Thank farmers for your festive feasts
POSTCOP26, becoming carbon-neutral is the new goal for business models and with it has come an emerging industry, carbon broking.
With this has also come new terminology, PIU’S (Pending Issuance Units) and CC (Carbon Credits). These have become tradeable commodities (reminiscent of milk quotas methinks). Such is the demand that companies are buying up large tracts of Wales and planting trees to offset their emissions. To add insult to injury they are using millions of pounds of Welsh Government money to plant the said trees.
These trees may end up being harvested for wood-fired boilers thereby releasing all the stored carbon – so much for joined-up thinking.
Business models now have to use the right jargon, we in farming are already using terminology such as regenerative farming, and we will be hearing a great deal more about this in the years to come.
Storm Arwen has been and gone leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Here at Penyrallt we have lost
Jinsy and David Robinson are organic dairy farmers from Penyrallt Farm in the Teifi Valley. It is a traditional, mixed, family farm, run by the Robinson family since 1960 and together they strive to farm in a way which has as little impact as possible on the nature around them
several trees that appear to have been mangled by the ferocious wind.
Clearing up the timber will have to wait until such time as we are able to traverse the fields as they are so wet at present.
The farm is littered with branches and twigs and huge drifts of leaves are everywhere. There will be no shortage of firewood for the next few years.
This is now the time for winter activities and the pheasant season is well under way. These birds make a wonderful addition to the larder and their flavour makes up for the fiddly job of plucking them.
Whilst processing them in a cold draughty shed it helps to focus on the end product, the roasts, game pies and stews.
It is good to know that the birds have a free life and that one feels totally involved in the food production cycle.
It is true that pheasants are not native to the British Isles and would struggle to survive without help from gamekeepers, but as a by-product a lot of other birds benefit from the numerous feeding stations that are maintained for the pheasants.
Another winter activity is trail hunting by our local hunt, the Vale of Clettwr.
The clarion call of the huntsman’s horn echoing across the valley gives one a sense of enduring tradition although they are prohibited from operating in their true capacity of controlling the fox population.
Last week we shot six foxes in one night so it is no wonder we are paranoid about shutting our poultry in each night.
The year is nearly over and it remains for us to wish you all Nadolig llawen and don’t forget to thank the farmers who provided the food on your festive table, be it a nut grown in a desert thousands of miles away using precious water resources or something grown in this country creating and supporting our beautiful landscapes and the livelihoods of British farmers.
Blwyddyn newydd dda.