It was great to see a crowd of young people from all over the country gather at Ruthin Mart on a sunny day during late April to compete and socialise after a rather miserable time.

The Field Day is held annually and is an opportunity for members of the Wales Young Farmers Clubs of all ages to come together to learn and share essential skills for working safely in agriculture.

Including activities such as fencing, farm machinery skills, sheep dog trials, Fferm Ffactor, auctioneering and junior and senior stock judging, there is enough variety for all keen young farmers to demonstrate their rural knowledge and skills when undertaking the various challenges during the day.

On 23rd April, Clwyd Federation hosted the Wales YFC Field Day at the Ruthin Livestock Market. It was a fun-filled day with a great turnout from all counties, and the standard of the competition was once again very high, even after a break of two years between the last Field Day and now!

The day was kindly sponsored by Wynnstay, who also supplied the fencing materials for the Junior Fencing compeititon. Menter a Busnes also sponsored the Farm Machinery Skills competition, with Mona Tractors Co. Ltd and Emyr Evans a'i gwmni cyf. kindly loaning the machinery for the competitions.

Overall winners of the day were the Brecknock Federation, who collected an array of trophies on the day. Both Junior and Senior fencing competitions were won by the county, as well as member Rhian Lewis winning the Senior Stockman of the Year competition. Thomas Pritchard also won first place in the auctionneering competition; it was great to see all the competitors in action!

by Angharad Evans, Welsh Language Communications Officer

Things will get better is now one of those iconic expressions, and one that has kept so many of us going through the long pandemic. BUT, at long last, we can look forward to the important events of our agricultural calendar, which provides us with an opportunity to start socialising again with everyone. Our house is now brimming with excitement for the summer shows.

What better way to start the show season than to hold a spectacular Nefyn show at the beginning of May. The crowds flocked back to Botacho Wyn fields for a wonderful day of competing and socialising. But arranging such a successful show is quite a task! Behind the scene, there is a lot of thorough organizing happening, and Eirian Lloyd Hughes, FUW Insurance Services Ltd Account Executive in Dolgellau knows this better than anyone, as she is the General Secretary of Nefyn Show.

After a busy show, Cornel Clecs had the opportunity to congratulate Eirian and the team on putting on a memorable show and to ask her about how difficult it was to get back into the swing of things after two years without a show due to Covid's restrictions? What were the biggest difficulties?

Eirian said: "It was a decision made towards the end of January when the restrictions seemed to be easing, and it was a bit risky at the time as things were not very clear, but everyone agreed unanimously to resume with the organizing work.  We only had three months to do everything instead of the usual six months, but things came together amazingly well in the end.

"The committee, although small in number, is extremely enthusiastic and we have volunteers who are more than happy to help out on the field before and during the show. Unfortunately, it was not possible to have a poultry section this year because of avian influenza and we did miss this section. We noticed that the cost of everything had increased since our last show in 2019 and as we had made a loss in 2020 because the show was organised before the first lockdown, this show needed to pay its way, and luckily, it did.”

Although Tecwyn y Tractor Bach Coch was nowhere to be seen, a crowd of people of all ages gathered at the Mona Showground on Saturday April 9th ​​to enjoy a wonderful day of Welsh music at the Ukraine gig, organised by Bryn Fôn, LaBelaBel, Arwel Hughes (MAD) and assisted by the Anglesey Show Committee and Anglesey Young Farmers.

Although the afternoon started with a cold wind, the crowd soon warmed up with the first band of the day, Dienw. It was followed by all kinds of music, with familiar and lively tunes by the Llareggub Brass Band, lots of dancing and singing with Bwncath and Bryn Fôn ending a memorable day.

Union President Glyn Roberts, his wife Eleri and Tom Jones, Chairman of FUW Insurance Services thoroughly enjoyed at the pavilion and the Union was delighted to co-sponsor the event and to contribute to such an important and worthy cause.

by Angharad Evans, Welsh Language Communications Officer 

Do you know where Llain Uchaf, Cae Bach, Banc, Cae Pant Bach and Cae Ffynnon are? You probably don't know the answer to that question, because these are the names of some of our fields here on the farm.

They don’t mean anything to anyone else, but to us these names are a natural part of the farm’s daily routine and conversation. Each small parcel of land has a specific name and meaning behind it. For example, cae Ffynnon - the answer is probably simple ... there is of course a water well at the bottom of that field. What about Llain Isaf and Llain Uchaf? The answer here is also simple, isn’t it?! Llain means a strip of land, so these fields are two long, thin strips of land that run parallel with the river running from the mountain down to the sea past the bottom of our farm lane.

A few years ago, I took ten minutes to record the field names on the Single Payment Form. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, it is now easier to tackle the form by seeing specific field names rather than a set of letters and numbers. Secondly, those names are now down on paper, and can be passed on to the next generation, just as the names were passed on to this generation.

A special evening bringing local produce and talent together was held on Friday, 25th March – with a strong flavour of Ceredigion!

The event was held to mark the success of Alaw James and Megan Williams of Lledrod YFC, who won a culinary competition at the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society Winter Fair.

The competition was launched as a result of a partnership between Cywain, a Menter a Busnes project that supports the development of Welsh food and drink businesses, and Wales Young Farmers Federation (YFC).

The entrants were tasked with creating a two-course menu inspired by Welsh produce. The dishes comprised a main course and either a starter or a dessert and included ingredients from (at least) two Welsh food and drink producers featured on the Cywain Producers’ Map (cywain.cymru).

Alaw and Megan’s idea came to fruition at Y Ffarmers, Llanfihangel-y-Creuddyn thanks to Caitlin Morse and Lewis Johnston and their team, who served their mouth-watering take on the winning menu.