We're All Going On A Late Autumn Holiday

My companion and I took our seats in the finest Indian restaurant in Narberth, indeed, the only Indian restaurant in Narberth. On closer inspection it was Bangladeshi. A tall man propped up outside with a glass of wine, a cigarette and an odd habit of ending each sentence with a dirty laugh had told us the food was excellent. We let ourselves be convinced. The alternatives were steak houses, a noisy pub, an over-classy restaurant and a pizzeria, and we wanted curry.

Anna is vegetarian, and I usually only eat meat if I know the place it's come from or if it's organic, so we ordered meat-free dishes. The friendly waiter said “Are you vegetarians?” to which the simple answer was yes. I asked if he was too, he laughed and said no, no, he loves to eat meat although his religion did not allow it, or eggs in fact. To those of his religion, apparently, eggs are like meat. We surmised he was a not-very-strict Hindu. The food was pretty ordinary really.

Fishguard Harbour with Dinas Island in the distance

We were on a two-day holiday in south-west Wales, my first (and only) holiday of the year. Already we had sipped coffee in Newport, circumnavigated Dinas Island (which is confusingly joined to the mainland), and sauntered about Fishguard. The next day we were to visit a small organic farm just over the border of Carmarthenshire, the home of the wholesalers that our weekly veg-bag scheme sometimes uses to supplement our locally-grown veg. Not the most romantic of holiday destinations perhaps, as my giggling fellow growers were quick to point out, but nevertheless we were both keen to see a real working organic farm.

Despite having forgotten we were coming, Peter and Mary* gave us a very warm welcome, a cup of tea in the house and a tour of their site, chatting away about all aspects of their business. They have two large fields, one of which had long lines of kale and other veg growing, and in the other are nine huge polytunnels, each eighty feet long, the middle four joined together to form a massive indoor space full of chard, salads and rocket. They use a small tractor in there to rotavate the soil and a larger tractor outdoors, and Mary let me try out her “wheeled hoe” which you just push along and it pulls up the weeds as you go!

This pile of stones is a Bronze Age burial cairn, one of three on top of Foel Drygarn

It was all on a much larger scale than anything around Machynlleth but they still seemed to think of it as rather small, providing a “top-up” to their main wholesale business, importing organic fruit and veg (mostly from abroad but also from suppliers in Hereford) and selling it on. They've been doing it for many years and it's now grown to a stage when they are considering hiring an employee or two. We left impressed by their capability, warmed by their generosity and down-to-earth humour and inspired to continue growing organic veg!

Last of my outdoor butternut squash. The indoor lot did a lot better

* names changed