2020 – The year that started just like any other…
2020 has been a tough one, but the farming calendar has kept rolling along regardless. In October we brought the sheep and cattle down from the mountain. We bought some very smart rams that next week will start working, setting us up for lambing next spring. Walter, the giant boar we had on loan, went back home to Mold, and we’re hoping he’s left our girls Barbara and Julie in pig. The young pigs have come inside; we hoped to leave them outdoors for a while longer, but it’s been too cold and wet. Llamas and turkeys have also started to come sidling in for the night to get out of the rain. Amazingly though, one or two hens are still laying, and up to this weekend we’ve still been picking tomatoes from the polytunnel.
As key workers, we’ve been kept busy since the start of the pandemic. Covid-19 arrived at roughly the same time as our 2020 lambs, and lockdown No.1 seemingly passed us by for 2 months and we barely noticed. Social isolation is pretty much the norm for Welsh hill farmers. We missed the Royal Welsh Show, which is an annual highlight, and we miss going to market to meet our fellow farmers over pie and chips, but apart from that, weve been very lucky. We had our family together, kept well, and were “confined” in a very beautiful part of the world. It has been a very hard time for so many people, and we count our blessings.
In some ways it’s been a good year. We’re not allowed into auctions to watch our stock being sold, but that has been offset by the unusually high prices we’ve been getting, especially for lamb. It’s given us all a warm glow – if only we could be confident that it will stay this way.
We’re going into autumn and winter under a cloud. Lack of progress with the Brexit negotiations, and the growing likelihood of a “no deal” departure from the EU, is bad news for farming, especially sheep farming. No deal would mean a high tariff (tax) on all lamb exported to the EU, our main market, and some industry groups predict that this will lead to millions of unsold lamb next year. It’s hard to think about the impact of this on hill farming communities, short and long-term.
Government attempts to leave UK Food Standards out of the Agriculture Bill is also a big worry. The only positive thing to come out of it all is the attention it has focused on farming and farmers. The press and social media coverage has highlighted the fact that most people really value the very high food safety and animal welfare standards in UK farming, as well as the role that farmers play in protecting the environment and landscape.
The big changes ahead have led us to make some decisions. We’re selling our suckler beef herd, and instead will be heading to Dolgellau Market to buy Welsh Black young stock. These will spend their first summer with us on the Berwyn mountains, and then be finished on grass the following year. We have also downsized and sold nearly one fifth of the breeding ewes. Cutting costs, and lowering the risk of being left with many lambs unsold, seems to be a good plan.
The upside is that this will ease our workload, and will allow us more time to focus on the exciting plans we have to diversify.
