Merry Christmas

Hope everyone has a great Christmas

Our Welsh Farm will be back with you in the New Year

Hope you are all coping with the weather!

Hi all please accept our apologies our service is dirupted as the servers are down we will resume webcams shortly!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all at Our Welsh Farm

Dave and his friends are eagerly awaiting Santa to help him with his deliveries.......

Snow Snow twice in one year!!

Panic set in last Friday when the snow came down. We sorted the shed out and opened the doors , when on our way around the sheep found them waiting by the gate and all came in for some food. We usually house christmas week or January but they are in now and how long will it stay?

Bought in some barley to supplement or haylage and silage.

Log in to http://www.ourwelshfarm/ to see the webcam activity in the shed and the ice on the lake.

Are you ready for Farmhouse Breakfast?

Farmhouse Breakfast Week is on it's way.......... January 23rd - 29th

Shake up to Wake up

lots of recipes, information and ways to get involved on the website.

facts taken from website:

Send your children to school on a full tummy and get a glistening school report!

Research done by the Cardiff University School of Psychology, led by Professor Andrew Smith has shown that eating breakfast helps children function better in school than those who skip the first meal of the day. The results revealed children who start the day with cereal are:



•9 percent more alert

•11 percent less emotionally distressed

•13 percent less tired

•17 percent less anxious

•10 percent less likely to suffer memory and attention span difficulties, than those that have no breakfast

•33 percent less likely to suffer from stomach complaints.

So what are you doing for Farmhouse Breakfast? Get involved !

Farmhouse Breakfast Week

Pictures from a previous event school children with fruit kebabs and cheese and bacon toasties and a local Rugby player Dale McIntosh (former international player)

The bacon was -British ,the cheese- Welsh and the Milk from the local dairy Ty Tanglwyst (silver award winner in the "True Taste 2010")

"What do you know about great British Bangers?"

British Sausage Week November 1st - 7th
great website for all info: British Sausage Week



For those strictly dancing fans Craig Revel Horwood will be dancing around the country as celebrity British sausage judge.

We have had some venison sausages made and they tasted delicious with hardly any food miles attached.

FACE annual meeting 2010 Leckford Estate

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Had an interesting day at the Leckford Estate, (after finding the Village Hall as my sat nav doesn't quite pin point the whole postcode! )
John Lee (Chairman of FACE) set the scene for the day and we had a welcome and introduction by Malcolm Crabtree (Managing Director of Leckford) who gave us an insight into the afternoon's trip.
The estate is a worker's democracy it was purchased my John Spedan Lewis of Oxford Street London in 1928 and formed into a Ltd company in 1929 and now forms an important part of Waitrose.
The Leckford Farm:

• produces 30 ton of mushrooms per week
• 230 acres of fruit but the harvest this year is less than last year being approx 800 ton not 1200 ton
• Organic processing dairy unit
• Winter Wheat milled into Leckford Flour
• Oats
• Spring Barley
• Free range Egg Flocks
• Free range Chicken flock

We were then given a talk by Amanda Dance Event and Education Manger followed by Mary Noyce Consultant to the Rural dimension.
Meg Hart FACE regional co ordinator gave us highlights of the work in her area in the last 12 months and this was followed by Bill Graham on FACE's acheivements this year.
John Lee summed up the presentations and asked Sir Don Curry to give the closing remarks which gave us a positive outlook for the future of farm education and working with partners to acheive this.
After a superb lunch from the farm produce we climbed aboard the tractor and trailers for a very informative tour of the Farm and Longstock Park Water Gardens

We won Innovative learning with Bayer / FACE awards 2010

"Farmers on tour" we were invited to the Tower of London for lunch in the New Armouries Banqueting suite it is called "new" as it originated in the 17th and 18th centuries please see The Tower of London for more details

We won the BAYER/FACE Innovative learning award and were presented by Jim Paice Minister for Agriculture and Gary Richardson from the Countryside Foundation for Education

For more resources for Farm education please visit the FACE website

Very Busy Summer, awards and Harvest!

Sorry for no posts but we have been updating the website and now have 3 cameras live!!

We all took our family holiday to the Royal Welsh (that's us and the children we didn't take the sheep!). Lots to see including the world Golden Shears competition and new Food Hall.

I was lucky to be runner up in the NFU/Natwest Welsh Rural Champion Awards.

We managed to get our Harvest in though the rain in August did mean it was a little here and a little there so silage and wrapped bale silage this year no Hay :-(
We also managed to get some barley straw from a neighbouring farm in the Vale of Glamorgan.

