Keep Britain Farming; Country Living magazine campaign

After a very long time since my last posting I have grabbed a few minutes to catch-up.
The past month has been incredibly busy with the arrival of grand-child no. 2...a beautiful little boy who arrived at the end of August, the puppies, holiday-makers, house-guests and all general stuff of living here.

The puppies are now nearly 9 weeks old and I still have 4 here on the farm. The other 6 have all gone to their new families in the last week and another goes tomorrow, one next week & we are keeping one until the end of October for its new owners and we are keeping one for ourselves. As in previous times I am amazed how far people will travel to buy a puppy, we have had buyers from Surrey, Stafford, West Midlands & South Wales although I am pleased that a couple are staying locally, indeed one is only a mile down the road in the village.

In the past few months Country Living magazine has been running a campaign called Keep Britain Farming and readers were invited to nominate farms, whether their own or someone else's, for the chance to wina beautiful enamel farm sign. Well, in an idle moment I filled the form in. I had to say why I thought it was important ot keep Britian farming and to give a short description of why I thought Penyrallt was worthy of a sign. I wrote about how we were a small traditional family-run mixed farm of a type that is increasingly rare nowadays, and that we now had the 4th generation growing up here, that we farmed organically & with a hope for sustainable future in farming.
Britain needs farmers for food production (though there is a school of thought that disputes that!), maintenance of the countryside, employment, the preservation of skills & crafts and a host of other factors not least the general sense of well-being brought about by a 'green and pleasant land'.
Anyway, I completely forgot about having submitted the form to Copuntry Living until I recieved an email informing me that I had bee awarded one of the 100 signs that were available.
(I forgot to mention that the campaign had only 100 signs to give out. They were made by Charnwood, the wood-burning stove manufacturers.)

Labrador Puppies Again

The puppies are thriving and having wolfed down their food & milk promptly fall asleep in the dishes! They are now 4 weeks old and becoming great fun. I have got good homes secured for 5 of them already which leaves me with 4 black dogs & 1 black bitch still to be adopted.

It has been a very busy time this past week with friends & family. Farming has also kept us buzzing about as calving has just started. Last night we had a set of twins born; the bull calf was dead sadly but the heifer (which will be a freemartin) is doing well though very tiny.

There is breath of autumn in the air now. Blackberries are ripening in the hedges & it looks as though we will have good crop this year . . . to make up for the abysmal past couple of years.

Labrador Puppies, Soil Association Farm Walk

The puppies are now just over 2 weeks old and while they stillspend most of their days sound asleep with full tummies their eyes are opening and they atre beginning to stopmp around thier nest of hay in determined manner...another few days & thye will start playing and beoming very jolly little creatures. I have already got home for the two little chocolate females & two of the black ones which is great.
Hattie their mother is doing a splendid job of rearing them and both she & they have good glossy coats and are looking very healthy & strong.
I have submitted a list of 22 names to the Kennel Club and hope that the Welsh names incorporating names of our local small river tributaries are accepted.

On Thursday evening last week we hosted aFarm Walk sponsored by the Soil Association. We were very pleased and somewhat surprised that 28 people turned up...I had really only expected half-a-dozen or so. It was avery interesting group who gathered on our front lawn for tea & cakes. Almost everyone was involved in organic farming & there was small group from a bio-dynamic college near Crymych.
The Farmer was on top form and marched everyone round the farm showing them how a small family farm survives & continues to be viable . I think peple were very interested in what we showed them and in what we had to say whcih resulted in some very good discussion and debate on a wide range of issues including inheritance, land management, organic farming (naturally!!), GM crops, the price of food and the attitudes of the general public to farmers & farming. They enjoyed the cake too!

New Labrador Puppies, Lightening Strike

Yesterday saw the arrival of 11 beautiful labrador puppies.
My lovely dog Hattie is now the proud mum of 7 black & 3 chocolate squirming, glossy-coated little creatures.
We were not expecting them until the middle of this coming week but Hattie had different ideas and so caught us rather on the hop but all is fine and they are lovely strong puppies who all seem to be of good size and thriving. Her last litter was only 8 puppies so 11 is going to be hard work for her but we will do what we can to supplement them and maybe our old lab Poppy will foster them as she has done in the past once they are a few days old. She has come into milk as usual which is a huge asset & helps ease the burden on Hattie.
As they will be registered with the Kennel Club I now have the unenviable task of coming up with 22 names to be submitted to the KC. Each puppy has to have the option of  two names of which the KC will choose one to register. I rather fancy going for roses as a theme this time, or maybe Welsh rivers & tributaries. One can have quite a lot of fun working out the 'posh' names for puppies & I do not go in for the ridiculous over-blown monicas that many dogs seem to have. After all these will be sensible working dogs on the whole I hope or just family pets.

