Images of Sark

Lush market garden on clifftop

Seigneurie and garden 1

Seigneurie and garden 2

Vines with mesh to protect from wind and salt

Seigneur's dovecote with one surviving dove

Seigneurie and garden 3

Possible images for the Queens of the Ugly House story

Ugly House from the road

Looking down on the Ugly House

Visitors to the Ugly House

Map by artist Philip Snow

The Ugly House

Footpath gang at work

First hive arrives

Gwyn Thomas Blaen-y-Nant

I’ve been here most of my working life, for the past 17 years as a tenant and before that helping the previous tenant. The farm is a thousand acres, from the face of Tryfan, the watershed on Glyderau down the Gribin ridge, down to Clogwyn y Tarw across the bottom of Cwm Idwal, down behind Hafod to the cattle grid then up alongside the A5. It’s a varied landscape with good shelter.

What have been the main changes?

The volume of people. When I was 7 or 8 we would go to Llyn Idwal to swim and maybe see 20 people in their hob nailed boots with thick ropes. Our parents told us to stay clear of the ‘mad climbers’ and we would run like hell if we saw a hiker. Now, in a couple of hours, you are likely to see a few hundred. My main concern is dogs chasing sheep when they should be on a lead.

This used to be a mixed farm with milking cows, cattle and sheep but after the war it became just sheep.  When I took on the farm there were 1200 and they had devastated the heather, bilberry and saplings with woodlands dying.  Tir Gofal was my saviour, it gave me the breathing space to improve the animals and at the same time the wildlife. Sheep numbers were cut 75%, Welsh Blacks reintroduced, plus goats and Shetland ponies which do a great job grazing the rushes. 

How viable is the farm?

Without support I would be bankrupt. To make money from selling organic meat to supermarkets I would need £100 per lamb but last year I got £54 for my best and just £30 for the lighter ones. Tir Gofal (now in its final year) pays me £20K a year, for destocking and removing the sheep over the winter, and the European Single Farm Payment is worth £12K.

But sending sheep away for winter is expensive. I used to send them to a 2,000 acre organic farm in Bridgnorth, they grew a mix of potatoes, barley, wheat and soft fruits but today it’s all maize which goes into a biodigester to make electric. The feed-in tariff underpins the wisdom of that farmer for the next 25 years. It’s as if it doesn’t matter what we’re going to eat so long as the house is warm and the car is running.

To balance the books I need to be inventive and for many years we have provided farmhouse accommodation with our own produce served for breakfast and evening meal. My big venture at the moment is Tryfan Organics, a catering van parked near the Ogwen centre, from which I sell hot food: lobscaws, Welsh Black burgers, minted mountain lamb burgers, sausages and bacon from our own pigs. In the future maybe Water Buffalo burgers too – there’s a boggy patch of ground they could sensibly convert into tasty meat.  

When people discover the taste they want more so we keep note of names and phone numbers and come the autumn we will phone them to take orders for boxed lamb and beef. I do the butchery here myself after the lamb has hung for a week and the beef for a month. I lead my cattle into the abattoir, talking to them, to minimise the stress – I don’t like the idea of a hired hand using a stick to control a despairing animal towards its death. It needs to be as humane as possible for everyone’s sake.  

Does the subsidy produce a good result?

No green desert here. Trees are regenerating; they don’t have to be fenced off if there’s plenty of grass, only hungry sheep will resort to chewing off the bark and the leaves. Fewer sheep plus wintering away means there is less pressure on trees. Cattle are my mobile muck spreaders. Each deposit of manure brings in worms, beetles and other insects which in turn bring in the birds. 64 different species here including 4 or 5 on the RSPB’s red list. This is the stronghold for the extremely rare Twite. It’s great to think that a shepherd, with advice, is helping save this species. The streams are in good condition with otters and water vole and with salmon and sea trout spawning up the end of Ogwen.

What are your next plans?

Glastir is the new agri-environment scheme which would like to encourage more cattle back in the uplands. Keeping cattle here has been difficult, with 100” rainfall I am constantly on my guard to prevent nutrient runoff into the waters. I would like to overwinter my cattle here indoors but I need to get permission to change the yard at the bottom to include a covered area with a slurry store so that it can be kept for use in the spring when the soil warms and can absorb the nitrogen.  If I get permission I then need to speak to the bank manager about a loan – I’m 60 now but it’s worth it because I hope to be farming here well into my 80s. 

