William: From all the time my father…worked with horses through to tractors, tractors, even when I was little, was all 2 wheel drive. I think I was…16 when we first had our 4 wheel drive tractor. So it was a big change for us, because there were certain conditions you couldn't even go near the fields, or if you did go in the fields, you had to go down hill and out to the road below us to come back up, because it was 2 wheel drive.
That was the biggest change in tractors, from 2 wheel drive to 4 wheel drive, and having a loading tractor. For years we didn't even have a loading tractor, because it was all small billet so everything was done manually. In 2001, my father bought his first round baler, up until then it was all small bales.
We were probably a bit behind the times, a lot of people have gone to round balers, maybe 20 years before that, but the old man everything was to do with cost…he had labour, because there was me and my three brothers as well on the farm, even if we weren't on the farm full time, we were here for harvest, so they said between us four, we could get all work done.
But farming has changed so much, that people haven’t got the time to be on the farm. The money's not in farming to pay extra labour, so you got to do, and buy machine, so you can do as much work as you can yourself.
It's rules and regulations the latter years, that’s controlling a lot of the way you farm, you’ve got to have licences for everything you do. And it's just…farming is hard enough and is making it that bit harder, because you have got to do so much paperwork to adhere to things and there's changes coming now for next year and the year after, which is…there's not much support as far as income to make all changes they want to bring in to farming, but somehow they just expect us to plug the money out of the air. And as everyone is feeling at the moment, the cost of living, it is the cost of doing farming. We are having the same prices for our stock yet our outgoings have probably more double if not quadrupled. So, same as all enterprises at the moment, the next few years are going to be crucial.
Interviewer Sarah Loud: how did you keep abreast with government changes and changing requirements? How would you keep up to date with that?
William: In all fairness, that's one thing in Wales we have got quite good is Farming Connect, so they will do meetings and to explain the rule changes coming in. In fact, we went to one last Tuesday to do with the slurry storage and manure and different rules and regulations coming in start of January. So Farming Connect is quite good like that, because they do give you opportunities to go to meetings and discuss it, ask questions, and if you want more information and quite a lot of the time you can have a one to one meeting with someone, it might be on you over the phone or something, but you can ask him whatever questions you want. So in that sense is something they haven’t got in England is good. Only downside in Wales, they basically took with single farm payment, a percentage of it off to fund that scheme, so we’re paying for it really.