The Really Welsh trading company’s North/South farming split is paying dividends this month, although the divide between North & South has never been greater.
“Normally in February we’d be knee deep in Daffodils” reports Richard Arnold, but this year the weather has wrecked all our plans for an early bumper harvest, and instead it’s the Leek crop in Flintshire that is blazing a trail.
Leek volumes are in fact up over 100% on 2009, with more of the crop than ever going over to England as the traditional leek growing counties in the east remain snow bound. “While leeks are still selling very well here in Wales” notes Arnold, “the “export trade” is way up, as Flintshire proves to have been an inspired choice for a major growing hub. Normally we’d be looking to pull about 30 tones of leeks every week, but over the last month that’s been more like 70 or 80 tones… with demand for UK grown fresh vegetables running at a 3 year high, and even Cornish crops damaged or slowed by the snow”.
As widely reported last week, the Really Welsh daffodil crop, based around Llantwit Major in Glamorgan is looking very sorry, with daily harvests 90% down on a year ago. “we’ve decided to keep prices the same as last year” says Richard, “not looking to capitalize on the lack of our national flower, and we really need to reward customers now, in the hope that they will support us when the large volume of the crop arrives later than we’d planned”
“We even had the television cameras here last week” adds Rhiannon Williams – brand manager for the business – “keen to find out if there would be flowers for St David’s day, which we are still very confident there will be, but we are in need of a few warmer days to get the flowers to a decent height for picking”
Meanwhile Charlie Lightbown and the team in Flintshire will keep pulling….. having only lost 3 days in the very worst of the weather in January, they are set to break all Welsh leek records, and finish the crop in good time in late Spring, by which time the company is hoping it will have harvested its 20 million daffodils too.
