John Davies: Crop decisions need to be made and a trip down memory lane beckons

The atmosphere was just like a rugby international, New Zealand won with Wales runners-up in the machine shearing but Wales won the woolhandling, narrowly beating New Zealand.

The machinery trade lines seemed busy and the standard of the stock was excellent once again. Ceredigion, as host county, has been superb, the support and hwyl (enthusiasm) raised quite an example. What a great shop window it is for Welsh/British agriculture.

A few cows are calving and it’s been difficult keeping them from growing their calves too big, especially some of the Belgian Blues, so the pullers have been busy.

We’ve weaned all the lambs and mouthed the cross-bred ewes, which we sold in Builth Wells for what I thought was a good price then, but has improved since. We’ve been drawing the lambs with 50 cross-breds weighing 39.5kg making £71.80. Some 34.5kg cross-breds made more than £60 and a couple of mules made £75. We have some good strong mule ewe lambs this year. I haven’t decided where to sell them yet. There were more than 3,000 lambs in Builth that day and there seemed to be plenty of demand.

We’ve been busy on the silage contracting with the weather making it a snatch and grab operation in between showers. We’ve done a few pits of wholecrop and with the rising grain trade, it’ll be valuable feed. We haven’t done our own yet, it should be ready in a couple of weeks.

The decision will need to be made on our winter wheat. Unless we have some sun, we’ll probably crimp it or treat it with propcorn. The spring barley has also come on well and the same decisions will have to be made on that. It depends on my patience.

We’ve put a new water system in on the ground we bought a few years ago. It had been reliant on streams which dry up, so now we have a lot more flexibility, which is needed having ploughed it all over the last few years. The new leys are really growing well.

We are busy planning our walk on the Epynt Mountain, which will include people who moved from the farms 70 years ago, recollecting their memories at their former homes. A tea party and singing festival (cymanfa ganu) will follow.

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