Farmers in the valley manage with limited inputs of part time and casual labour, but they make widespread use of contractors. The use of contract labour has two main advantages; first, it relieves the farmer of the need to invest in machinery which is expensive and which would very probably be under utilized once purchased; secondly, it means that the farm need not carry as much labour. The use of family labour to do contract work, alongside other activities on the farm, also means that it can be done more cheaply than if a full time waged worker has to be paid for. Farms in the area appear to fall into two categories: those which can supply contract labour, and those which need to hire it. Much of the contracting is done by farms which were able to invest in machinery during the 1970s, and which now have a member of the family available to carry out the work; examples we encountered were of sons who were underemployed while the farmer was still running the farm, or farmers' brothers needing part time work. There is strong support for the idea of using local contractors to do farm work, since this means 'creat-ing employment in the valley' and this tended to be possible for work like hedging, ditching, fencing and silage making. Shearing and lambing are more often done by outside contractors. In these contracting arrangements, we can see a contemporary develop-ment of earlier patterns of co-operation amongst Welsh farms, and the practice of 'lending a boy' (ie a son) to help neighbour-ing farmers (Rees, 1950); the difference is that nowadays money changes hands to pay for contracting services. Contracting links farms together, and also provides a means of smoothing out the fluctuations in the availability of labour which inevitably accom-pany the life cycle of a farm family. Once again, social networks and family life-cycle are closely bound up with farming practice.
Outside farming, there are few enterprises, and the range of employment opportunity is narrow. Apart from a few shops and pubs, providing necessary local services, the remaining economic activities arc more or less independent of the local economy. An exception was a small building firm, which built houses in the valley as well as outside. This employer showed a distinct preference for local labour; this had the interesting result of producing part time work, as house painters, for two married women. The employer's reasoning was that:
This is very much an area for helping yourself, self-generated, the whole area is geared to manage on its own; the people all make an effort, there's an active community spirit, (concerned with) being able to generate work in your area. We support local efforts in full, for example, buy in the local shop, get the nearest petrol.
Given what some perceived as a local boom in house building and renovation, a few others found construction and repair work locally. Being able to get such work depends very much on having the right sort of personal contacts and upon an informal approach to neighbours among whom the job seeker is known and trusted. Social relationships seem at times to merge easily into economic relationships. Some individuals succeed in working from their homes, mainly as craftspeople, but otherwise employ-ment entails travelling out of the valley to one or other of the 'growth centres' in mid-Wales, such as Newtown, Llandrindod, or Rhayader, or even further afield. Hence, there are resident in the valley a set of people who could be regarded as 'outliers' of the newer rounds of investment which are occurring elsewhere (mainly Newtown). In this sense, wider economic restructuring does impinge on the valley; this is evident, for example, from the presence of respondents with occupations like computer programming or film making who were clearly involved in economic net-works which extended well beyond the locality.
Since they serve a small and dispersed population, the turnover of local shops and pubs is low, and profits are correspondingly meagre. Only one shop in the valley was run by a local person. It was recognized that incomers did not find it easy to establish themselves in a local business. An incoming couple had made an effective start running one shop, by researching their customers' needs; they were aware that survival depended on finding a niche where they were not competing with cheaper, but more distant, supermarkets. This meant working long hours and offering ser-vices (such as credit) which could not be obtained elsewhere. Even so, viability depended on the continuation of the post office business, currently threatened by downgrading to a part-time 'community office'. Likewise, public houses, of which there are three in the valley, offer a precarious living. Socially, they pro-vide a focus for local life, but economically, they find it difficult to flourish; if they do not get local support, there is little alternative custom; it is easy to get into a vicious circle, where initial suspicion of new owners makes business slow, therefore owner-ship changes, and local loyalty is lost — one public house had changed hands eight times in seven years. The economic viability of such local services is very much bound up in the social relations which surround the interaction of locals and newcomers, to which we return below.
The majority of men actually employed in the valley will, for the foreseeable future, find work on farms. It seems reasonable to assume that the valley comprises a sufficiently self-contained economy to furnish work, made up mainly of part-time and casual jobs, to absorb any individual male who is well known and liked, and who possesses the necessary range of skills. Certainly some informants felt there was no need for men to leave the area for lack of work, provided they were not after 'steady nine-to-five type jobs' but were ready to turn their hands to whatever was going by way of building, farm work, and machine maintenance. There is however a total lack of opportunity to pursue professional and skilled occupations.
The position of women is quite different. There is little employment available locally except for part-time farm work (usually carried out by farmers' wives and daughters) or pub work. Otherwise women seeking employment have to travel to a nearby town, which presents particular problems for women with young children. This makes it quite difficult for girls to stay in the area, unless they are marrying into a farm family. Married women arc in demand from town employers as stable, settled employees, providing they can cope with the necessary travelling. One farmer's wife had been pleasantly surprised by the ease with which she had returned to secretarial work after having children; at first she did part-time work, and then when this worked out, she had gone full-time. Subsequently other local women (she knew of four examples) also found part-time clerical jobs, for instance, working in a Newtown bank.
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