We were also nominated for the Bayer/FACE innovative learning awards story to follow shortly.......

The Red deer have increased we bought in 5 young hinds so hopefully lots of deer calves next year.

some of our Deer's friends at Blaenhow

10 Green Bottle recycled Greenhouse and Bridgend SMILE project

I was fortunate to be invited to the award ceromony of SMILE in Bridgend recreation centre last month and met Claire George.

Claire is an IT Lecturer at Bridgend College and has received the ‘Most Enterprising Teacher Award 2009' from the education team at Enterprise UK, the campaign to increase entrepreneurial behavior in the UK.
Claire has worked with 5 primary schools which entered into the SMILE (Students Motivate Innovative Learning via Enterprise’) project and has plenty of more ideas for further projects.Claire with her fellow colleagues in the construction academy from Bridgend college are going to build a 10 green bottle recycled greenhouse in a local primary school annually.

Claire approached me "Our Welsh Farm" to come along and help the pupils plant some seeds ready for the greenhouse. I attended the school and with the pupils made some recycled plant pots from newspaper and the children planted salad leaf seeds these they were going to take home.

We then used the bottoms of the 2litre bottles that had been discarded from the build and planted these up we had a talk about the properties of wool and put some raw fleece in the bottom of the seed planters as an experiment we are hoping that by watering daily the moisture will last in the pot by absorption in the fleece to save the caretaker watering over the weekends we will let you know the outcomes......

Below are the photos we took and along with the seeds and weeds club hoping to have a project with pumpkins in the autumn.

We are very grateful to FACE http://www.face.org.uk/ and the NFU for the seeds

Our Welsh Farm visit to Llangewydd Primary

Thanks to Llangewydd Primary for letting me visit with Freddie and Pillow, we all had a great time although Freddie was a little restless. Both lambs love their new names and certificates have been sent to school.

There was a vote in each class and the most popular won.

The school had the theme "keen to be green" so we discussed the properties of wool and it's uses.
They were given seeds to grow and we discussed food miles on a lamb dinner and the benefits of local and fair trade food.

Shearing time 2010

It's that time of year again.

Am working on putting a kit together to take to schools to make felt.

We have just sheared our Jacob ewe and now know why they are kept for wool the fleece is 4 kg twice as heavy as our normal BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) ewes.

I bet she is feeling cooler now!

We have plenty of fleeces for sale please contact us if you wish to buy.

Dawn the kid and our pet lamb now named FluffyBelle (by Little Fingers after school club in Evanstown) have been around and about visiting local playgroups and they were very well behaved.

Dawn took a likig to the kid in the mirror at Tumble tots and had a good rummage through the Fancy dress section!!

New Puppy , new kid

Lots happening even though lambing nearly over, we have a new puppy called Jen and Molly the Sannan Goat has had a female kid called Dawn.




I have visited Bryncethin and Abercerdin Schools and hope they are following us on the website. The children in Abercerdin were excited to hear their own voices as they helped me with the "hear some facts" section.

Lambing Live at Our Welsh Farm

Just over half way on this set of ewes 200 left to lamb, do join us on http://www.ourwelshfarm.co.uk/ and log in to see our webcams in the shed.
We have Steven on works experience from Bridgend College and our children are on Easter holidays so all hands on deck.
The weather has been a bit extreme - sun, rain , sleet and snow all in 2 hours....................
It is brightening and warming now and the fields have turned from yellow to lush green and the ewes and lambs are loving it.

Quads

Sheep Fleece what can we do with it?

A secondary school has explored natural textiles. A fleece from our sheep was attached to the teachers wooden sheep and the all clipped and processed it into different products It was spun , weaved and felted.
The website was used as a resource if you want to contact us to sign up for this resource please contact us

info@ourwelshfarm .co.uk

Wool and lambs

The wool initiative by Prince Charles has had an impact into school life we have been asked for fleeces for spinning and felting projects within the classroom. If you need to purchase fleeces we still have some left please contact us.

Lambing is happening quickly, Sunday morning was not peaceful as 15 sets of twins caused a bit of confusion with their mothers this morning but all sorted now

Please contact us to subscribe to Our Welsh Farm web interaction and live camera in lambing shed. This is funded for all in rural Bridgend.

We have the sun out and I think spring is here.........

Prince Charles & The future of Wool

An initiative was launched by Prince Charles to enhance the qualities of wool.

A spokesman from Clarence House said: ‘The Prince was getting very concerned about the prices that farmers were getting for their fleeces and decided that something had to be done to help them.

