Llety Llwyd

Tecst gan/ text by Ffion Jones

Images/video by Lindsey Colbourne

Spiral outwards:

Before the visit from Merched Y Tir to my farm, Llety Llwyd, I thought about what kinds of things I might do in order to offer an experience of the working farm.

When I think of the working farm experience from my own perspective, I start from my place as a woman within this patriarchal world and work outwards in ever increasing spirals into the farm environment.

The domestic; the walls of home. The place where gendered roles were magnified whilst growing up on an upland sheep farm. These divisions are omnipresent even within my current farm context where a woman is still having to juggle a myriad of roles within the world.

In the past, on shearing day, or other points in the farm calendar where borrowed labour visited the farm, us women and girls would ‘feed’ the men, fetch and carry, wrap wool or watch from the peripheries. The kitchen of the home, along with a strange hybrid domesticity seen within the shearing shed (where we sometimes took afternoon tea) are markers for ‘how one might do things’ on a farm to give thanks and sustain the hard physical labour of men. Whilst this might seem out of touch with current discourses seeking to challenge gender division, it is actually hard to shake off such values.

It felt important to welcome Merched Y Tir to Llety Llwyd with the promise of sustenance as thanks for their travel to my home.

Around the kitchen table it felt like welcoming friends, with conversations flowing freely. My relationship to this farm is different. It is still home, but perhaps my spiritual homes resides within the land of the farm where I grew up – Cwmrhaiadr farm.

In conversation, I try and explain how I came to be here –

I had grown up with knowledge of an expectations placed on farmers’ wives and decided that I wouldn’t ever marry a farmer. Hec! If I could, I’d stay well clear!  As a teen, I rebelled perhaps against the traditional ideas and values so often embedded within the farming world.

However, I met my partner, Ioan 13 years ago. He was a farmer, but not from farming stock. He was different to the young farmers I had encountered growing up; he was more open to the world out there somehow, and less closed-minded. His great uncle had inherited half the farm, and Ioan and I have a mortgage to pay for the other half.

Whilst there is some gender division of roles on the farm, these are mostly for good reason (the domestic sphere is another story…but we’re always working to challenge that!).

Time has of course, moved forwards and now, farm women choose to work towards their own dreams and ambitions. I juggle my farm role with being a mother and working part-time as a lecturer at Aberystwyth University where I teach Drama and Theatre.

Home

Around the kitchen table, someone asks me about the farm where I grew up – a farm, quite different to this one.

An upland farm of just under a thousand acres, to the North of here.

I am taken aback for a moment...

It is still painful...

to talk about...

But important too.

During my early 20’s, some 15 or 16 years ago, I reconnected with my farm-upbringing during my MA in performance studies.

My earlier artistic endeavours during my undergraduate degree had attempted to connect my senses of embodiment and disembodiment to the farm upbringing that I had experienced. Whereas, during the MA I suddenly realised that I was intricately linked to the farm where I had grown up – the farm had made me who I was. I felt woven in with the seasons, the animals, the weather and the geology. It felt fundamental to understand this relationship and to acknowledge this as having a profound effect on my identity, often in subtle ways.

Later, my PhD expanded earlier explorations, as I undertook a practice PhD exploring the ways in which multidisciplinary methodologies to rural research might fill a void between traditional models of academic research and the expertise of on-the-ground knowledge. As part of this PhD, I had an ongoing practice of fieldwork where I spent a day a week for three years, observing and participating in farm life at home which Mum, Dad and Owen, my brother, as research participants.

At the end of each year, I made a piece of work developed from the fieldwork notes I had taken across the year.  The first piece I made was a guided walk with my research participants, the second, an animated film and the third (Dear Mick Jagger - see below) an hour-long film installed alongside performance and work done with a group of sheep within the main agricultural shed on the farm. I had enjoyed my time undertaking the PhD immensely.

But after submitting my PhD and with a fortnight to go until my viva,
my brother Owen,

  died from accidental                                                       
smoke inhalation. He was
26 years of age.

           Things were suddenly
different.

All that we thought we knew about our future lives as upland farmers in this place were gone with him.

I no longer saw the PhD as an academic endeavour, instead, I was grateful to have had that time conducting fieldwork as an opportunity to get to know my brother as a young man. The fieldwork photos I had collated were testimony to not only work done, but work that would never be done in the same way again. The future, which had felt certain - that my brother would inherit the farm tenancy and take over from my Dad, was no longer a possibility.

