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November-17-06 - November 2006

I must start this month’s diary on a slightly depressing note and  issue a warning to everyone living in rural areas to be on their guard against thieves that seem to pass through an area picking up high value items such as Quad bikes at will. We discovered our nearly new Quad bike had been taken one morning, in broad daylight, from our main yard here (as reported in the Free Press a few weeks ago), along with several other items in the area on the same day. By the very nature of our day to day activities it is very difficult for us to keep everything under lock all of the time, and it seems that these people will stop at nothing to get what they want, but we have to remain vigilant and help each other as much as possible. This sort of activity also leaves one feeling very uncomfortable and disappointed and makes a difficult job much harder.

On to a more pleasant topic as I reported in last month’s Diary Cor Meibion Bro Glyndwr have recently returned from a very successful trip to the city of  s’Hertogenbosch in Holland, where we attended the 62^nd anniversary celebrations of the liberation of their city by the 53^rd Division of the Welsh Guards during the Second World War.  We performed at the Cenotaph alongside the mixed choir of s’Hertogenbosch and a wreath was laid on behalf of the choir by two of our members, Trebor Jones (WW2 veteran) and Gareth Griffiths (Chairman). That evening, we performed in a joint concert at the United Reform Church in the City which was attended by 450 people and proved to be a very successful concert – we even had a standing ovation !!

On to farming issues – the mild autumn has been very welcome and has, hopefully, shortened the winter (it is frightening to think that Christmas is only just over a month away!). However now the ground is getting quite wet, the main job recently has been to house most of our cattle and the silage pit has been opened. Several cattle have also been purchased from other farms and from a couple of Organic livestock Markets, held at Brecon and Welshpool. The mild autumn weather has also been kind to the ewes and scanning of the early lambing flock will take place next week, with the main flocks being scanned early in the New Year.

We recently received our annual visit from an officer from the Organic Centre Wales to collect data for this year’s benchmarking exercise. This entails gathering physical and financial data from all of our enterprises to enable our costs of production to be calculated. This is then compared, or benchmarked, against other farms taking part in the same exercise. This is an essential part of any business (knowing your unit costs of production) and can be used to plan ahead when making policy decisions for the future.

I will hopefully be at the Millenium Stadium at the weekend to cheer the boys on against the All Blacks – pob lwc hogia! (we’ll need all the luck we can get).

Written By: Gareth Jones

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