This film is part of Free

Spring is Sprung in Powys

The spring is sprung, bees are buzzing and lambs, piglets, calves – and perhaps a lamblet? - have arrived in the Trants' Powys fields.

School programme and Educational film 1960 9 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales

Overview

Pretty primroses, delicate daffodils, a big, busy bumble bee and the sowing of oats all herald the advent of Spring at Maesmawr Hall/Cefn Du farms, Welshpool. There are sheep and lambs in the fields but one lamb has found a new home with a sow and her piglets! At Esgairdraenllwyn, a farm at Llaithddu, Llandrindod, the horned Welsh Black cattle have calves with white faces (Hereford x) and one gets a serious licking from its mother, a striking record of a cow-calf bond.

Ion Trant, brought up on Dovea Farm in Tipperary, Ireland, felt a gulf was emerging between town and country and welcomed school visits to the farms he ran with his wife, Janet Owen (Maesmawr Hall, Cefn Du, Esgairdraenllwyn). He also devised, filmed, edited and scripted the "Country Close-Up" series for children (BBC - 1956-62), often featuring his own three. As a result of this series, he was offered work as a freelance cameraman on the BBC's weekly farming programme and he also ventured further afield, travelling as cameraman with sports commentator Max Robertson to the West Indies and with George Cansdale, field naturalist and ex-Superintendent of London Zoo, to Palestine and Israel.