What will it be like here in 50 years time?

I’d like to see a Welsh family run farm which will probably be more specialised but still based on a mix of mountain lamb and Welsh blacks. Diversification will continue, it’s nothing new. Visitors used to come by train and ride their bikes up from Bangor station. Children would be moved into the barn, a bit like a dormitory, with metal beds and an orange box for storage. Meanwhile best crockery would be brought out for the visiting family that would live the life of a Welsh farm for the week. By the time they returned to Birkenhead or Oldham they would know so much about our culture and ways of life. I’m still sending Christmas cards to people we met like that.

Governments urge diversification but we do it by necessity. What we need is a clear steer; are we food producers or guardians of the countryside? There are so many little projects but no clear direction. At the moment Britain produces just 52%* of its food.  

*FoodStatistics Pocketbook 2012, Defra

All change at Blaenau – you won’t believe it WORKING DRAFT

Ffestiniog is not the end of the line but where it all began, with slate heaved out of mountains onto wagons for a thirteen mile descent by gravity to ships at sea. It’s also the top of the Conwy Valley line from Llandudno. A railway mecca; relics of tracks on, down and inside the rock with slate the Victorians reason for it all.

The industry is about 1% of what it used to be and the steam trains are busy with passengers not freight. Stepping off the train your eyes are drawn through twin pillars towards the rocky horizons that frame the town. Each pillar made with 9,000 stacked slates from Llechwedd quarry, a CROESO welcome and directions indicated by the motif of a slate splitter’s chisel. Steps to the street are framed by four huge chisel-shape sculptures with slates stacked at an angle; not any old angle but 30°, the typical lie of a bed of Blaenau slate. 

Bands of single line poetry encircle the pillars and also dissect the town’s pavements. Some, such as ‘a bracelet of a town on the bone of the rock’, by famous poets and others by local schoolchildren.   All carved in Welsh with translations provided online and in booklets. Reading these and their explanations brings a deep insight to the community past and present. Even the bus shelters are a revelation with ‘fat ladies’ on the floors! Most sizes of slate were named after aristocratic women such as ‘duchess’, ‘marchioness’, ‘narrow lady’ and so on. Replicas with their names and dimensions are embedded in the ground. 

Howard working on the river of slate

Across the street is another set of twin pillars with a small quarry train pulling slate wagons down from the marshalling yard. But before you reach this, stop and admire the river of slate, a pavement mosaic with a river running down the middle. On either side are the names of over 350 quarries from across Wales each carved into a block of slate that matches the colour from that particular quarry. A rich mix of greys, reds, purples and greens set in alphabetic order. 

Local artist Howard Bowcott, creator of the works, described the significance of the river: ‘it symbolises the formation of slate with river mud washed out to sea four or five hundred million years ago. The river was also the vital corridor for exporting slate before the Ffestiniog Railway opened in 1836.’

Each bank of the river has a line of poetry by Gwyn Thomas, one in Welsh and one in English. ‘Time flows on and water too but not the life of a rockman’ and ‘Men die. The rocks and empty darkness of these mountains endure’. Worked out slate chambers are the ‘empty darkness’ and both poems reflect the perilous work conditions of the ‘rockmen’ and their transience, but a blink compared to the life of rock.

A version of the
Lightning Strike by David Nash

London has the Shard and the Gherkin but we’ve got our Chisels and the Lightning Strike. This sculpture by David Nash reflects the zig-zag shape of the quarryman’s path descending the slate spoil from the Oakeley quarry. It now stands on the main road midway between the quarry and the centre of town – the only Nash work of art on permanent display in Wales.  

If words and symbols of Blaenau’s slate heritage are not enough, keep on walking about ten minutes out of town to Llechwedd Slate Caverns where you can literally get beneath the surface of it all. They offer a choice of two underground tours and provide exhibits that bring to life the incredible stories of rock cannons and wild cars. This is also the place for downhill biking; a bit like skiing, the riders buy a ‘lift pass’ for the day hurtling down a choice of runs ranging from the gentle blue to the double black. It makes a good spectator sport.

