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Ceredigion - Sandra Vaughn-JonesSecretary: Fernlea Smith Welsh Assembly Breakfast - January 2008 British Food Fortnight in Wales, 18th September to 3rd October 2004 / Pythefnos Bwyd Prydeinig, 18 Medi – 3 Hydref 2004 Powys Food Links closed last week and Jane Powell has taken over from Jillian Daves as the coordinator in Wales. Jillian has done a great job of this and Jane won’t have as much time to spend on it, but will be maintaining the web pages at www.organic.aber.ac.uk/bff (English) and www.organic.aber.ac.uk/cymraeg/bff (Cymraeg). News will be posted there. Setpoint Wales has funded the printing and distribution of the schools pack in Wales, and it has already gone out to most schools. A PDF file of this excellent resource can be downloaded. It has ideas for food-related activities across the curriculum and an introduction by the Prince of Wales, from the webpage above. Hard copies are not available, except to schools. We are talking to the Assembly about having a proper Welsh version of the schools pack for 2005, but obviously a lot will depend on how successful the 2004 event is. The guide for retailers and caterers is also available on the website, with advice for restaurants, pubs and shops on how to take part. It includes information on sourcing regional food, what’s in season when, recipes (and there’s a Welsh section!), tourism, and how to get media coverage. Please send me details of activities that are planned for the Fortnight to Jane at jnp@aber.ac.uk, and she will post them on the BFF webpages. Please send them in both languages if you can. This will be particulary useful for preparing a press release in August. Please let her know if your organization can endorse it. Jane Powell
Farmhouse Breakfast Week - 26th January 2004
Chairman's report - September 2003We have had a busy summer, our last group meeting was in April, since then we have been busy with Cheese and Strawberries. The first show was Aberwystwyth county show, where the only animals were horse. Although it was just horses we had a good show with time to talk to visitors about Cheese and Summer fruits. The next major event was at St Fagans near Cardiff where we attended a 3-day eco advent with Glamorgan branch. Ceredigion took the first two days, which were aimed at schools, we had 2500 children per day through! The cheese and leaflets were both popular. There was a lot of interest in the Dairy Council information pack from teachers, we took school names and addresses and forwarded them to the dairy council. Early July saw another new venture for us, we hired Theatre Felenfach and had a Strawberry cookery demonstration. The chef Hazel Thomas used the Summer fruits cookery book - it's amazing what you can do with Strawberries! This proved a very successful evening, we are already being asked when we are going to do the next one!! The 22nd of July was the Royal Welsh show. Pembrokeshire worked very hard with the Cheese. Ceredigion members helped on the Tesco stand promoting Strawberries. At the end of that week we had Lampeter food fair, which was Strawberries again and The Johnny Ball NFU road show so Cheese again. A few weeks gap and our show year finished with Lampeter Agricultural show, this time the theme was Welsh cakes and Bara Brith which made a welcome change. The show season has been very successful. The Cheese gave us a very good oppertunity to talk to the general public and I think that we got our message across better this year than previously; or perhaps we are just getting better at the job!