After a night of rainstorms we had a early morning call of great resounding rumbling thunder-claps & vivid streaks of lightening at about 6.30 which succeeded in demolishing my broadband router. So, after an intensely frustrating day of phone conversations with sweet people in Calcutta who could do absolutely nothing about it, the Farmer (who is the least computer savvy person in the world!!) sorted it out by replacing the router with an old one that was hidden in a cupboard. It took us all day to work out that it was such a domestic problem not an internet one...still we've got the computer working again but no wireless which will frustrate Younger Son hugely.

The rain has been quite welcome as the gardens and the fields were in dire need of wetting and it has laid the dust on the yard. The growth spurt that will now take place will be considerable and great for the silage fields but not so great for me having to try to keep ahead of the weeds in the gardens. It is a losing battle but as we are hosting a Farm Walk next week for the Soil Association I do need to get the place looking tidy.

Royal Baby & Others

Alongside the national rejoicing at the birth of Baby Cambridge we have had a flurry of babies locally. Two sets of friends & neighbours have produced thier babies in the last fortnight and we have our second grandchild due at the end of August plus other friends & neighbours are expecting at various times during the autumn. Babies everywhere!
We had a visit from one of the babes last evening. Tiny week old Theodore called in with his delighted parents to be introduced to us. He was beautiful, of course but one does forget how very small new babies are.

The weather of course is a continual topic of conversation and the intense heat lately has been very trying for our expectant mum (& our pregnant labrador!) and for the babies that have already arrived. Todya it is cooler and overcast though we have not had the thunderstorms that hve occurred elsewhere.
The Sons went off early this morning to the Royal Welsh Show at Builth Wells and they are fortunate that it has cooled off rather as a day at the show in searing heat is not pleasant. Now that the madness of the hay & silage harvest has ended the boys have taken a day off to go & gloat over shiny new farm machinery and talk techy stuff with reps. ...I doubt they will see much else other than a visit to the cattle sheds & possibly the beer tent! No flower shows or craft exhibitions for them!

'It's Too Darn' Hot!'

After nearly three weeks of scorching hot weather I am very appreciative of my large cold stone house. I do not enjoy very hot weather and so have been able to retreat most gratefully into my cool north facing domain. From this oasis of cool & shadow I have been supplying mountains of sandwiches & the inevitable cake for the Farmer & Sons who have been slogging away in their air-conditioned tractors everyday since this fine weather started.
The work of silage-  & hay-making for neighbours and ourselves has completely dominated these past weeks. Many hundreds of bales , indeed possibly a couple of thousand by now, have been made and everyone is so happy that we are having a 'proper' summer when winter feed can be made at a more traditional pace than in the last few years. To be able to actually make hay over several days is something we haven't done for so long.

We are beginning to watch our water supply carefully. One of the streams that flows down the farm has almost stopped running. There is slight trickle barely visible except for a slight glint of light on the thin run of water over the stones and if rain does not come before too long we may have to start rationing water in the house. The cows have to take priority in such times. Each dairy cow needs 10 gallons of water a day to drink plus all the water required for washing the milking equipment, parlour & dairy.
About 25 years ago when the Sons were little, we had long dry summers and I had to take the boys to friend's houses for baths and other friends were kind enough to do my laundry for me as we just did not have enough water here on the farm. I hope it will not get as bad as that this year.

Despite the intense busy-ness we have been able to take a couple of trips to the coast in the cool of the evening and last weekend we had a family outing taking the canoe and a picnic to Cwmtydu once again.
I even ventured into the water for brief swim...cool but exhilarating...and I never usually swim in the sea until September when the water has had a good long time to warm up. But this season seems to be making up for the lost summers of the past few years.

Summer at last!

