Opening Ceremony
12th May 2023
Opening the event is Glandon Lewis, a partner at Morris Marshall and Poole with Norman Lloyd, who run Welshpool Livestock Sales. He says it’s an opportunity to welcome people from all over Wales and the UK to such a special occasion.
And with Wales noted worldwide for producing quality lamb, he feels NSA Welsh Sheep is vitally important to the general public, as well as to farmers. It’s important to get a mix of people there and to include those who don’t understand what happens on farms.
He stresses the importance of reaching out to consumers: “It gets people together and it’s very important that in the farming community that we all gather together and have a good open day. I’m looking forward to a very successful day for everybody involved.
“It’s a good message to get out to the whole of the United Kingdom population that what we produce and what we generate from the good ground that we farm is of top quality and it’s a worthwhile effort to put on anybody’s plate to eat healthily every day.”
Glandon has been an auctioneer for 35 years and is the son of a local farm, married to Sioned from a farming family at Lake Vyrnwy. He worked closely with the host family for much of his working life and has long been involved with the Welsh Sheep events.
He clearly recalls the NSA Welsh Sheep of 30 years ago, held in Mid Wales at the legendary John Gittins’s farm on 10th June 1993. And he says the event only narrowly missed a tremendous rainstorm that flooded a nearby farm, one of the most noted in the Banwy Valley.
He says: “I remember going to help John Gittins at Ystum Colwyn at about 5 o’clock in the morning, to prepare some sheep and help to take them up to the event up at Cefn Coch.
“The evening before my then business partner, Chris Sheppard, and I toured around the improved hill land to prepare our commentary. It was quite a sight and his work so impressive.
“Ystum Colwyn and the farm at Cefn Coch were probably about ten miles away. I can see him there now, cigarette in his mouth, and he held this sheep and he’d be trimming there with his hand shears.
“He was a perfectionist, a very, very, skilled stockman. And very foresighted. I learned a lot off John Gittins. He was a man of few words, but whatever you heard off John Gittins was worth taking in and you don’t forget.
“His contribution to the sheep industry was massive: improving hill land and improving hill sheep, he was the instigator of the Welsh Mule Society.”
It’s this thread, running through his and the life of rural Mid Wales that means he feels so honoured to open NSA Welsh Sheep 2023. And he is especially proud that, as a partner in one of the biggest sheep sales in Europe, it links the event and the sheep industry so closely to livestock markets.
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