It is a beautiful, crisp, December morning. we have had our first covering of frost, leaving puddles of water iced upon the roads, and you can hear the grass snapping as our two kittens Dreamer and Smokey prance around the garden.
Despite having to amend my website and update it due to losing all of my data 4 weeks ago, despite the fact that our single farm payment hasn't been made, nor our ESA payment, due to the fact that the cartology unit in Llandrindod shut down for up dates 3 weeks before last Christmas and still hasn't opened again yet, despite the fact that my MP Roger Williams will again phone me today so I can complain bitterly about the last two problems, I just wanted to share with you the beautiful view outside my office window........................................................

Yes............... it really is worth it........................

Off for the Nuffield Interviews Again........

I am so very excited again.

Mid November I posted off my application form for a Nuffield Farming Scholarship Award, and yesterday I had my letter explaining I had been selected to attend an interview in London between January 21st - 23rd, my subject is still the one most passionate to my heart which is 'To Investigate the Future Potential and Economic Viability of the Untraditional SME'.
An SME is a Small, Medium Enterprise which has fewer than 250 employees..... I think that would cover most farms!!! Untraditional? - well in the good old days we would have been called family farms however this is now the term under which we are all classed whether we like it or not. All paperwork which comes from the Welsh Assembly government asks us to clarify which category we fall into... and I'm afraid this is it.

I am still of the opinion that farmers have to take their business by the scruff of the neck and break it down into logical and radical thinking... however this can only be done with support and backing from many agencies, as this is not how many farmers have been encouraged to work in the past. You may think that farmers deserve all they get but what has happened to the farming industry over the past decades is that the government have felt that their enterprise is deserving of public monies to encourage and increase food production but also to play a major role in protecting, sustaining and developing the ecological and environmental areas which we all associate with our beautiful British countryside. All of a sudden these cash incentives have been drastically reduced. Farmers, who are hands on people working and tending their animals, were suddenly prone to ever increasing amounts of paperwork dropping through their mail box, which had to be filled out, very often having to employ a representative to do this, as the forms were so complicated, and often when filled out would be input incorrectly at eh public offices they were returned to, making even more problems that the poor farmer must sort out. Also an ever increasing amount of licenses and therefore training which had to take place and be paid for, no choice about this legislation dictates.........The farmer who still tends his animals is now forced to be an administrator, secretary, marketing genius and accountant, which is fair enough but all this needs encouragement, quite cajoling and time for generations of good farmers to be able to take up this new challenge in order for their business to succeed.
In the meantime they have seen their product reduced to a pricing point which is under their cost of production.....How many business men would be able to continue to trade if the steel they made their swing frames out of cost more than the swing retailed at when complete? not many and certainly not for long, however the sheep farmer has been doing this for nearly 30 years. Market prices have not increased in this time, how many of you would be able to live today on the wage you were paid 30 years ago? not many assume.
Yet the brave farmer has carried on, unrelentless in his task, for that is what it is it is a lifestyle, which is hard and unrelenting, a 365 days a year job and I hate to say it but 24 / 7. It is all he knows and in the main he is good at it. He tends his ancient hedges, he ploughs his fields he sits with his flock at night, yes he has to make money as do all business' but they may need help to do this.
Lets not forget the plight of the dairy farmer who very recently have begun to see the price of their product.- milk.... rise to reduce the deficit between cost and profit, but this came too late for may dairy farmers who opted out of the industry leaving Britain short of this essential commodity. there is no longer enough milk produced in this country to supply our own demand..........I think that is a very sad state of affairs, and I want to study what other countries are doing to ensure this declining trend in British farming does not continue....................

Anouther From Farm to Food Success Story

Today I was invited (or did i invite myself?) to offer a Cawl workshop for Class 5 at Treffonnen School in Llandrindod Wells. Having already proved a successful format when I had visited Crossgates School, I was much more at ease delivering this session.

The class split into 5 groups each to deal with one vegetable, either carrots, parsnip, swedes, leeks or potato, they then added these to the stew pot, which contained pre boiled shoulder of lamb and we went on to discuss, well a little of everything really. They quizzed me on profits, animal welfare, cookery, abattoirs. It was a really good question and answer session. it just goes to prove that my statement at the beginning of the workshop "I believe that it is your generation who will save British Farming" could be true, i really hope it is with a passion.

They created and ate their Cawl, sampled my fresh Bara Brith- demanded the recipe and looked at some of our pictures fro the website.

I promised I would add this and their pictures to my blog this evening so here we are - good as promised, I can't wait until I am invited back again, or even better till they visit me on our farm and see where their food really comes from.

thanks Class 5 and Mrs Baynham

We are down with TB and on restrictions!

Yes it has happened. After years of being TB free our test last week showed one bullock as a reactor, and we are now under restrictions.

Let me explain........

The vet came out on Wednesday and pricks every cow, calf, bull on our farm with a little bit of TB, then two days later they come out again and we get every animal back in and the vet measures the lump which inevitably appears on each beast. there is a size by which the vet suggests that the beast has 'reacted' to the TB which suggests the beast is infected with TB and therefore you must abide by laws and legislation laid down to protect the rest of your herd and industry.

This means that the one beast which is showing as a reactor must be slaughtered. In Wales we have an auctioneer who comes out then to agree a compensation value for your beast which is paid to us by the Welsh Assembly Government. Apparently the vet has told me that actually TB infected cattle can go into the food chain, but the ministry representative says she has not been able to retrieve a carcass for anyone yet, so it appears these beasts are not condemned to protect human health, in the food chain, but to reduce the risk of spreading the infection amongst other bovines or wildlife.

We must then re-test again in 60 days. Meanwhile we are restricted to only taking cattle to be direct to an abattoir. So if we wanted to sell any of our bullocks fat at a market, or any breeding heifers or cows we would not be able to. Luckily we are in the position where most of our cattle do go directly to the abattoir so they can be processed in the butchery, but can you now start to understand how this disease is crippling the farming industry, when farmers who rely on taking aft animals to markets or store cattle have only the option of fattening and selling directly to an abattoir, so their market negotiations, and full options are halted and they have no option than to take the price which is offered to them.

The beast which proved to be a reactor is one of four that we bought in from a local farmer, the other three have already gone through the butchers shop, so fingers crossed we will hopefully have a good result when we test again in 60 days, as the bullock has not been mixed with any of our original herd and therefore should not have proved a threat.

It concerned me that the bullock we bought in had had a pre-movement TB test when we purchased him, along with his butties (brothers),and this proved negative, however the vet explained that the TB test is only 70% accurate. So 70 % of reactors don't in fact have TB and 70% of beats testing negative could have TB. 1000's of cattle every year are slaughtered on this basis, 100's of farming families are affected.

We have several badger sets on our farm, we are convinced that our badgers are not infected with TB. As badgers are territorial they must keep new badgers from moving in, badgers who potentially carry the same strain of TB which cattle contract. As we buy new feeding troughs we are buying very tall ones which cattle can feed at but badgers can not reach. There are many photographs of badgers eating side by side from troughs with cattle and touching noses in fattening sheds, these are all ways in which the TB virus can be spread.

As a farmer who passionately has the welfare of my cattle and family business and national industry at heart, I have only one avenue of thought....... that a carefully planned culling of infected Badgers in high TB areas must take place. Cries of "no no" to killing badgers must be swept aside, after all the Britain has for a long time now sen nothing wrong with the widespread culling of infected cattle, with little success of slowing down or eradicating the disease, further steps must be taken and soon!