A black and white photograph of a beaming young boy in a flat cap, a fine-looking pig by his side, sits on a filing cabinet in Andrew Phillips’ farm office.

The image is of his three-year-old self, taken at Pembroke Farmers’ Club Show, a hint of the award-winning stockman he was destined to grow into.

Now 32, he has an aspiring next generation farmer of his own at Windsor Farm, Lamphey, his four-year-old son, Edward.

The pigs have gone and at the heart of the farming enterprise he runs with his parents, David and Ruth, and wife, Jane, are 2,500 breeding ewes, a herd of suckler beef cows and arable crops.

Wind back in time to when that photograph was taken and Andrew’s earliest memories of growing up on the farm are of exhibiting at agricultural shows.

Little wonder perhaps, as Pembroke Farmers’ Club Show has been hosted by the Phillips family at Windsor Farm since Andrew was born and many years before that.

“So many of my childhood memories are tied up in that show, it was the highlight of the summer,’’ he says.

There was never any doubt that he would follow in the footsteps of previous generations of his family and become a farmer – like his son Edward he was immersed in the farm from the cradle.

He has acquired many accolades and awards in his short farming career – more recently the 2021 NFU Cymru/NFU Mutual Welsh Livestock Champion of the Year Award and a finalist in the 2022 Farmers Weekly Sheep Farmer of the Year Award.

But, awards aside, Andrew is at his happiest in the nitty gritty of farming.

It was his industry placement year on a large scale sheep farm in Scotland that opened his eyes to new possibilities that existed for his family’s business.

Up to that point, stores were bought in for fattening but that enterprise was coming under pressure from economics and bovine TB regulations.

“The cattle side of the business was just getting harder and harder,’’ Andrew recalls.

The farm was also growing early potatoes at that time, in a hand-picked system, but with a downturn in that market too it was time for a rethink.

The business transitioned from a mainly potato and cattle fattening enterprise to a predominantly sheep system.

Numbers now stand at 2,500 breeding ewes and 600 ewe lambs, mostly Suffolk cross Mules.

Windsor Farm is also home to a beef suckler herd of 40 commercial cows, mainly Limousin and British Blue, which are sired to a Limousin bull. Most of the calves are sold at 10-12 months if they are not retained for breeding.

About 15% of the farm is reseeded to grass leys each year, with long-term leys established after a crop of winter barley. Forage maize, 140 acres grown to sell to dairy farms, is undersown with short-term ley mixes.

The business has also diversified – it has a pick-your-own pumpkin enterprise and provides holiday accommodation in two shepherd’s huts.

The pumpkin business, now in its third year, was launched when Andrew saw a similar enterprise on another farm, ironically when he was travelling back to Pembrokeshire from a farm diversification event in Birmingham.

“We called into a farm shop and saw that they had a pumpkin patch. We were sure there was an opportunity to do something similar in Pembrokeshire.’’

He was right and the business has continued to grow, now covering four acres, with a pick-your-own-site open at weekends during October and for the half term week.

With recent government announcements on free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand, major red meat-producing nations, there is some nervousness among farmers about how their businesses will compete.

Andrew believes it will indeed be very difficult to compete against the scale of production and economies of scale in those countries but adds: “I feel positive that the sustainable and grass-based production system that we are operating at Windsor Farm is the way forward and that we are producing a climate-friendly and high-quality lamb product.

“My aim is to continue to ensure that our business can stay as competitive as possible.’’