Later, a further sense of loss would occur as my father, on handing in his notice to the landlords a few years after my brother’s death, had invertedly given the landlords the rare opportunity to sell the estate. My brother would have been the third generation of a 3-generation inherited tenancy agreement, there were specific clauses within the tenancy (one of them being gender) that made it difficult for me to attempt to claim the tenancy.

It was sold by the landlord and then the land sub-let to a pheasant shoot. The pheasants and the management of the land will, over a short amount of time perhaps, are likely to unravel some of the important environmental good that my Dad and my Taid (grandad) had been paid to do through various subsidy schemes. I find it very sad that such activity can happen in the place where I grew up, and that those who work this land now, see it through different eyes; through a different set of frameworks.

Having said that, these issues are complex and I do understand that life has to go on, that this place had to make itself financially viable, that it has employed young people etc. But it still hurts to know that some of the values of those running the farm will be very different to the values that we have.

A little bit of wandering and an apology

We head out, the Westerly breeze at our backs,

      burnishing the skin at the top of our ears.

              Kitted-up in our wellingtons and walking boots,

                   ready to meander our way around the farm.

                                    A gentle start

            as we visit the latest development on our farm; the dairy.

Llety Llwyd was once part of the Gogerddan estate, and it is said that during this period, it was a hunting lodge. In later years, it must have become detached from the vast estate of the Pryse family and eventually became a family farm.

It always amazes me how quickly things begin to disintegrate; once fairly stable outbuildings 14 years ago were in far better condition than they are now. I remember seeing them for the first time when Ioan introduced me to the farm and thinking how beautiful they were, with the cracking red paint on the door and window frames of the dairy, the cool and spacious hay-shed with it’s small arrowslits – each building had its own charm which hinted at past lives and uses. I remember once popping my head into the strange little boxy room tagged onto the front of the dairy and looking behind the door, I found the old overcoat of the milker, neatly hanging on the hook, dusty and forgotten. Other times, I was charmed by the odds and ends in the old smithy; horseshoes, random bits of twisted iron, old tin boxes, screws, nails, an anvil, bellows frame and a radio from the 1950’s.

After a chance meeting at a local people’s practice event, Ioan met a couple who were struggling to expand their small-scale ethical dairy business because of the cost of land, and Ioan was looking for ways to get help on the farm. It seemed to be a good fit, so they now are renting some land and a place to live in return for working for Ioan. Basically, they pay their rent through working hours, rather than through money; this means that Ioan can get additional help and they are able to develop their business.

It was a great opportunity to repair one of the outbuildings too…the old dairy, with its concrete mangers and the remains of the old pipework refreshed by some DIY re-roofing

Merched y Tir have the opportunity to be shown around the dairy by Sophia, whose business of producing cheeses, fudge and yoghurt is getting back onto its feet after a brief pause whilst they relocated. We are shown how this old/new milking parlour works and get to have a peep at the processing room next door. It is great to see the building having a purpose once again. As we cross back through the yard, I lament the fact that to save these buildings requires a lot of time and money…I only hope that the future brings further positive developments to the yard.

An apology

                 I’m sorry

                 I’m sorry as we walk for the mess over here.

                     Sorry for the mess over there.

                     Sorry this is not the tidy farm of ladybird picture books

Nor Enid Blyton’s rural idyll.

                                See the twisted metal piles in Y chwarel?

                     Sorry for them too.                   
And most of all,

                    sorry for the bloated, dead cow, under its shroud of silage wrap,

Awaiting the pick-up by the knacker-man, who is,

no doubt,

                 Is sorry for this too.

Death and decay, is integral to soil health, and yet, such a point has been overlooked by policy makers in the wake of the BSE and Foot and Mouth crises in the UK. I wonder how many valuable microbes might have once benefited from the decay of animals like this? How many might have been reliant on this dead cow? Policy, environmental health and farming practice infect each other, sometimes for the good, and sometimes bad. As we walk around the farm, I explain how we came to change the way we manage this land.

