Whizz-kid on the web flies farming flag (From Western Telegraph)

Whizz-kid on the web flies farming flag

A FOUR-YEAR-OLD computer whizz may succeed where the might of the farming industry is floundering.

Sam Walsh has established his own information-packed website named simply Sams Farm Site.

By clicking on a variety of picture links featuring farm animals, browsers at www.samsfarmsite.co.uk can learn all about the countryside.

Pembrokeshires dairy producers will be pleased to see his comments extolling the virtues of milk. Drinking milk makes you grow up big and strong - thats what my mum told me!he confides.

He also flags up the sheep industry by revealing that one of his favourite meals is roast lamb with mint sauce and vegetables.

Sam, of Maes Dewi, St Davids, is mad about computers. When he heard his mum and gran discussing their websites he decided to build his own. His gran, Ann Riggs, lives on a farm at Walterston, Newton Cross, Hayscastle. The familys shared love of the countryside inspired him to write about agriculture.

All the ideas, colours and text content are his own while his mum, Gail, helped him with the code-typing in Notepad.

The response has been astonishing with more than 400 hits in the first week and lots of encouraging messages in his guest book.

His gran, whose www.anniebakes.com site is equally popular, says Sam uses the computer with great confidence. He types all his own e-mails and surfs the internet, says Ann, who had never switched on a computer until nine months ago.

He heard me and his mum talking about our sites and said he wanted to do one about farms to tell city children where milk comes from and so on. He has had lots of lovely comments, particularly about him using animal pictures as the links to make it simple for children to use.