Visit sees farm’s role in retaining landscape and wildlife

12:02pm Friday 25th July 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

It seemed most appropriate in the Year of Food and Farming that the Golden Valley Probus Club chose to visit Colin and Joyce Richards’ Abbey Farm at Craswall as the club’s summer function.

The farm, which overlooks the Craswall Valley, runs up to 1,500-feet above sea level, making the farm some of the highest farmed land in the county.

The 350-acre farm, which is in the west Herefordshire-designated Severely Disadvantaged Area, has grazing rights on Cefn Hill and The Black Mountains, where Richard and Joyce entered into the Sheep and Wildlife Environmental Scheme, which restricts the grazing period on the mountain to protect the environment.

Due to its elevation, difficult climatic conditions, soil type and depth and topography, the farm is entirely down to permanent grass and produces store cattle and fat lambs.

The farm’s 55 Limousin-cross Blue Grey cows, which are housed during the winter, are mated to Limousin and Charolais bulls. Although some of the herd are home bred, most of the replacement cross-bred cows are bought in. Calving is split between spring and autumn, with the progeny being sold as stores in Hay Market at about a year old.

About 1,100 of the farm’s 1,350 sheep flock are Welsh-cross Cheviot ewes, which lamb out on the hill in April. A limited number of the cross-bred ewes are put to Border Leicester rams to produce flock replacements, while the rest are mated to Texel rams for fat lamb production.

The ewes with single lambs graze on the Black Mountains from May to November. The remainder of the family’s ewe flock are home bred Welsh-Half-breds, which are mated to Texel rams to produce fat lamb. They are housed for six weeks prior to lambing in March and, after weaning, the ewes graze on Cefn Hill.

Richard and Joyce do most of the work on the farm themselves, with some part-time help from their son Graham and daughter Sharon, who at the end of the visit, sheared some ewes to show how it is done.

The visitors were surprised to hear Colin Richards say that, despite this year’s much better price for wool, it costs more to shear a sheep than the wool is worth.

The visitors were also struck by the tremendous vista visible from up on the hill, with spectacular views down the Monnow Valley, against the backdrop of the Black Mountains across the farm.

The visitors were able to appreciate how essential it was for the land to be farmed and the landscape managed in the way the Richards do and the family’s role in retaining such a beautiful landscape and wildlife habitats.