Spring is just around the corner, Teifi Valley

Despite the chill dampness and general gloominess with which we are swathed at present there are signs that spring will arrived in due course. I found the first primroses a few weeks ago and the snowdrops are coming out all along the drive and in hidden corners of the orchards & gardens. The daffodils are spearing upwards at a great pace and many of them are showing swelling buds and before we know it we shall be having golden skeins and pools around the farm. Something glorious to look forward to.

Today I attended a Tourism Business Support Roadshow event held in Newcastle Emlyn. It was put on by Carmarthenshire Tourism Association to enable tourism businesses and associated organisations to network, to use the jargon.
I am tending to refer to local tourism rather a lot a present as I am involved with setting up a new organisation to promote the Teifi Valley, the part of north Carmarthenshire where I live. Visit Teifi Valley (VTV) is being set up and run by a group of volunteers like myself who with the support Carmarthenshire & Ceredigion Tourist Associations and visit Wales will work to promote the valley of the river Teifi which forms the county boundary between the two counties and a small corner of north Pembrokeshire. It is an area rich in history, stunning & varied landscapes, superb castles and delightful market towns & small villages, remnants of a former flourishing wool industry which at one time produced great wealth for the area. It is a region that is little known yet when discoverd by visitors enchants & delights with its multi-faceted character.

Dinefwr Park, Carmarthenshire

Yesterday courtesy of Carmarthen Tourism & the National Trust the Farmer I went on a 'familiarisation' tour of Dinefwr Park, near Llandeilo. We have been there many times before but this was a day organised for accommodation providers in the area to enable them to encourage holiday-makers to visit some of the most interesting places in the county.
Dinefwr certainly offers a marvellous & varied place to visit.
The dramatic ruined 12th century Dinefwr castle is wonderful, perched broodingly on a hill looking down over the beautiful Towy Valley in the sweeping 18th century landscaped parkland. In the park there is herd of the very rare White Park cattle who have been at Dinefwr for 1,000 years.
The park surrounds the extraordinary Newtown House with its four turrets and great portico. All this is in addition to the 120 acre medieval deer-park in which roams a herd of about 160 fallow deer. There are lovely walks through the park and woods and a great feature of the park is the vast number of 'veteran' trees. These are trees that are many hundreds of years old of which there are said to be some dating back 700 years and it is thought to be the largest collection of veteran trees in the country.
We were taken round the park in a purpose-built people trailer towed by a tractor. I have never been so cold despite tweed coat, pashmina shawl & sheepskin gloves! It was a fine day though not sunny and intensely cold so sitting in an open-sided trailer for an hour was not ideal. We were in a party of about 15 people & we were all absolutely frozen and as soon as we got back to Newtown House we all rushed in to find the nearest radiators to huddle up to! Once we had thawed out we were taken on a tour of the 'hidden house' which included going up into the roof space and then out onto the leads where the views were spectacular in all directions. The vistas were just as they had been designed by 'Capability' Brown in the 18th century and there are trees planted at that time looking superb in the landscape including a wonderful Cedar of Lebanon. The fallow deer were grazing near the house and we had the lovely sight of them all from the stags with their strange dished antlers to the does and last year's fawns in their natural setting.

Winter Landscapes, Winter Farming

My 300th posting! and as so often the weather will feature! It is soooo cold, but dry and today it was sunny so really a lovely day. There is still ice around and tiny pockets of snow with the top fields looking as though someone has gone over them with sugar sifter.

We recieved an email from an old friend today who grew up here on the farm & is now warden of the RSPB bird reserve on the Dyfi estuary in Ceredigion & he sent a beautiful description of winter on the estuary & his memories of Penyrallt in winter;

'It is a spectacularly beautiful, brilliantly sunlit day. Frost is suspended in slow moving curtains across the valley, creating an icy haze. Frost crystals suspended on wind bleached strands of sedge and molinia tall grasses, shiver to create the most exquisite delicate musical notes. Deep frost covers all saltings; Sheet ice covers all tidal scrapes and pools and ice begins to form up on all river shallows,and gravel bed fringes at lowest tidal ebb.
We have lost our earlier overwintering 400+ Barnacle geese; they have moved on but our Goldeneye, Teal, fewer Pintail, Little Grebes and Egrets, three pairs of Kites, Wigeon and Greylags provide daily company.

On beautiful, hazy frosty days such as this, my mind often drifts southward only to settle and relive again those magnificent landscapes across fields and wooded slopes and secret track-way from Penrallt Home Farm, leading down to the Siedi. The bouquet of your oak woods in November and the magical "silence" of your land when under deep snow. The utterly spellbinding discovery of "Roding" male Woodcock in airborne courtship display at dusk, in spring and early summer, over your woods in that shallow valley between you and neighbouring Mountain Farm, are all deeply embedded with permanence.'

After that lovely lyricism back to bald agricultural realities; The last couple of days have seen proper winter farming activity with the spreading of slurry on the fields. Big tractors take long pipes out to the fields. This pipe system is know as the umbilical cord and the pipes are filled by a tractor-mounted pump standing by the slurry lagoon. The slurry then is sprayed onto the fields which in this dry weather means it can seep into the ground distributing the invaluable nutrients to enrich the soil & encourage good grass growth which is so important to our organic system. Nutrient rich soil is the key to a healthy organic system which in its turn is the key to nutritionally rich food.

Snow

We awoke this morning to find it had snowed overnight (a complete contradiction to what the weather forecast had told us yesterday!) and now I am sitting in my warm kitchen while it snows very heavily, so much so that the view beyond the yard is quite obscured. I love it! I have a very well stocked larder and deep freeze and so being snowed in does not present too many problems other than making sure the milk is able to be collected. in bad weatherIf things look serious the Farmer & sons will go out and scrape the drive open up a more level access that should ensure the tanker can get in & out without being towed. The slope on our yard sometimes makes this necessary if there is ice on the ground.

