February- Sheep in waiting! Open Farm Sunday is coming!!

Our Welsh Farm is getting prepared for lambing lots happening in the next few months. Spring is on its way all sheep have been scanned and results good despite the cruel winter we have had.

We are hosting a french agricultural college group on the 9th of March they want to experience rural Wales. I hope they enjoy must get out the phrase book!!

Lambing will begin at the end of March and we will be lucky to have the expertise of a Bristol Uni Vet student  learning from both sides will be a great experience.

News

I am now Welsh coordinator for Open Farm Sunday an initiative of LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming).

LEAF brings farmers and consumers together to raise

awareness of how farmers are working in harmony with nature to produce good food with environmental care.

After the success of "Care for your Food We Do!" the theme this year is " Discover Life on British Farms" If you wish to find out where you can visit a farm on Open Farm Sunday June 12th 2011 please visit the website Open Farm Sunday .
If you are a farmer and would like to get involved or just thinking about it please attend one of the workshops which are being held across the UK in March/April. Please have a look OFS workshops. Attending a workshop will give you all the hints and tips you need to host a success event and could make up your mind!



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!!

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

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.

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"

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.

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.