It took three years, £40,000 in costs and tenacity to secure planning permission for free-range egg housing at Castle Farm, Bishton.
The farm is on the urban fringes of Newport, close to the Tata steelworks, and that urbanisation is inching closer with thousands of new homes built in recent years and many more planned.
Yet the local authority took a lot of convincing that a chicken shed would not be visually intrusive.
New farm shop
The same is true of the new farm shop they are hoping to build soon - a successor to the unit they already have at the farm, which has outgrown that physical space as footfall has increased.
Kevin says the resistance by planners is at odds with the Welsh Government’s messaging on encouraging farmers to diversify as direct
subsidies are phased out.
“Family farms like ours need to diversify to survive but when you actually try to do that it is really difficult, it has been a very stressful process for us.”
'The Tip'
The poultry shed is built on a piece of land they had named ‘The Tip’, that name a reflection of its unproductiveness as farmland.
As such it was the perfect spot for the development, providing the 32,000 Lohmann Brown hens with 40 acres to range on.
Convincing the planning authority of that was another matter but the Rickards persisted.
“We protested outside the Civic Centre on the day of the hearing and Kevin spoke at the meeting,” Sian recalls.
Permission was duly granted and helped to ease some of the financial worry and sleepless nights that the uncertainty had caused.
Gritty determination
The family has a gritty determination to see through the plans for the farm shop development too.
“We are at the right age to do this, it offers a future here for our children,” says Sian, mother to six-year-old Archie, and Maya, aged four. “Dad worked hard to buy the farm and keep it in the family.”
‘Dad’ - Martin Webber - is in charge of the day-to-day running of the poultry side of the business and is more philosophical about the obstacles the family encountered along the way, acknowledging that planners are constrained by the straightjacket of local plans.
Rural regeneration
“The policies are out of date, when local plans are renewed there will be more of a focus on rural regeneration, business like ours offer a future for family farms,” he says.
Martin’s parents came to the farm as tenant farmers, renting the holding from the University of Wales.
They farmed the 160 acres with beef and sheep as did Martin and his wife, Sue, when they took on the tenancy.
In 2000 the family took the opportunity they were offered to buy the farm.
Sian had been working off-farm as a depot manager for a fuel company when she decided to give up her nine to five job to farm.
Met through YFC
She had met Kevin, a dairy farmer’s son from Usk, through the YFC - she was a member of the Wentwood club and he of Usk - and they both wanted to farm.
“Farming is in our blood,” she says. “I work more hours that I did when I was working Monday to Friday, but the children are not in childcare, and I can do the school run.
“The children can be with us on the farm, we can do things as a family, three generations together.”
Sian’s brother, Ben, balances the running of the sheep flock with his job as a lorry driver.
Kevin had been working full time for Cogent Breeding Ltd on its sire analysis programme and has kept that up in a part-time capacity.
The family has invested heavily to make the farm financially viable for the future - they spent £1.2 million getting the free-range egg business up and running, budgeting for a 15-year payback, although higher feed costs could lengthen that timescale....
Read the full feature in Farming Wales' February edition.