We have guests in the cottage and I'm sure they will be enjoying the dramatic turn in the weather during their holiday and will cosy-up by the wood-burning stove very contentedly. An unexpected snowfall always makes for a memorable holiday.

First Snowdrops ,The Common Agricultural Policy

The 1st of February & I found the first snowdrops this morning, always a cheerful sight especially with the current bitter weather we've been having. We seem to have had days of sleet & hail but no actual snow unlike other parts of the country, although neighbours 2-3 miles away but few feet higher than us have reported a sprinkling of snow on their roads & fields.

The Farmer & I attended a meeting of the local branch of the Farmer's Union of Wales
(www.fuw.org.uk) a couple of evenings ago. The meeting was to bring us an update on the Common Agricultural Policy for 2015. And what a complicated, long-winded and at times incomprehensible set of documents it is!
As farmers we have always been supported (& that is a whole other point for discussion), but the way in how this support is delivered is changing this year, bringing in a raft of new rules & definitions. For example the new rules on trees & hedges...if there are 3 trees in a straight line then they could constitute a hedge or 'a landscape feature' but if they are growing together and create a canopy then the land underneath them will be deducted from any area payment made, even if that land is grazed or harvested. There is also a document on the definition of a tree!
The new system of payments is moving from historic to area-based payments though no-one seems very clear on exactly what is going be brought in. It seems the Welsh Assembly itself is not sure what is going on either and the FUW ( and other farming bodies)is left in state of frustration at not being able to give clarity on a number of issues raised by farmers.
The only thing that is certain is that the subsidy payments are going to be less than in previous years.

Farming & Farmers

The crisis in the dairy industry has taken the BBC news headline today and it may encourage people to really start thinking about where their food comes, not just milk, and how vulnerable we are as farmers to market forces. What other industry finds itself selling a product for less than it costs to produce and be able to stay in business.
In December the number of dairy farmers in Britain dropped to below 10,000, a 50%(!!!) fall since 2001.
There are always people out there who have a perception that farmers are miserable,complaining curmudgeons, well maybe they too would complain if they felt that they were working for nothing and were unable to do anything about it.
The general public's view of farming & farmers is confused I think.
On the one hand there is the bucolic rose-tinted idea of the merry peasant tilling his ground and tending his animals and on the other there is the greedy, factory farmer keeping livestock in huge sheds & despoiling the land. Both views are extreme nonsense.
The reality is that farming covers a wide spectrum of methods, lifestyles and aspirations. We all work hard in often very difficult and challenging conditions & using methods that are often misunderstood by the consumer but at the end of the day we are all producing that most basic of human requirements, food.
Without farmers and educators (those who pass on knowledge, not just peddlers of information)there is nothing.

First Milk Meeting, Weekend Shooting

A cold sparkling silver morning with the blackbirds and robins trilling away merrily in th hedgerows. The dogs love this weather, as do I, and whilst I do not leap and prance around with the frost in my toes like them, I do enjoy the briskness it brings to our daily walks.

Further to my last post, we attended the First Milk meeting and listened to Sir Jim Paice explaining the current dire situation regarding the milk price.
In simple terms there is simply too much milk on the world market and this affects the whole system from the farmers onwards. It is a very complicated business and I can't begin to try to explain it as I barely understand it myself but it has meant that the price to farmers has dropped dramatically. First Milk has deferred its payments to the farmers by two weeks and this deferrment is to continue until August. Some farms are going to really struggle...some 60 farms left the industry in December alone.
I take back my comment in the last post about the chairman & board not having their salaries deferred as Sir Jim did tell us that they had in fact deferred them at some point last year (though possiblynot with the same impact on their lives as it is having with the people who actually milk cows).
The whole thing will rumble on for some considerable time yet, but the general atmosphere at the meeting which was attended by anything up to 200 farmers, was reasonably amiable though many are very worried. We were presented with facts & figures and there was no trying to hide behind statistics & jargon.

We have had a very busy weekend with some of Younger Son's friends, their labradors & girlfriends arriving on Friday for a weekend's shooting. All very jolly. The two visiting dogs are the offspring of my lab Hattie and siblings of Younger Son's lab Jess. It was interesting to see family likenesses so strongly apparent. They are all very good-looking dogs and very well trained and therefore much admired when out in the field.

First Snows, The Price of Milk

We're half way through January and we've had the first snowfall. Not a great deal but enough to transform the landscape into something magical. Whether there will be any more we'll have to wait and see. I do rather hope there will be...I know it makes a lot of work for us all but it is such fun.

As some of you may be aware there has been much coverage in the media about the price of milk; that it is cheaper than bottled water, that many farmers are being paid less than the cost of production. The company that has been in the firing line this week is First Milk, the company that we have a contract with. They have made the decision to defer payments to we producers until the end of the month instead of paying us in the middle of the month, and have dropped the price by 2 pence per litre. This has been done to improve their cash flow problems.
The big question for us is will the electricity company, the phone company, the local petrol station be willing to accept deferred payment from us as a result? Somehow I think not.
Also, is the chairman of First Milk having his huge salary deferred? Again, I think not!
Anway, we have been summoned to a meeting tomorrow with the chairman to 'discuss the full details of last week's announcement'. I guess it may be a rather tense gathering.
Milk industry politics have been volatile for long time and it seems that they are continueing to be so. It is to be hoped that some significant changes can come about with regard to the price paid to the farmers and the price of milk for the consumer. With fewer than 10,000 dairy farms in the UK and more leaving the industry something has to be done.