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Jane Smith is modest, to say the least, but is a key figure in heading one of the industry's biggest livestock sales. Here, Gaina Morgan talks to her about her life in farming.

The stalwart of what has traditionally been Europe's biggest ram sale, a fearless eventer and a former motor racing partner, Jane Smith shrugs off any suggestion that she is an inspiration.

Yet at 74, Jane heads up a business which is a multi-million-pound economic driver in Mid Wales: the National Sheep Association (NSA) Wales and Border Ram Sales.

She also retrains racing horses and events with them, having returned to riding in her 60s after retiring from her pivotal role in Belted Galloway breeding. And to add to an already extensive list of achievements, she also won the George Hedley Memorial Award in 2003.

She is as fearless with horses as she is with sorting thousands of sheep into sensible lots for the annual sales at the Royal Welsh Showground, plus she is adept at resolving problems which arise among sellers, vendors and a team of 200 employees and volunteers with subtlety, sensibility and a firm resolve.

Her core principles are rooted in her childhood, farming and showing ponies, and in her later experience travelling the world, motor racing on a slender budget. It means she appreciates quality, but knows it has to be marketable, and that the bottom line is paramount. But challenge and competition remain a thrill.

Jane's philosophy is to simply ‘keep going and get on with the job'. And although she is teaching her granddaughter to ride, she laughs at the thought that she might be a role model in an era when ageism and the role of women are so high on the agenda.

She says: "I don't even think of it. It isn't even something which crosses my radar - I don't consider myself to be a role model at all.

"I can sometimes go to an event and think, there are all these girls with legs up to their armpits on really flashy warmbloods and the judge must wonder ‘what is this old woman doing on this racehorse coming up the centre line?' But that is a thought I have to put out of my mind at every show, because it's very negative."

Determination

Jane's beloved horses are the only exception to her rigorous rule that her animals must make money.

She loves thoroughbreds and delights in creating a new and fulfilling life for a racehorse whose working life might have ended at just five years old.

Her unflappable approach to life and to crisis management was forged on the motor racing circuit with her late husband, Robin Smith. They travelled the world on a very tight budget, living frugally, and lurching from challenge to challenge, albeit with life enhanced by the exhilaration of challenge, competition and glamour.

The NSA Wales and Border Ram Sales have also been a constant in Jane's life since 1993. Her formative years were spent on the family's stud farm, and she studied at Usk Agricultural College, making lifelong friends and consolidating her farming knowledge.

She says: "With the ram sale, it is horrendously hard work for about eight weeks. The steady work for the rest of the year fits in really well with me. I don't mind having my back against the wall for eight weeks.

"I've come to the point with the experience I have of doing the job that, yes, someone will throw something new at you, but there is a solution to everything. It's just a matter of finding what it is and doing it.

"I do worry about it and I'm conscientious. I want to try and do the sale as well as I can for everybody and to me, whatever you're selling, whether you're first or last, you have equal importance regardless of what breed.

"So, it is a challenge to try and make a good sale for everybody, but while I'm fit enough to do it, I'd like to carry on."

Determination 

Jane's competitive streak and her love of farming came together 20 or more years ago when she bought her first Belted Galloways for her small farm near Usk. She built the herd up to 12 breeding cows, becoming a top breeder with championships at the royal shows, judging and selling bulls to £8,000.

Her breeding policy was controversial, but with a seat on the council of the Belted Galloway Society, her role in shaping the breed has been pivotal. She felt very strongly that the traditional breed traits had to give way to a more commercial type, with a good back end, but not heavy in the shoulder.

It is a source of pride that today the breed is off the Rare Breeds Survival Trust's watch list and is particularly useful for conservation grazing, while being commercially viable.

Jane says: "This is the type of animal I bred and I think it paid dividends because the breed has now developed and has become more commercial in its conformation. I was very much a lone voice initially, but I've never been too worried about what other people think.

"I looked at the breed and thought it was never going to survive unless it had a commercial market as well. I thought for it to be sustainable we had to have bulls making decent money and that was my aim.

"I decided at the very beginning that the most important thing was to buy a really good bull. I was fortunate to buy a bull called Bolbec Dun Concorde from top breeder, Christopher Marler, the year he was retiring.

"It was the September of the year of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001 and we did an escort from his Buckinghamshire farm to bring Concorde home. He was really the whole reason I was fortunate to be so successful, because he bred some tremendous stock."

Similarly, the NSA Wales and Border Ram Sale, once the biggest in Europe, has faced extensive challenges and change, particularly post foot-and-mouth in 2001. There is competition from online and private sales and the current Covid-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of last year's sales and has impacted on the current year.

"The first time I drove around the roundabout at Builth and saw the marquees, I thought this was not something I was going to manage," she says, recalling her first year in 1993.

"But we did. It survived and it's obviously grown from there and we've been there ever since.

"It's hugely important to me. It's been part of my life for nearly 30 years and I've seen it develop from what was numerically a much bigger sale, but with none of the legal constraints we have nowadays.

"Nothing was really checked. The traffic just used to arrive. We were in the marquees and used to trail around putting numbers up in damp grass.

"It all worked, but it wasn't the operation it is now. Things have changed so much on the legal side, the things you have to do and the things you have to be aware of.

"It's not a cheap sale to bring stock to, but quality always sells, and people have realised that over the years, with the NSA inspection, we have improved the quality of sheep put forward."

Today, the sale comfortably accommodates about 5,500 rams. This year almost 4,000 were catalogued, which was no mean achievement given the mood of the times, the pandemic and subsequent Government controls and restrictions.

Jane feels it has become more of a commercial buyer's sale. Numbers of the main commercial breeds have increased, while minority breeds have fallen away.

Jane is confident that with so many sheep from so many breeds offered on the one day, the sale will continue to enjoy enthusiastic support.

All in all, it is an exhilarating ride, and that is just what Jane expects from life.