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October-08-07 - Estate Diary

Development Land

The land recently sold in the village of Cynwyd for development is now in the final stages of design by the purchasers, Lloyd Homes.  The estate and the community are

particularly keen to see the range of starter homes become available to the market as there is significant shortage in our area.  We hope it has a smooth run through the detailed planning applications, and we look forward to seeing construction start early next year.

Farms

Following an extremely hard year with foot and mouth and blue tongue in the livestock sectors and poor harvests, both our in-hand farm and tenant farmers are in the midst of very difficult times.  The medium and long term outlook is extremely positive with soft commodities seeming to have a never ending rise on future markets, however the short term is more pressing.  We can only hope that the farming of this area being sheep and beef production goes through the same boost in prices that the diary sector has been experiencing over recent months. 

Storage

Angela has been very busy booking in our winter storage visitors for car, caravans and boats etc, and we are almost at capacity.  There seems to be significant demand in this area and many of our customers now repeat and come back to us year after year.  Whilst it is quite a drain on time it is also a good income stream to maintain otherwise redundant rural buildings which if not maintained can become an eyesore in our landscapes, consequently it is a great solution to the problems we have with traditional and small farm buildings.

A5 Road Scheme

We are delighted that Sir Alfred McAlpine has been awarded the contract to undertake the A5 road improvement and commencement is due any day.  We are also hoping that we are able to work in with them the same machinery to undertake the works to our new farm shop, which we hope to commence with next spring.  Our new shop is a very significant development for us, and we are putting a lot of time into the project in an effort to make it as much of a success as our temporary units have been over the last 5 years.

Rural Life

The shooting season has now commenced which means the winter is coming, and it is good to be serving our retail and wholesale customers with the pheasants reared and shot on the estate.  We have also recently started foraging for autumnal mushrooms and septs with a little success, with some exquisitely flavoured mushrooms some of which will be available through our shop and others to the chefs we supply.  However with such foraging activities the supply is not constant by any means, but nevertheless extremely interesting from week to week.     

Written By: Philip Hughes

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