[Penygroes Farm]

We need info on ANY grants, assistance payments or freebies that we can, as Smallholders apply for...
Any suggestions on where to start. We are new to this.
 

[Bodger]

Perhaps tell us a little bit about yourselves, what you want to do and what you're about.

[Penygroes Farm]

Well, 7 acres divided in to 3 large paddocks. Some new fencing / gates required. Largest field is quite wet as a lot are in South Wales. We would like to improve the ground maybe by planting more trees or drainage or introducing livestock.
We have a conservation area / fenced off pond which is well planted up. We are considering setting aside the "wet" land and developing a camping site and introducing hard-core in the wettest area to form an access road??
We would also like a few more out buildings / stables / barns..
Where do we start looking for grants etc? Do we qualify for the single farm payment?

Ray   

[Backinwellies]

Your place is too small for SFP  and to be honest for most grant schemes.    You may be able to get something for planting a woodland maybe. .... best of luck.

[Penygroes Farm]

Okay ... thanks Linda..

It doesn't hurt to ask...

[Bodger]

Ray is that the Penygroes near Caernarfon? if so, then you're only 20 miles or so away from where we live.

[ferretkeeper]

It might be worth checking out Glastir - we don't have enough land, we own 5 acres and rent the rest - you might just be borderline. If there's wetland they would encourage you to keep it that way and fence it off for its own protection. You can plant trees under the scheme but not just a few, I think they want acres. They did mention orchards to me which we were interested in, but again on a much smaller scale. Even if we qualified I don't know that we would do it anyway because of all the red tape.

I've applied for the Young Entrants to Farming scheme but you have to be under 40 and taking over the holding for the first time, there's a lot of hoops to get through there as well. But it's for agricultural businesses, you'd have to have very solid business plan, forecasts etc to get accepted as a start up. We're already trading, just, so had a bit more to go on.

There were local authority funding initiatives for certain areas, redeveloping empty outbuildings, rural development, diversification type of thing. But they were all fully subscribed when I asked.

There is precious little funding out there, grants much less so, but there may be start up loans etc if you are planning on running a business.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but hopefully it saves you sitting on the phone for two days being bounced from place to place!

Are you anywhere near us - Ammanford way? There's a meeting of the Carmarthenshire TASers in two weeks, here on the Events board

[Tudful Tamworths]

They're not actually too small for the SFP (as it stands - change on the way), but it depends whether the land came with entitlements and whether the previous owners made claims. They would, however, be ineligible for the current agri-environment schemes.

I've written a piece on the proposed CAP reforms which is in the current (November) issue of Country Smallholding magazine, and one of my colleagues is compiling two further reports on other grant assistance that might be available to smallholders, so look out for the December and Christmas issues.
Good luck with your smallholding, Penygroes Farm. Feel free to ask any questions about smallholding - either on here or by PM. Liz x