The Hushings - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 171

The low sun was so bright and the shadows so crisp that the land
looked as if it had been lit for a film. This would be the fourth con-
secutive year in which the customary British weather had been
reversed: easterly winds, warm days and crisp nights in the spring,
smeary, rain-lashed summers, still, warm autumns.
In the heart of the Cambrian Mountains, I drove up a bumpy track
to a small stone farmhouse. In the green fields around it grazed Welsh
speckle-faced sheep, with panda bear eyes and comical black noses.
Clear water poured over a sill into a raised pool beside the tidy farm-
yard. A white and caramel sheepdog lunged and barked on the end of
its chain.
Dafydd Morris-Jones and his mother, Delyth, came out to greet me.
I had expected a much older man: he was still in his twenties. He had
blue eyes, a handsome, open face, two earrings in the top of one ear
and - appropriately for a sheep farmer - mutton-chop sideburns.
Delyth had the same bright eyes. Her white hair came down to her
shoulders. She looked fit and strong.
I had found Dafydd after writing to the Cambrian Mountains Soci-
ety, to express my concern about its portrayal of the ecology and
landscape of the plateau. It had passed my letter to him. Though I
disagreed with some of what he wrote, I had been impressed by his
clear reasoning and the breadth of his knowledge, so I had asked to
meet him.
Delyth herded me into the house and sat me down in her little par-
lour. A Welsh dresser displaying her best crockery filled one wall. It
had been nailed up by Dafydd's great-grandfather, she told me, after
his son - Dafydd's grandfather - had, as a small boy, tried to climb it
and had brought it down, smashing all the plates.
Their family had taken the tenancy of this farm in 1885, and had
bought the land in 1942. Dafydd had just replaced the roof of one of
his barns - that had held since the beginning of his great-grandfather's
tenancy - using the original slate. 'It should do for the next 150 years,'
he told me.
After tea and scones, he took me out onto his land. His sheep,
which were beginning to swell, were still in the low pastures sur-
rounding the house. Dafydd explained that he puts the ewes with the
rams later than most farms do, so that they could lamb in the fields,