Leaving home!

Chauffeur driven to Port Talbot Railway Station by a retired gentleman farmer from Cwrt-y-Cadno was the ideal way to start my Nuffield . In a few days we will have travelled to the other side of the world, and over a period of six weeks driven through most of New Zealand, and then flown onto Australia, where farming one sheep per ten acres is a challenge. Surreal, but then writing this blog 11 kilometres off the ground is also fairly weird. There is a screen in front of me showing our flight progress, and I have just realised that we are flying over Iraq, and names such as Mosul, Fallujah and Baghdad are appearing. How many of my fellow countrymen are below me on the ground in great danger, while I have the freedom to fly over them. A sobering thought.

Leaving Llandre for six weeks……leaving the family for six weeks!

Everything seems to be in place:
· two daughters away in college,
· one daughter at home looking after Dadcu and Mamgu (or the other way round…it will work out!)
· the rams out with the sheep, 640 ewes – do not believe everything you read in Gwlad, although it does cause a certain amount of local discussion!
· Irwel looking after the farm with my father and a great deal of Tir Gofal work to be done before the end of November.
· 188 ewe lambs sent on tack to Pembrokeshire
· 230 lambs left to fatten with 550 already sold to Dunbia at an average of 17.9Kg deadweight
· Room for seventy cattle to be over wintered on GOOD SILAGE, with only twenty booked in as we leave. Contact huw.llandre@farmline.com if you have fifty cattle looking for B & B!

Next stop, Dubai , where we shall stay for couple of nights and meet up with a family friend, tidy up my presentations for New Zealand and try to keep Sheila away from the shops.