Interviewer Sian Green:  So obviously you've changed the use of your farm over the years, but have you noticed that farming in general and the community around it has changed a lot? Or are there things that are still the same?
CHT: Farming in Gower has changed dramatically.  There used to be 34/35 dairy farms in Gower now there is two.  So the whole change and the move towards other income streams like tourism and obviously yeah, tourism and and the visitors and converting buildings into accommodation, it's been a huge change.  There's also been a big migration so there's a lot of people who lived locally who have moved away because obviously farming to a certain extent has been seriously in decline, I would say in Gower for a long time.
LHT: On that, I think the other thing is that you remember when you were a boy being able to go to Reynoldston and there was the local butcher and you could buy locally produced food locally and you had meat off the farm which your father would butcher at home. And that sort of thing. Whereas now obviously everybody goes to the supermarket. So that part of what we're trying to do now is to turn that clock back.  Ten years ago, this place was nearly all cereals, whereas now we've reintroduced cattle and sheep onto the farm and we've reintroduced vegetables as well and we're trying to find local markets for the vegetables, which is challenging but…and there are other associated challenges as well, like trying to get accommodation for staff. Of course, the price of accommodation down here is ridiculous, so trying to actually get anywhere for people to live and work down here is really challenging.  And the other thing is trying to change people's habits to actually persuade them to buy local rather than buy in supermarkets, which is obviously what the majority of people do and they find it easy and cheaper. And with the economic crisis coming down the tracks as well, I think that's going to be even more challenging.
CHT: Yeah. And in terms of the sustainability and changing the farm, we built a new pack house over the last couple of years to allow us to actually convert some of our farm products into retail products and to get a better margin within them. So going back to what Louise said, we're having real problems finding enough people and accommodation is a problem for them. So I think it's all muddled in. But of course we have to change we feel within the farm system otherwise farming …and farming is changing and we got some huge changes about to happen.
LHT: And again, going back to the cereal side, 5-10 years ago, all of the cereals were being trucked, taken away in big trucks and often going abroad to Africa as just big lorries of grain. Whereas now we're selling all of our cereals pretty well in the UK and to local markets, which is great. Some of it's going for animal food to local businesses and then the straw and the hay that we're producing on the farm a lot of it's going into our pack house to create added value equine products, so equine bedding and straw. And the equine market across South Wales, is loving that because a lot of people who are buying, have traditionally been buying product let's say it's imported from abroad for their horses, whereas now they're able to support a local farm and buy a naturally grown product which we are then bagging and adding a little bit extra to and delivering and really we're going now from Haverfordwest across to the borders with that range of products and up to mid Wales.
CHT:  I think you know farming has changed as well in terms of the whole cost structure its now very very expensive. It's gone very technical, which means that they don't need so many people on the farm traditionally.  Dad would have had in days gone by 30 odd men on just the farm, and now we are down to two. And forget the pack house, that's just on the farming things.  Whereas my father would take a week to spray 500 acres, we can spray the whole farm, which is about 800 acres if we wanted to in a day now.  The weather patterns are changing, the cost of fuel is changing, everything has gone through the roof, which is of course creates its own problems at the moment because of Ukraine, we are getting quite high prices for our grain, but in reality, without being greedy, that's where it should be anyway, whereas up to now, we've been price takers.  As Louisa mentioned, we were sending product to Africa, so all our grain ended up going by truck to Avonmouth and into ships and gone and we were totally the price taker. So this is part of this change that we're trying to keep control of our own destiny and add value in to sustain the farm in all the crops to grow.
LHT: So on the vegetable side and we started doing pumpkins without any artificial fertilizer or chemicals 2 years ago, and that was really successful. And so that's what kicked off the new vegetable operation. So even though Chris going back to the 1970s had a big veg operation here where he supplied to the supermarkets, we know we can grow veg really well here because we've got good quality land. That that was all stopped because the supermarkets basically pushed the prices so much that it wasn't viable. So now we've come back into vegetables sort of generations later, and the idea this time is to try and do it all say without chemical or artificial fertilisers and develop that local market.  So in many ways we're just sort of turning back the clock