Aled Jones surveys the steep incline in front of him at Ty’n y Braich farm in the picturesque Cwm Maesglasau Valley, just outside Dinas Mawddwy. It’s the same spot where his grandfather, Robert Jones, was photographed inspecting Welsh Mountain ewes for a feature in British Farmer magazine almost six decades before.
Save for a line of conifers, the scene in 2025 remains almost unchanged from the one depicted in the black and white print from 59 years previous. The beginning of that article from 1966 provides a fair assessment of the challenges associated with farming land which, at places, rises to over 2,200ft above sea level: ‘What the Psalmist wrote about the hills giving him strength doesn’t always have the same unmixed truth. When the hill is a mountain and the source of your livelihood grazes on it, it can give way to anxiety’.
‘What the Psalmist wrote about the hills giving him strength doesn’t always have the same unmixed truth. When the hill is a mountain and the source of your livelihood grazes on it, it can give way to anxiety’.
British Farmer magazine, 1966
Difficult place to farm
Much like the landscape has remained the same over all that time, so have the challenges in farming it. “It’s only in the last few years that I’ve really appreciated what a difficult place it is to farm,” admits Aled. “Everything is difficult here. We’re producing the best we can from what we’ve got.”
Despite the trials and tribulations of farming in what can be, at times, a harsh and unforgiving landscape, Aled remains unperturbed. His father Wyn, who is now in his late 70s and still lives in a bungalow on the farm, was just the same, as was Aled’s grandfather Robert, a former Chairman of the NFU’s Welsh Committee. In fact, no less than 17 generations of Joneses have lived and farmed at Ty’n y Braich. Cherished and detailed family records, documented in a prayer book handed down over generations, show the family have farmed the land since 1012. Such is the scale of the family lineage that it’s now documented on the back of a large scroll of wallpaper, charting Gethin Jones at the top of the tree in the 11th Century, Robert Jones and his six siblings, three of whom were blind but were revered locally for going on to have distinguished careers: Gruffydd a vicar; Wili a braille translator; and Lewis who worked in IT at Nottingham University; right through to Aled and his children.
Family and flock hefted to the land
The family’s story is one that was captured by S4C in 2012 for a documentary, ‘Un Teulu, Mil o Flynyddoedd, Un Fferm’ (‘One Family, One Thousand Years, One Farm’), that explored 1,000 years of family heritage at the farm. In that documentary Aled’s mother, Olwen, who by her own admission is an ‘outsider’ having married into the family in 1973, suggested that there was something that ‘draws the Joneses to the land’. Some might even say that a millennium constitutes the Joneses being hefted to Ty’n y Braich in the same way, perhaps, that their flock of Welsh Mountain ewes are.
While the Joneses’ remarkable family history has been brought into the public spotlight before, the UK Government’s recent proposals to alter reliefs to inheritance tax have thrust the family’s multi-generational story back into sharp focus in a new context.
New Government plans
Those plans would see many families passing their farm onto the next generation – just as the Joneses have for more than 1,000 years - burdened with a heavy tax owing to changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR). Aled, who is a member of NFU Cymru’s LFA Board and Meirionnydd County Vice Chairman, hosted a meeting at the farm where he and other NFU Cymru members invited Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville-Roberts and MS Mabon ap Gwynfor to hear from farmers, accountants, surveyors and land agents about the impact of the proposals.
'Like expecting a fisherman to sell his boat to pay a tax bill'
“There are things here that are very, very old. They may be valuable, they may not. But that’s irrelevant, really, because they belong to the farm. People ask about selling parts of a farm to pay a tax bill, but I don’t feel the land is mine to sell, either. I’m just looking after it for the next generation.”
Aled Jones
“This policy is being brought in by a government that, I feel, has no grasp of rural Wales or country life in the UK. It’s crazy how distanced they are in their views from the reality at ground level and how things work. It’s like expecting a fisherman to sell his boat to pay a tax bill. He might be able to pay the tax bill, but he’s not going to fish anymore.
“Mum and dad are nearly 80 and I’m 50. You hear terrible stories of people my age and younger falling ill and only being given weeks to live, or farmers who’ve tragically lost their lives to accidents on the farm. Things can change so quickly. What happens then? It’s a real worry.
“We’re all sitting on valuable land – no matter the size of the farm - but the reality is that there are not generations of money in these businesses; there is no £5m sitting in a bank account. There’s no capacity there to pay these tax bills. The net profit from the farm here, from which each of us can take a modest wage, is barely anything for a full-time, skilled person. It’s only covering costs, at best. We’re fortunate that we have been able to diversify, but not everyone is able to.”
Diversification
The main diversification supplementing the 690-acre organic upland beef and sheep holding was, in fact, borne out of a necessity to find additional work as the farm could not financially support another worker.
“I had it drilled into me from a young age that I could not immediately come home to farm and that I would need to find another income,” Aled recalls.
Having travelled to New Zealand, Norway and across the UK to shear, as well as working for various contractors, Aled saved up enough money to take his first tentative steps into the world of business. In August 2002 Aled purchased his first excavator and with it, began the first step in his journey to creating a successful contracting business which now supplies a range of large machinery to forestry and civil engineering companies.
Harnessing the farm's natural resources
In addition to the machinery, Ty’n y Braich is home to two hydro systems that harness the considerable rainfall experienced in this corner of Meirionnydd, turning it into green energy.
The original hydro scheme was installed in 1949, powered by the nearby Nant Cwm Eglwys to serve the traditional farmhouse. After falling into a state of disrepair, the hydro was replaced by a new system in 2014, largely installed by Aled and his father. Drawing from its original source, the new hydro system supplies all of the farm’s electricity, with surplus sent back to the grid and powering the equivalent of 23 homes. A second hydro was installed in 2020 with water running from the majestic Maesglasau Falls overlooking much of the farmland, the energy being sent back to the grid and delivering an income for the farm.
Ty’n y Braich was originally a small estate comprising two holdings, now in ruins, while the old farmhouse, renovated countless times over the centuries, was pulled down in the 1980s. A new house was built soon after that which today is home to Aled, his wife, Eirian, and their three children: Glesni, 18; Ceri, 16; and Aaron, 13. All three have showed an interest in a future in farming, not least Glesni, who is a second-year student at Coleg Glynllifon and particularly enjoys sheep work back home. However, Aled suspects, just like he did at her age, she may need to find income away from the farm before any return to Ty’n y Braich. He does harbour the hope, however, that at least one of his children will continue the family’s centuries-old history with the farm.
The family tree
“I’ve never felt any pressure, or the burden of the family tree, that I had to come back here to farm. It’s something I wanted to do. My mother says that as a family we’re drawn to the farm. There’s something in us that will do whatever we can to succeed – not necessarily to make money – but to make sure the place survives. I’d like to think that the kids have that in them, too. It would be really nice if at least one of them wanted to end up coming back to the farm and carry on. But there won’t be any pressure from me for them to do it.
“There are things here that are very, very old. They may be valuable, they may not. But that’s irrelevant, really, because they belong to the farm. People ask about selling parts of a farm to pay a tax bill, but I don’t feel the land is mine to sell, either. I’m just looking after it for the next generation.”