Arwyn’s son Wyn had left the farm to study. A sawmill and a planer brought him back. The family has lived at Blaen Cwm Farm since at least the 17th century, thanks to a forward-looking investment in timber processing, the farm will continue to remain in the Jones family.

The stone and plaster cladding conceal a timber frame. This is so unusual that the local TV station produced a report about the construction.

Stairs and windows made from oak grown on the farm.

The stunningly beautiful Blaen Cwm Farm lies in a valley at the heart of the Snowdonia National Park in north-west Wales.
”Our family has lived on the farm since the 17th century,” says Arwyn Jones.
But it looked as though he was going to be the last to do so. In the past, the farm’s main source of income came from sheep breeding. However, relying on this single stream of revenue is no longer financially viable for such a small farm. Arwyn realised this 20 years ago. He bought a mobile band sawmill, followed a couple of years later by a timber drying kiln.
”It was an eleventh hour thing. Then came BSE and foot and mouth disease. We managed financially thanks to the sawmill,” he says.
From the outset, he drove around the local farms and did some contract sawing. But the aim was to move the business home and start to sell products from the farm’s forest. This became possible thanks to the purchase of a PH260 four-sided planer.

Taking over the farm
The planing machine also had another effect. Arwyn’s son Wyn had left the farm to study. Most people of his generation never move back and farms start to disappear from families. But he saw the opportunities through the sawmill and planing machine.
”With businesses in both areas, it should be possible to drive the farm forwards,” he says.
When we visited, he still lived in his flat in the nearby village of Llanuwchllyn, but it was just a matter of a few weeks before he was to move home again.
”We’re building a house for my parents so that I can take over the old house that was built in 1777,” says Wyn.

TV programme about the house
The new house is a big, fully modern building that is constructed in a way that is unusual in Wales. From the outside, it looks like a traditional stone house. This was one of the planning conditions set down by the local authority that had to be met in order for approval to be given.
What’s unusual about it is that the stone and plaster conceals a timber frame. This is a common building method in other parts of the world, but is so revolutionary here that the Welsh-language TV channel produced an extended report about the building.
”The house will also be a showroom for products produced on the farm. All windows, mouldings, panels and joinery are made from oak grown on the farm, and we will have flooring from three different species of tree, all taken from the local area,” says Wyn.