R Whitefoot came to film our ewe lambs that have just been sheared to report on "the Future of Welsh Wool" if you wish to read more Welsh Wool a bleak future?

Wool can be used for felting, spinninng and knitting, insulation,weaving for clothes and carpet support a natural product buy wool!

We are just starting to lamb and our first set of twins appeared on Valentine's Day so keep an eye on our webcam.

Bonjour!

We had our 3rd visit from an agricultural college in France they must enjoy it here. Most of this years students were dairy farmers so they were curious about sheep farming. Husband promised to get County up and running this year as not a lot happened since they saw it last.
The college is Issat de Chatelet and we hope to visit them and Jean Claude one day.

They also were off to visit a large dairy Farm in the Vale of Glamorgan in the evening. Our welsh weather didn't let us down it was a damp and miserable Feb day!!

Earlier in the day we had a visit from Rebecca Whitefoot, studying journalism in UWIC she has been given agriculture and made a film about the future of Welsh Wool in response of Prince Charles's new campaign.

Schools and Students

Successful visit to Tonyrefail Comprehensive I hope I helped with your studies Year 11 and good luck with your GCSE Geography.

Next visits to primary schools to promote website and arrange sessions.

Glamorgan WFU celebrated Farmhouse Breakfast Week by serving a welsh breakfast to Ogmore Vale Primary Pupils and were joined by Mike Phillips  rugby player for Wales and son of a dairy farmer,the milk was sourced and bottled in Bridgend at Tytanglwyst Dairy.

Tuesday we are hosting a group of Agricultural students from France this is the 3rd year they have brought students to our Farm I hope they will sing on the trailer ride again!

We have scanned all our sheep now and this weekend we sheared our ewe lambs if you visit our you tube site you will see our sheep to be sheared and the ones with their coats off!

Farmhouse Breakfast Week 2010

How does breakfast benefit you? The eleventh annual Farmhouse Breakfast Week 24-30 January 2010 is the ideal time to find out! Taking place 24-30 January the week is a real opportunity for everyone to get into the healthy breakfast habit and celebrate the rich wealth of breakfast foods found across the country.

Support your local farmers:

• local milk tastes best as well as saving food miles!
• try some local homecured bacon
• enjoy the local cheeses on offer
• Buy british cereal

Breakfast is an important meal of the day you don't try to drive to work with an empty fuel tank!!

please leave comments tell us what you've had for Breakfast today?

Last year's Breakfast week

we served Welsh Cheese & Bacon Toasties in local bread with fresh Tytanglwyst Dairy milk

"Think Breakfast"

Preparations for Farmhouse Breakfast Week

Farmhouse Breakfast Week 24th - 30th January

"Breakfast Benefits" is this years theme- Promoting breakfast with local produce is a great way of covering various subjects on the Curriculum.

Glamorgan WFU will be out and about again this year to help you support this challenge.

There are numerous resources on http://www.farmhousebreakfast.com/

The Snow and adventures

The snow has been with us now since the 20th of Dec lots of problems only able to get out by 4WD did take car out twice failed our hill on both occasions so had to reverse it home!!
Luckily the sheep feed arrived in between christmas and New Year due to the clever lorry driver, the postman has been most days too.
We fetched our load of Barley with tractor and trailer so the sheep are warm and cosy in the shed with lots of food.A lot of farms have had trouble with sheds caving in due to snow and trouble getting feed and water out to the fields.
We have been feeding the birds each day as they are finding it difficult in this weather and our lake is frozen over there doesn't seem to be much wildlife about both our semi tame ducks have disappeared so we fear Mr Fox has found his way over the ice to the island which is usually a safe haven.
We have built the snowmen, sledged the hills,thrown the snowballs and are now ready for things to become normal again - school and shopping without wellies and boots.

Robin in the Snow- January 2010

Please feed our birds they are finding it difficult in this weather here is our Robin this morning outside the office window.

Wales YFC - News

Wales YFC - News

YouTube on the Blog

We hope to get webcams running on the site shortly and are uploading videos onto youtube for tasters
Hope you all enjoy all sheep now in shed and Deer not far from their shelter more snow tonight.

Welcome to Our Welsh Farm

Our Welsh Farm website www.ourwelshfarm.co.uk. We can arrange an interactive session for rural schools in Bridgend for free this has been funded by the RDP.
I will update this blog as time goes on so you can keep up with us and farm life.

The sheep are now in the shed and will remain there until we lamb in February