Episode 1 The Hill Farm

For thousands of years, farming has shaped the landscape of Wales.

HE WHISTLES AND SHOUTS

Generations of farmers have worked the land and in Snowdonia, one family

has been farming the slopes of the Carneddau Mountains for centuries.

Meet the Joneses.

For 350 years my family can say that we have farmed this valley.

Gareth Wyn Jones is the latest in a long-line of hill farmers to

rear sheep on the mountains

near Llanfairfechan on North Wales coast.

But the way we buy our food has changed.

Lots of people has lost contact with the land, with agriculture,

with farmers.

Gareth's wife Rhian takes care of the family, their home and the garden.

Picking peas.

Ahh, there is nothing better than eating peas fresh from the park.

Their sons, Rolant and his elder brother Sior,

are following in their father's footsteps.

Steady steady, hey stand! These sheep are getting on my nerves.

And their daughter Mari isn't far behind.

Sit! Sit.

Their grandparents also live on the farm, Gareth's mother Eryl

and his father Roland Senior.

We will follow Gareth and his family through

the course of a year, as they take their animals from the mountainside....

to the market place.

That's it. That's the end product.

After all that hard work this is what we sell.

But with bad weather and rising costs, what does the future

hold for the traditional Welsh hill farm?

Physically, mentally, emotionally it's tough. Two faces.

If you are born and bred into it. You know nothing better.

That's the way it is. That's the way the mountain is.

It's spring.

But this year Wales has been hit by freak, unseasonal weather.

A fierce blizzard with gale force winds and heavy snow

has crippled parts of the country.

The extreme weather has proved devastating for hill farms and,

as he has been for the past week,

Gareth is out searching for his sheep.

So far the farm has lost almost 100 ewes and countless lambs

to the cold weather,

but Gareth has worked tirelessly to save what he can.

This just gives you the scale of how much digging was with of each one.

These two were in these holes and, you know,

that doesn't look like a lot,

but bloody hell, there is a lot of digging gone there.

That's two sheep, we have dug 70 of them over these days.

And to be honest this is supposed to be Easter, isn't it?

We're supposed to be in a glorious sunshine and...

Praying to God for bloody miracles, I think, today. For miracles.

It may be spring, but here in the Carneddau Mountains near Conway,

at over a 1,000 feet above sea level,

this unseasonably cold weather

could not have come at a worse time for the farm.

What the problem is, it's come too late in the season.

The sheep are at their weakest. Heavily in lamb.

All the nutrients goes to the lamb.

So, if she is stuck in a drift for five or six days

possibilities of her aborting and dying.

How many we'll be losing at the end of the day is anybody's guess.

But...the ones that survive are bloody tough, I can tell you that.

That's breading stock for next year. Nice little ewe lamb.

Lovely to see her. There are a few, you know? They're going to make it.

These will be the breed lines that survive, the fittest.

We never had a winter like this.

Gareth's family are not the only ones suffering.

All over the country, farmers are losing livestock to the snow.

All these farms, all you see in front of you, they've all had sheep.

And he's got 40 missing.

Doesn't know where they are.

He's got a lot more than that.

He doesn't even know how many he's got missing.

And over the next valley.

And this is only a small community, Llandegfan

of about seven or eight farmers. It's shocking.

So, I think we'll be looking of casualties of thousands

throughout North Wales.

He's so tired, Gareth is. I can't believe what he's going through.

I think he's aching all over, but he's just been carrying on.

Just pure willpower.

He is dealing with it in his own way by trying his very, very best.

And if he knows that he has done his utmost, then he is happy.

That's how he feels and deals with it, I think.

He has got to do it, because, you know, he's got no option.

He comes back in and was it Saturday? He had the gripper

and he just couldn't feel his hands.

He was through to the bone. He was, ah, stone-cold.

But I just try support him as much as I can and, you know,

just be there for him and just be, you know,

something different from work for him, really.

Those that farm these mountains form a close knit community,

and on a neighbouring farm, Gareth's cousin, Tudor,

still has many sheep missing.

Having done all he can to find his own sheep, Gareth volunteers

to help his cousin search for his flock.

It isn't long before they find the first sheep -

a ewe trapped deep in a drift.

She's alive. Closed in up to her eyes.

And she is one of ours.

Come on, little girl.

That's the reality, lamb hanging out of her.

Having been trapped for six days this ewe is unlikely to live.

All Gareth and Tudur can do is move on in search of sheep

strong enough to survive.

Whatever's here now, is dead.

I've got to close my mind about it. Forget about it.

And whenever it melts, we will have to find the bodies.

I've got to concentrate on the sheep.

I brought about 380 or 390 down to the village.

There is no snow there. I'll look after them now.

It has been a disastrous start to the spring,

but life on the farm must go on.

It's the middle of the lambing season,

the busiest time of year for hill farms.

Often ewes will need help delivering their lambs

and from first light Gareth is out tending to his flock.