Everywhere is unique but Blaenau takes the biscuit! Local artist Falcon Hildred says in his recent book ’I believe that Blaenau Ffestiniog and its landscape are the best and most complete surviving industrial landscape in Britain’.  It’s not stuffed away in museums but all around you. Shops are one-offs where you buy bread from a baker, local meat from a butcher and discuss the finer points of DIY with the ironmonger. Cafés are homely and good value.

No amount of words can describe this place, it must be experienced. If you’ve been before, you won’t recognise it.

Harvest mice

25 of us descended upon Chester Zoo for a training session to survey for harvest mice. I was pleasantly surprised that local conservation work ranks so high on the zoo’s priorities – it’s not all about the exotic, we need to look after the natives too. “Conservation starts at home!” My 50 year old memories of the zoo are elephants and my Mum’s warning not to fall into the polar bear pit.

Training was delivered by Sarah Bird (Biodiversity Officer) and Paul Hill, freelance ecologist with experience of captive rearing harvest mice. The event was commissioned by the Mammals In a Sustainable Environment Project (MISE) to grow capability for identification of harvest mice in Wales. From our local records centres we have a total of just 60 records, most of which are old, with only 10 being recorded in the last decade. Surely this has got to be an under recording or is it a catastrophe?

Some years ago the zoo arranged a reintroduction of harvest mice on fields alongside a canal. We began our training event at this site unloading 20 traps which revealed loads of voles (field and bank) and some wood mice but not what we were looking for. Our second exercise was to search through the undergrowth for the distinctive nests, balls of woven vegetation made mainly with  leaves split lengthways, lashed together without being severed from the plant. 15 minutes later we found our first example, neatly built around the supporting trunks / main stems of a few reeds. Once we got our eye in there was no stopping us and a further 4 were found before returning to our lecture theatre.

We were shown some brilliant ARKive footage to bring the subjects to life. See this as an example:

http://www.arkive.org/harvest-mouse/micromys-minutus/video-03.html

  

The characteristics and lifecycle were explained. Widespread distribution from UK to Japan but absent from Ireland! Prehensile tails a very distinctive feature acting as a 5^th limb. Very small size, just 4 to 6 grams, a third or a quarter the size of a field vole. Average life expectancy 6 months. Prolific breeders but 95% mortality in winter, mainly February.

The supposition is that they are in decline due to our changing farming practices but we don’t have much data to confirm or deny this. Thanks to MISE and Chester Zoo we are now going to get a fuller picture of what’s happening in Wales. If you’d like to join in please contact the MISE project website.

Here’s a short film of our training day:

The bears have gone and their pit has been covered with a net and turned into an aviary.

Slime Moulds at Loggerheads

Last Sunday I was very privileged to meet up with Bruce Ing the expert on slime moulds. In an interview for the Radio Wales Country Focus programme (Sunday 6^th November 07:00), he explained that they were neither slimy nor moulds. During the walk around Loggerheads Country Park, appropriately near Mold, Bruce found several species and explained the lifecycle of these beautiful organisms. Although they share similar characteristics to fungi they are very different and in a class of their own. 

Now is a good time of year to see them as they emerge to spore – some are tiny and difficult to spot although Brefeldia maxima (they don’t have English or Welsh names) is quite easy. It’s the largest of the species and has been seen at Loggerheads up to a square metre in size looking like a bucket of cold porridge eventually turning to a pile of black soot. 

Typically they are found on decaying wood, but it’s not the slime moulds that cause the wood to rot, that’s the bacteria which they feed on. 

I was truly amazed with the wondrous specimens, or pyramids of amoebas, we saw through a hand lens and their bizarre lifecycle. For the sake of the interview I had to ask the ‘so what’ question. Bruce was well rehearsed in his response, with benefits for both agriculture and medicine, but I particularly liked its potential for treating ulcerous conditions caused by a bacteria which can’t be sorted by current anti-biotics. ‘Maybe we can develop a slime mould that will eat the bacteria. It’s difficult to develop immunity from something that’s eating you. The challenge will be making sure it doesn’t go on to eat the patient.’