Well, summer has arrived with a vengeance...although many things in the garden are very late the elderflowers are in their full creamy glory and in such a profusion. I must gather some for cordial and wine making in the next day or so.
I have been busy making jam over the last couple of weeks. I managed to get a large quantity of strawberries last week and made a a good batch of jam and yesterday it was the turn of apricots. I also bottled apricots, they are one of the best fruits for such a metheod of preservation.

With the arrival of the sunshine the Farmer & Sons are madly busy cutting , baling & wrapping silage all over the parish for their contracting customers.  It means many long hours sitting in tractor cabs and hoping there will be no break-downs.

Last evening we all took time to go to the beach for a picnic...the tractor driving had finished early for the day (for once) and so we had a family outing which does not happen very often. Our favourite beach is Cwmtydu, a very small beach within a tiny cove where we almost always see seals. There is often a large bull seal patrolling the waters keeping an eye on his beach.
 It is a fairly stony beach especially if the tide is in, but none the less a lovely place to spend an evening with small grand-daughter building sand-castles and eating gritty sandwiches.

TEIFI - FROM SEA TO SOURCE

It is always a good moment when a project comes to fruition & last night saw the culmination of what has been a long and fascinating experience in film-making.

The Farmer & I belong to an independent tourism group, the Teifi Valley Tourism Association (TVTA) which was set up 4 years ago to promote the beautiful part of west Wales in which we live. Four years ago the membership stood at 9 businesses, now it has over 70 small local businesses listed, mainly holiday accommodation providers, artists & craftspeople.

As an independent organisation we have without any grant funding or outside sponsorship, produced a film showing the wonderful and varied landscape of the the Teifi Valley from the air.

I was the producer & scriptwriter and our good friend G. of Maesyffin Mushrooms who had in a previous life worked in film, directed & edited the film. Another friend who owns a small light aircraft was drafted in to fly the entire 75 mile length of the River Teifi with a small but incredibly clever camera attached to one of the wing struts of the plane. This all sounds very Heath Robinson but in fact with the state-of-the-art technology of the camera it was anything but.
The resulting footage was superb. What was a 2 hour flight following the course of the river from the estuary in Cardigan Bay to the source in the hills of mid-Wales has now become a beautiful 35 minute journey through a dramatic and ever-changing landscape.

The filming was only the start of a very long process involving many months of editing, script-writing & hours sitting at the kitchen table researching the history & stories of the valley & continuous emailing over small points of editorial and details in the script.

In addition to the narrative script we recorded music of the valley, some of which was played by the Farmer on fiddle. We were incredibly fortunate to be given permission by Ceri Rhys Matthews, of the acclaimed Welsh folk band Fernhill, who lives in a small village near by, to use some of his recordings and also a talented harpist Harriet Earis arranged some traditional tunes from the Teifi Valley and recorded them for us. As result the sound track for the film is as beautiful & haunting as the landscape it portrays.

Our script was read for us by the actor Richard Mitchley who lives in the valley & we were given permission to use a poem about the River Teifi written by a noted Welsh bard 'Cynan'. The voice-over is a lovely mix of English interspersed with romantic rolling Welsh poetry.

The cover illustration was supplied by the local artist Diane Mathias. She allowed us to use one of her lovely paintings of one of the many handsome bridges that span the Teifi.

As you can see the emphasis was very much on keeping the whole project as local to the valley as possible.

Last evening we had the premiere of the film at a delightful venue, Waunifor Centre near the village of Maesycrugiau, in the heart of the Teifi Valley. As well as showing the film for the first time to the members of the TVTA we had invited lots of friends. local press & community councillors from the length of the valley. After a welcoming buffet of  biscuits & local cheeses washed down with a glass of wine the film was played to what turned out to be very appreciative audience.

As a project run on minimal funding and many hundreds of voluntary hours the end result was well worth the effort and goes to show that all that is required is enthusiasm, energy, imagination & a commitment to producing a good a piece of work using the skills of a network of people who believe in the project & have an understanding of a sense of place.

Croeso i DyffrynTeifi.

DVD copies of the film are available from me @ £6.20 incl. postage (UK)

Please email fadog@tiscali.co.uk to order a copy.

Diolch yn fawr.

The film can also be viewed on http://vimeo.com/teififromseatosource