With the ewes weakened by the weather, many lambs have been lost.

Come on!

Ewes without lambs and lambs without mothers

will mean even further losses for the farm.

So, to ensure that every possible lamb has the best chance

of survival, Gareth employs an age-old technique.

Strip...the skin off.

And give it to the other lamb,

and the mother thinks it's its own lamb.

She goes by scent, so if we didn't do this,

she wouldn't take it.

This is a little girl and she will go up on the mountain

for the summer now and she'll most probably be a breeding ewe.

It makes me feel better as well after the death of losing that lamb.

You've got a bonus, haven't you?

It sounds absolutely mad, but I believe

that I've turned a corner today and we are on the way up.

It has been a horrible six days.

Probably the worst six days in my life.

But you got to get on with it.

And when you see that tunnel and the light,

you got to just keep chasing it.

So, erm, you know, we'll be here, we're not going anywhere

and we will do the best that we can.

As the sun starts to the shine, the snow begins to melt.

After weeks of cold weather it feels like spring

has finally come to the Carneddau.

Rising from the Menai Straits to over 3,000 feet,

these mountains form part of the greater Snowdonia range.

Their rugged terrain is home to a range of wildlife

including a unique breed of wild pony.

These windswept slopes have been inhabited for millennia...

..from pre-historic times to the first hill farmers.

Today, 27, 000 acres of open grazing

is shared by dozens of farms and their families.

Its 7am, and down at Ty'n Llwyfan, the Jones family farm,

the mood has changed.

WHISTLING

Come on!

Spirits are high and the bustle of day-to-day life has returned.

Come on! Come on.

Before breakfast there are chores to be done.

Every morning the first job of the day is the milking the goat.

For Rhian, the biggest chore is getting all three children ready

for school on time.

Mari! Mari!

That is very hard work.

She says "I'm coming," but it's another half hour.

Before school, though, Sior has more work to do.

The farm has around 20 chickens and he sells their eggs in the village.

I collect them first, sort them, clean them and then...

LAUGHTER AND MUTTERING

OK. No, I sort them, she cleans them.

You are a good businessman.

You grandad buys food, buys you chickens, I build you the shed.

I help.

You reap the profit.

Better that way, isn't it?

Instead of him getting a little bit of wages,

he has got chicken money and egg money, which is fair enough.

This is the way I was brought up and you know if you want something

in life, I think you've got to work for it.

They are fresh everyday.

They're free-range, aren't they?

Some of them are dirty, so we clean them,

but we are very careful when we clean them.

You don't need to put them in a lot of water, because they absorb.

The egg will absorb the water and they'll be no good.

A key part of Sior's business plan is to get his grandmother

to do most of the work.

Yes, it's easy, isn't it?

£1.50 half a dozen, so it's not bad.

-We'll be millionaires before long!

-I don't think so.

She came into our bed and she got kicked out by her mother.

Come on, Sior!

With the morning's work done, it's off to school

and back to work for Gareth.

It's time for him to come out, I think.

He is a young little crown.

The happiest sight in the world to see that, to me.

So important new life coming in like that, first thing in the morning.

And it's just a buzz, a buzz.

Every single calf that is born alive is a massive bonus

and you know, we've got to look at them as our profit

and what keeps us up here.

Because we need to live, we need to survive.

I tend to think lots of people have lost contact with the land,

with agriculture, with farmers

and they tend to think that a lot of us are scroungers,

that we sit around and just open cheques from Europe and stuff.

But that's not the reality of farming.

We are subsidised and we do have money from European grants,

but at the end of the day, our job is to produce food.

But there's a matter about that,

even the toughest of farmers have feelings and there is nothing better

than bringing something new into this world

or helping to bring something new into the world.

The farm occupies some 2,000 acres of land

just outside the town of Llanfairfechan.

The family keeps more than 300 cattle

and around 5,000 head of sheep and lambs.

Yeah, this is how spring is supposed to be,

this is what we should be seeing is these lambs running around,

having races and sleeping in the sun.

But this is probably the first day they've had

of good sun on their backs.

And, yeah, makes you smile, makes you happy.

When you've seen so much death and destruction,

it's blooming good to see this.

It's... Yeah, happy!

Over the coming weeks and months,

Gareth will rear these lambs,

keeping a close eye on them from day to day,

until they are big enough to be sold.

In recent years they've had good prices for their livestock,

but their costs - fuel, feed and fertiliser -

have risen faster,

making every single animal all the more valuable to the farm.

This little lamb doesn't look too well.

Yeah, look.

He's very light.

His mother's most probably left him.

And then, erm...

He's very, very thin as well.

He'll be dead by the morning.

Maybe one of a set of twins,

or his mother was just too weak,

so she's just gone off.

So what we'll do is,

we'll take him home now

and give him a drink.

It's pound, shilling and pence for us -

the more of these we can produce,

the more money we can make.