A number of years ago, Ioan became interested in the work of American regenerative farming. This was a type of farming practice which advocates no till (that is, no ploughing), no use of synthetic chemicals including fertilizers and biocides, instead, regenerative farming relies on the management of important microbial soil life commonly depleted by modern farming’s overreliance on pesticides and synthetic nitrogen. In a nutshell, it’s a way of thinking in an integrative manner, by considering the whole plethora of living species having a role within the complex life-cycles and systems of the farm environment. The goals are to build soil, organic matter, microbial activity and livestock animals for meat and eggs, whilst maximizing future carbon sequestration. Within this system, animals are rotationally grazing, that it, they are moved every few days through smaller paddocks, which they graze until there is a certain ‘bite’ left on the grass. This allows for optimum root growth and decay as well as introducing further organic matter to the mix via animal dung. In our system, typically, the sheep and cows are followed by the chickens. Over time, such practices increase the soil depth and carbon sequestration capacity of the soil through taking care of microbial activity, so often inhibited by modern farming techniques.

Cheap food/Co-operatives

We walk though the cattle, admiring their easy grazing. We talk about how we’re trying new things like selling meat boxes to local customers, and the difficulty with booking in a cow to local abattoirs (there’s often a long waiting list). I think that food production has been devalued by society – people would rather spend decent money on restaurant or takeaway food rather than invest in good, local produce. People want to save money at the shop and spend that money on other things – I suppose this is what happens when we try to live up to consumerist ideals…

“Ooh Dave, don’t buy that here, we can get it cheaper in [insert generic budget shop here], we’re saving up for the Wagyu beef in that Michelin starred restaurant remember!”

The meat boxes are a way to not only engage with the local consumer, but to also re-engage with the process of seeing more of the detail in your livestock’s journey from birth to slaughter. This is actually a piece of the puzzle that even most farmers are removed from (although I have been lucky to have seen that process a bit as a child and a young adult). The ethics of meat eating are complex and different for every person, but for me, actually being able to eat meat that has come from the animals you have looked after and from the land we are looking after and have been slaughter somewhere that is close by is a complex and special thing. I am grateful to the cattle and sheep for our shared time together.

We walk up through Cae Cerigog, up along the track then through Cae Canol and up into Cae ucha where we stop to chat.

We talk about the co-operative group that Ioan has been trying to get on its feet. The group is meant to allow a wider group of growers to sell their produce at the local market and to even perhaps develop pop-up stalls in some of the villages in the local area.  I explain that it has felt like a slow start and trying to figure out the best ways to develop some kind of organisational structure has been something that has concerned me. Salamatu offers some great advice from her own experiences of co-operative groups, about allowing the co-operative to find its feet and allow for that period of people getting to know each other before being more proactive in establishing an organisational structure.

Curlew/Trees

I ask Siân about the Curlew conservation organisation she has been working with. She explains to me the kinds of habitats that Curlew’s need, and how there is a Welsh action plan for curlew recovery as breeding pairs are predicted to be extinct in Wales by 2033. I often see woodcocks up here, but I have yet to see a curlew. Shiân explains that one reason for their decline is the increase in predators, and how conservation actually means changing the ecologies that might already exist in a place in order to maximise the potential for Curlew to recover. In the case of Curlew, a landowner may be advised to remove scrubland in order to offer less cover of predators etc.

We slowly meander back towards the little shed by Cae Pen Rhiw and then turn downwards into Cae Llechwedd mawr so that I can show the group the new shelterbelts and forage belts that we are trying to get established on the farm. Whilst large corporations are (problematically) buying up huge swathes of productive Welsh farmland in order to export their carbon-guzzling guilt elsewhere, we have received a grant from the woodland trust to plant a slightly more adventurous tree-scape. The idea is to follow the contour lines of certain areas of the farm, and plant wide belts of trees as both fodder (which the animals can graze once they are fully established). There is also a trial section of the belt which contains hardy fruit trees (something I am particularly excited about).

For more conventional farmers, the fact that we have planted these extra-wide hedges would give them nightmares! These areas of planting cut fields in two and take away from the grassland. For most, this goes against the idea of large open and easily accessible fields. I talk about the way the contour lines are supposed to help keep the water from running straight downhill – essentially, we want to try and get rainwater to absorb into the land in an efficient way. This approach in combination with the regenerative grazing patterns should enable land with better capacity for water storage as well as carbon storage. These methods attempt to demonstrate that looking after land in a sustainable way does not have to be an either/or approach. You don’t need to remove livestock and plant vast swathes of forest in order to make a difference. Land that is managed with care and integrity can contribute to carbon sequestration and improve soil health whilst also supporting farming families by producing food.

Diolch i Merched y Tir: Audrey West, Elinor Gwynn, Salamatu Fada, Siân Shakespeare

Read more: Gendered, embodied knowledge within a Welsh agricultural context and the importance of listening to farmers in the rewilding debate by Ffion Jones, 2022