, isolated it isn't. Juliet has just come off the phone after organising conferences in Switzerland and Germany and she is about to take another call from America. It's proof that the Government's drive to connect the smallest of hamlets by broadband to the internet is working - and small busineses can not only exist but survive very nicely miles from the nearest Tesco. "Business Link helped to get the computer and the internet connection," she says, "and One NortEast were a tremendous help, plus it means I'm not leaping into the car and driving miles here and there. It's what the Government has been promising - we've got broadband in all the local villages." Juliet runs Quest For Taste Publishing from her handsome farmhouse and the only difference between her business and a city centre-based operation is that her cockerel is likely crow at some time during a telephone conversation to shatter the metropolitan illusion. Quest For Taste published its first book (by the same name) late last year. It features the best in the region's food producers from honey to ham, interspersed with recipes from restaurateur Terry Laybourne, Newcastle's sole Michelin star recipient. The book is also written in a lyrical, easy style by Stuart Howson with stunning photographs by Duncan Davis, whom Juliet represents as an agent. "We'd been talking about a book for ever and a day," says Juliet. "It was always too difficult to get off the ground, but eventually, we said, let's just have a go. So we went to London around all these publishers who were all very sniffy, saying a book on regional produce wouldn't sell." That's when the idea formed that she should set up her own publishing company to run alongside the freelance marketing work she does for Procter & Gamble. "It's more than just a cookery book," she says. "We wanted to make a celebrity of the North-East. "Stuart, who works at Alnwick Playhouse, is very knowledgeable on local history and was able to bring the more newsy bits to it - and Helen Pickles is a great food writer. Geographically, it covers the whole North-East. It's about the provenance of foods and how they're cooked. It's set out so you start at Terry Laybourne's Newcastle restaurant, Cafe 21, then work your way through Northumberland up over the Border and back down the coast." Everything about Quest For Taste is North-East based. Flying Fish in Newcastle handled the design work and it was printed by NB Printers on Team Valley in Gateshead. The book is an inspiring journey through the region's best, most attentive and understanding food producers such as Steve Ramshaw, producing lamb; Anne and Hugh Gray at Ravensworth Grange, Gateshead, rearing pigs within sight of the Angel of the North; the Pattinsons farming Blue Grey cattle virtually on Hadrian's Wall and the Jersey cows that add extra flavour to Wheelbirks' ice-cream near Corbridge. "All the producers had something different to offer in slightly different ways," says Juliet. "We're now looking at a series - Yorkshire next, we're getting a lot of interest from there, and we're at an international food event in London. "The advantage of working like this is that we're a self-employed cluster but none of us works entirely alone - we're not isolated at all, which is often the problem with people who become key workers in big corporations. They can feel isolated from colleagues when they opt to work from home." Juliet also finds time to organise the successful use of Exmoor ponies ("rarer than giant pandas") for environmental grazing, where they crop the grass in ecologically-sensitive areas and leave wild flowers alone, particularly at sites of special scientific interest. She works closely with English Nature, the National Trust and Gateshead Council on various environmental projects. As previously mentioned, this is a mile from Whitley Chapel in Northumberland - isn't it supposed to be cities that never sleep? l Visit: www.questfortaste.co.uk | 
