A farm shop venture has paid dividends for a North Wales couple keen to move with the times and take a plunge into the unknown. Clive and Gail Swan's farm shop, situated off the busy A5104 road from Corwen to Chester, has now been established for a year. The couple offered no real experience in a shop produce business but after some extremely detailed research, some help from the Farming Connect scheme, the shop officially opened on St David's Day last year.
The decision to make a fundamental change to the farm business was carried out to ensure a future for their children Edward, eight and Rebecca, ten. Clive and Gail say that running the farm shop and changing the farming enterprise has inevitably changed their family life what with Clive and Gail now working very long hours, approximately sixteen or seventeen hours a day. Major changes have been made to the running of the farm too, in order to try and ensure a continued supply of meat, poultry, vegetables and eggs to the shop.
This year, Gail received an accolade for her hard work and determination by becoming a runner up in NFU Cymru / Nat West Woman Farmer of the Year Award. The judges said that the competition was extremely close and that the four women finalists were truly the backbone of Welsh family farming.
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In 1998, John Sigsworth who farms at Midlist Farm, Halkyn, Flintshire visited the Dairy Show at Stoneleigh and was so impressed with the milk produced by the buffalos at the event, he decided to give it a go.
Six years on, John and his wife Wendy have a highly successful farm business keeping 200 Asian Water Buffalos and 130 Welsh halfbred and Texel cross ewes at their farm in Halkyn near Holywell. Nowadays, the buffalos are kept for their meat and not for their milk as originally set out and the majority of the stock, including the lamb, is now sold through local Farmers Market and Food Fairs within a 30 mile radius.
With three sons and a daughter, Hayden the youngest lad (24) is heavily involved in the business.
John was born and bred in North Yorkshire and has followed in his father's footsteps as he was a butcher and then moved into farming on a small scale. Having worked on a pig farm in Northop for a few months and then in Cheshire, John met his wife, Wendy and later married. In 1974, John was given the tenancy at Midlist Farm and in the early eighties bought the farm. He has been instrumental in setting up a weekly food service to regular customers who visit the Farmers Market at Northop, held monthly. The stallholders were keen to meet their customers demand on a weekly basis and will, in the future, develop this service online.
