Fortitude and resilience lie deep within the farming psyche and one farmer who has an abundance of both is Richard Jones.

Today he runs a successful free range poultry business and suckler beef and fat lamb enterprises but the path to achieving that wasn’t an easy one.

Richard had the opportunity to buy the family farm in Montgomeryshire in 1999 but to fund that he had to sell assets, including stock and machinery.

Four years later, when he was ready to start rebuilding the business, the farm support structure had shifted to the Single Farm Payment (SFP) but the base years for payments were the previous three when Richard had been producing very little at Wern Ddu in the hamlet of Aberhafesp near Newtown.

As a result he was only entitled to a 'very tiny SFP'.

“We had to change the way that we farmed,’’ he says.

Free range egg production offered a way forward.

At that time, there were diversification grants available to farmers to get their businesses back on their feet after foot and mouth so Richard applied.

I didn’t get the £80,000 I had been promised and I was facing much higher building costs

It took a year to get through planning hurdles for the poultry housing, during which the price of steel and other materials doubled, but permission was eventually secured and Richard was then awarded £80,000 in diversification grant funding. Three days later and the offer was withdrawn because the scheme had run out of money.

“I didn’t get the £80,000 I had been promised and I was facing much higher building costs,’’ says Richard.

His Assembly Member at that time, Mick Bates, fought his corner on the SFP ruling and the grant funding withdrawal, even taking it to the House of Lords, citing discrimination of a new business, but he was unsuccessful because force majeure could not be proved.

Richard was on the point of packing it all in because he couldn’t see his future in farming but his saving grace turned out to be the person who often gets a bad press – the bank manager.

“Thank goodness I had a very understanding bank manager in Eifion Green. He told me to keep going, that interest rates were extremely low and that I had nothing to lose. And he was right, we really got on our feet quite quickly once we got the poultry business established.

“I am pleased that I seized it with both hands, I have loved every minute of it.’’

Direct sales through an egg round created valuable revenue. “It was the making of the farm,’’ says Richard.

The pressure and stress of the intervening years did however take its toll on his health and in 2008 he suffered a heart attack at the age of 47.

His wife, Pauline, kept the poultry enterprise going while he recovered and his two sons, Fraser and Oliver, then joined them in the business.

Together they are farming Wern Ddu to its full potential, with the hens, a suckler beef herd and a flock of Beulah and Mule ewes.

The suckler beef herd is made up of mostly Continental breeds with the progeny sold as stores through local livestock markets at 12-14 months.

The herd calves over six weeks in the spring. The spring is a busy time as lambing gets underway on 5th March. The Welsh and Beulah ewes are crossed with a Blue Faced Leicester to produce a Mule. That Mule is then sired to a Texel ram to supply the fat lamb market.

The family works well as a team – Fraser, who is 29, is in charge of cattle and machinery, his younger brother, 27-year-old Oliver, the sheep. Their sister, Alice, 31, doesn’t work on the farm but loves to help out when she can.

Richard and Pauline oversee the poultry enterprise and Pauline also has her own poultry consulting business.

The family generate an income from two holiday lets too.

There were a number of setbacks that were out of Richard’s control in his forties but the emotional body blows he was delivered at that time have given him a different outlook on life.

What he has learned from those experiences is the importance of communicating with others.

“When I look back I realise that I was stressing about things that I didn’t need to be worrying about, if only I had talked to people, the right people.’’

As NFU Cymru County Chairman for Montgomeryshire, he says if there is one thing he would like to help to make a difference with during his time in office it is to make farmers realise that there is help there for them should they need it.

“It is an honour to be a county chairman and if I can make a difference by making people understand they are not alone when they are facing issues in their business or personal lives, that they must seek out the right advice from the people they think they can trust.’’