Members of Ceredigion united with other Welsh branches at the Royal Welsh Show to host a Cheeky Cheese party. Strawberry Day 2003
Branch report, May 2003 The question panel on 26th February was a lively meeting. Two of the panel have diversified very successfully - Jenny with a Farm shop which has won the NFU best farm shop in Wales & Leon who's cheese has won many awards in the cheese world. John's food centre has units where any embryo food business can develop its products and start to market from there. Rhain gave us an insight in to some of the legislation that is being discussed. With good questions from the floor it was a varied informative meeting The March meeting continued the diversification theme. Rosemary gave us an insight in to the trials an tribulations of getting a new business of the ground. Our visit to Pwllperian was blessed with good weather and we were treated to a lovely afternoon being taken round the ADAS farm & the next door Hafod Estate. We were given a talk on the development of uplands agriculture from the 50's with the ploughing up and reseeding of mountain pastures through to fertilizing by planes!!! Now they are trying to reinstate the heather & winberries. It was a lot easier to destroy than reinstate. How we are pushed by the dictates of the Government of the day! Seven of our members will be going to Horeb to do their Food Hygiene Certificate on the 20th May. We now look forward to a very busy Summer season with Cheese & Strawberries. Meetings are held at Vale of Aeron Inn, Felinfach at 8pm unless otherwise stated. Programme for 2003:
Farmhouse Breakfast week at Llanybydder Primary school. Llanybyther school hosted a breakfast on Tuesday 21.01.03 as part of the Farmhouse breakfast week. The children were treated to a wonderful breakfast of Welsh produce, starting with fruit juice and cereals (all high fibre and low sugar), followed by bacon, free-range eggs and a local sausage and finishing with toast, butter, and jam. The children thoroughly enjoyed the breakfast. All the children were at school for 8.45 and stopping some eating was more difficult than persuading them to have breakfast. Cambrian News was there to photograph the event, it was also mentioned on Radio Cymru. Our grateful thanks to Mr I.R.Howells Headmaster and Denise Evans the school cook who had a very early start to make the event a success, also Sandra Vaughan-Jones our vice chairman who arranged the Breakfast. Presidential visit
Janet braved the gales to travel to Wales with her husband for a brief but interesting visit. A full programme of visits was organised, starting with a very pleasant social gathering of Ceredigion members on Sunday evening to enjoy some of the excellent Welsh produce provided by members. ADAS Pwllpeiran Our first visit was to ADAS Pwllpeiran research station high in the hill lands of mid Wales. The station comprises 1,118 ha of land between 200 and 625 m above sea level. The annual rainfall is 1,000 mm at 300 m and 2250 mm at 700 m above seal level.  29% of the station is sown grassland. At higher elevations the ground is undulating and peat covered with few rocky outcrops. Below 500 m there is a good deal of steep land and a high stone content. From 1995 10% of the land has been farmed organically and 150 ha of recently acquired land is in organic conversion. There are currently 2,100 of breeding sheep of which 1,170 are pure bred Welsh Mountain, 880 are Hardy Speckled Face and 50 are Scottish Blackface. 160 of the sheep are organic. 67 autumn calving Welsh Black suckler cows are used in a range of studies, including silage evaluation. 10 of the cows are organic. Our host, Barbara McClean took us on a tour of the land and explained some of the research that was being carried out on the agri-environment. She explained the conflicts that exist between organic production and environmental conservation. She is studying the regeneration of heather under different stocking densities and has found that if stocking densities are too low insufficient heather is grazed and not enough young heather is grown for sheep to feed upon. Sheep only like the young shots of heather. They cannot burn the heather easily as the land is so wet and they border large amounts of forestland. Another area of their work is on hedgerows where they have found that the native species are hardier than the cheaper imported shrubs that are currently being planted in large quantities around the country. It was a fascinating visit. It is to be hope that the government will take heed of their scientific findings when planning the future of agri-environmental schemes.
IGER (Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research IGER is based near to Aberystwyth and carries out research into a wide range of forage, from variety development to feeding of ruminants.  IGER Has recently introduced a Technology Knowledge Transfer team including our host, Heather McCalman, who had a particular interest in the development of organic production. Project manager, Bryan Evans, was unable to work his computer technology, but we chatted to him about the way in which knowledge is currently transferred. Plans for development were unclear. We were shown the state of the art cattle shed, which is used for forage feeding experiments and we could see how individual cattle's intake of forage is carefully measured. Unfortunately, the last cattle had left the building the day before and we could not see them in action. Interestingly research is carried out on cattle acquired to order from local markets. It seemed that Welsh Black Cattle do better on Welsh fields and forage. Food Centre Wales The Food Centre Wales was opened in June 2001 as an initiative by Ceredigion County Council as part of the Economic Development Strategy. It is a dedicated food technology centre offering an advice and consultancy service to business start-ups, SMEs and existing food manufacturers. The centre offers:
The centre runs training courses in cheese making, yoghurt making, food hygiene, health and safety, butchery and HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point). We were shown around the centre by John Davies who has recently taken over as manager of the centre. In the past the centre has been under-utilised, but his vision for its future is clear. It appears to offer excellent opportunities to develop added value products economically and without the probable excess outlay that is likely when developing products independently. www.wfu.org.uk |
On one of her last official duties as President of WFU, Janet Godfrey this week visited Ceredigion branch on the west coast of Wales.