Tir Y Ffynnon farm is based near Cilgerran, with 70 acres of land. The idea is to build a place which provides nutritious food, in a way that benefits and engages the local community, building biodiversity as well as soil and water health, creating a small farm which is resilient to climate change and other shocks. 

So far

we’ve held two farm walkabouts and got lots of feedback about how local people would like to get involved – elderberries for medicine, a mediation space, keeping pigs and access for kids being just some of the ideas.

With the help of five hardy volunteers we planted 500 native broadleaf trees in grizzly weather!

We’ve had a survey done of the old trees onsite, so that we can put in measures to support them, especially the fabulous ancient oak. We’ve done some grassland surveying so we have a baseline against which we can check whether our measures to create diverse pastures are effective. We’ve been plotting for ponds and restoring hedges and many other things!

We’ve hosted parts of the Ffynnon Farmstart this year – three friends keeping geese for the Christmas market, and a local beekeeper growing her business. The Farmstart has also been supporting a couple keeping milking goats and lambs, and a small tree nursery, on different sites. 

Croeso i fferm Tir Y Ffynnon!

Right now

There are 33 goslings (dead cute!) and 8 yearling cattle – some of you may have met these guys already, the escape artists who broke out to spend some time with the Vicar! We’re about to host a herd of traditional Hereford “Pasture for Life” cattle – raised without grains, or concentrates, just grass (and sometimes hedges). We plan to carry out mob grazing whenever we can – moving the cattle quickly through the landscape to mimic their natural behaviour, which will improve the pastures, promote biodiversity and help capture carbon in he soil.

We’ve been starting the project on an absolute shoestring this year (aka no cash) but we’re pleased to announce that Ffynnon has just been successful in gaining a grant from the Lottery to run activities on Tir Y Ffynnon land (and other community gardens) over the next three years! We’re planning measures to promote biodiversity and climate resilience like bringing in green hay from diverse meadows nearby, planting trees, managing the grassland in a way which restores healthy water cycles and builds topsoil. We’ll also be putting a shout out to invite next year’s cohort of Farmstarers to apply, by autumn. 

Over the next three years we’ll be holding open events like biodiversity surveying, farm walkabouts to meet the animals and tree planting days which we’ll advertise. Working on this new much larger site, with three whole years of funding should give us the ability to grow our support to new food producers and implement measures for biodiversity at a larger scale. 

We’re interested to hear from you if you have an idea about building this place as a community farm, and haven for nature. Do you want to grow food or medicine at scale? Help with measures that support amphibians, water health, bats, birds, bees, or bog plants?  Plant and maintain an orchard? Are you interested in being part of a working group to figure out how this place can really become a community farm? The land is owned by two individuals, at the moment Ffynnon uses it for its activities with an annual rental agreement for free. How can we make it secure for the community long-term?  Contact us through the website to get involved in this vision of farming for the future!

Here are some gratuitous pictures of our newest and cutest additions to the farm. The goslings are from different hatch dates, so some are way smaller, they get bullied off the grains we provide each day by the big ones, so we made a ‘creep’ where the larger ones can’t access the feed, but the small ones can get in and eat unmolested – if they can figure it out!