Bwlchgwynt

When my father retired after a career as a solicitor in the City, he and my mother promptly took up sheep farming in West Wales. The 80-acre farm was called Bwlchgwynt, and nestled on the side of a small valley about 4 miles from the tiny village of Ffarmers, which is between Lampeter and Llandovery. This was quite an undertaking for a couple the wrong side of 60, but they'd always been very active and had some help from us children [when holidays permitted] and my uncle Mac. Besides about 100 sheep, we kept some beef cattle, pigs (inevitably <grin>), and the odd chicken. The farm was a small one, but tested us to the limit, as the ground was not brilliant and it took a lot of effort to try to improve it and the farm buildings. In the picture on the right, you're looking down on the farm from above: our land extended to the centre of the valley, and some way left and right of the photo.

This area was (and is) a solidly farming community who immediately became our good friends. Indeed, we still keep in touch with many of them still, even though my parents sold the farm a number of years ago. They were vastly amused by our approach to some things, however, such as deciding when to get the hay in: their approach was fairly haphazard and they cut their hay when it looked like a good spell was in progress, and if it rained, oh well... My father, on the other hand, was ringing up the Met Office, and consulting the long-range weather forecast on the back page of his Times, and trying to be very scientific about it. Mind you, there were several years when we were the only farm locally who got all their hay in in good condition, and we never had a bad year. It was a very close community and everyone helped everyone else, particularly when it came to things such as haymaking, lambing, shearing etc

Cutting the hay, drying and turning it, and bailing was always a great time of the year, and for which I always tried to make it down to the farm from Manchester. Our old bailer was a very rickety old thing, which was literally held together with bits of string or bailer twine. It need coaxing and cajoling into keeping going, but never stopped working completely. My younger brother Paul was always in his element, welding this, and bulldozing that, and building all sorts of wonderful things, like a new pig pen, and a bridge across a ditch. My elder brother Stephen was a semi-permanent resident at Bwlchgwynt, and my parents had hoped that he might take it over completely when it became too much for them, but it was not to be.

My other abiding memory was fence-posting up the mountain, where we had some hill-grazing for the sheep during the summer months. Part of our bit of land there was a complete bog, and completing a mile run of fencing down the middle of this quagmire was a real labour of love. Still, the cider and cheese consumed in the process made it all worthwhile!