You know, if we can save him,

find him a new mother,

he can get on that mountain, then, for the summer,

then gets back down, fattened,

and he's 55, 60 quid

if we're lucky.

And that's if we're lucky.

So each one of these is...

Is a couple of days wages, isn't it?

Come on, fella.

This lamb will now need to be hand-fed every day

until it is old enough to feed for itself.

Sound of music.

The more of these that we save,

the more chance that we can carry on farming

and it's nice to have five minutes

to just give him a drink, really.

The kids are growing up now

and I remember them when they were like this.

He'll survive, he's a survivor.

'It's been quite a bad winter, really, you know. Yes.'

'I can't remember - and I'm 76 -

'and I've never seen anything like it, no.'

This year, we got to accept our losses.

We had four or five, six, seven good years,

but this year's been horrendous.

We're going to loose a lot of money this year on lambs.

We've got to work hard

and there will be no new tractors this year

and there'll be no nothing like that.

We won't have any money to, you know what they say -

an extra, that won't be there.

And that won't be there for a few years now.

It's going to hit us hard.

The full cost of the cold spring

has yet to be counted,

but out on the mountain,

there is a stark reminder

of just how devastating the weather has been.

The sheep weren't the only thing lost in the blizzard.

Many wild ponies also perished.

So, this is the kind of spring it has been for us.

This is just one hole and one pile.

There's another one on the next mountain in Carneddau.

Yeah, it's pretty hard to look at these.

This is what their heft was here, this is where they ran.

What's really, really upsetting is

that so many of them died giving birth.

You know, that's just real nature

at its most raw, really.

The wild mountain ponies of the Carneddau

have grazed these slopes for centuries,

forming an important part of the ecology of the mountain.

Gareth and others from the community

are responsible for looking after the herd.

I've seen quite a few of my farmer friends quite upset over them.

My father was quite upset,

I'm quite upset.

Erm...

But it's life, we live and we die.

You know, and this is something that we see every single day,

but not on this kind of scale.

I think that's what's shocked me, really,

is the scale of the disaster up here.

There were just over 200 ponies roaming free on the mountains,

it is feared that up to half of these

may have been lost to the snow.

Only when the ponies are gathered up and counted at the end of the year

will the scale of their loss been known.

During the winter months,

the mountains are cleared of livestock.

This gives the land time to recover

and protects the flocks from the worst of the weather.

Then, on the 1st of April,

the mountain is open for grazing.

Traditionally, farmers race to herd their sheep on to the best pastures.

But it is only now, three weeks later than normal,

that Gareth is finally able to take his flock up on to the slopes.

The sun's really beating down now,

I can feel the heat.

This is what we want for growth.

Everything looks nice,

the sun's on your back,

the spring is here.

Swallows are out, birds are singing.

HE WHISTLES Oi, come on!

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

'Today, Gareth's eldest son Sior has come to help his father.'

Yeah, we're getting to the drift now, I hope.

They're going over the drift, anyway. That's brilliant.

This is as far we can go in the Land Rover now,

so we'll go out and see them.

Here, come by.

It's Sior's first time to bring the sheep up with his dog, Bill.

Yeah, he's having a few problems,

but I had probably more problems when I was his age.

I think he's got a better dog than I had at that stage

and yeah, he is a bit sleepy this morning.

So, yeah, I'm trying to give him the tradition of hefting,

like my father taught me.

Hefting is the foundation on which hill farming is built.

The heft, or "cynefin" in Welsh,

is the part of the mountain

that has been grazed by the family's flock for generations.

It is a right that has been passed down from father to son.

With the day drawing on,

the sheep will be rested for the night

before continuing their journey up the mountain.

Tomorrow morning,

we'll be heading up for Blaen y Ddalfa and...

This is where their heft is, right on the top there,

which is about a mile and a half again from here.

With the boys busy at work,

down at the farm Rhian is making the most of some time to herself.

The family grows their own fruit and vegetables,

and at this hectic time of year

it falls to Rhian to do most of planting.

I don't tend to have much time to go outside,

because I have got chores in the house - cooking, cleaning, washing.

It's nice to be outside and doing something where you can see.

Sometimes...living in a house full of kids,

you can't really see what you have done,

because it gets undone so quickly.

There's a satisfaction in gardening, isn't there?

Where you can actually see the fruits of your labour.

Picking peas.

Ah, there is nothing better than eating peas fresh from the pod.

So sweet and so nice raw.

It's idyllic.

It's idyllic. We're so lucky.

We are, we realise we are so lucky.

To be part of this, it means so much to us.

If you live off the earth and work hard,

you've got that connection with nature,

because you are living with nature every day.

I don't know, maybe it's something about being Welsh.

I don't know.

I can, honestly, for half the time,

sit down and just stay totally happy,

just listening and just watching.

It's quite mesmerising.

It has been the hardest spring in living memory on the farm,

and the worst possible start to the year.

But the seasons are changing

and there is a big year ahead for the Joneses.