Dung. It's the future, I smelled it...

Over the weekend we went to Builth Wells for the Smallholder and Garden Festival, held at the Royal Welsh Showground. It was a chance to meet people who already farm on a small, or larger, scale, to see breeds and, hopefully, to get some information that would inform our choices for the future.

It was more than even I had hoped for and just about everything you could want was represented: hens, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl, dogs, sheep, pigs, goats, cows, horses, tractors, alpacas, hamsters, rabbits and bees. I haven't been this excited since I crossed the border into Albania. We got to the showground around 9am and we didn't leave until many of the trade stands had packed in and gone at about 6pm. Where the time went to I have no idea. It was fantastic. I got to speak to people about cows, goats, sheep and spinning and for all the questions that got an answer, another dozen sprang into my head.

I was really buoyed up by the positive attitude of the people I spoke to, their hard lives made better by the quality of life they now enjoyed. I was at once elated and depressed. Elated because this is what I want for our future, somewhere to live where my family can enjoy food and drink untainted by chemical additives, where it is produced locally and doesn't sit for days in the back of a trailer, trundling across Europe so that Tesco shoppers can enjoy the fruit (and veg) of the season at unseasonable times. I know it will be hard work but I am not afraid of that, not if it means giving Agnieszka and any children a good standard of living. On the flip side, it made me depressed knowing that, for a few years at least (how many? Three? Five? Twenty?) we will be stuck in that cultural sewer pipe known as Farnworth and that money will restrict what we do here, or in Poland. It was a sobering thought and one that made me think hard over the following few days. Depressed I might be about my current finances and lack of 'easy' opportunities but the resolve has hardened and the determination is there. One day, we will have it. I am sure of it.

From the show, then. Some photos:

An Angora goat, softest fleece I've ever touched.

Some Anglo-Nubian kids...

An ancient cow of Wales with calf...

A modern farrier, making a horseshoe the traditional way...

Parading some Welsh mountain sheep in the ring...

Preparing to show...

A sheep hairdrier, I kid ye not...

How to shear a sheep in under two minutes by a bloke from the British Wool Marketing Board...

Some quail, these ones are Cinnamon Quail...

The pig shed buzzed and hummed, mainly from the smell of the pigs, which is a bit of an acquired taste. These are English Whites being shown in the ring. Essentially it is an opportunity for the pigs to do a bit of running around and for their owners to chase them with a bit of board and a flimsy walking stick...