Llangadfan young farmer Eifion Jones stars in Cefn Gwlad on S4C

Eifion Jones is studying agriculture at the NPTC College in Newtown alongside working on the family farm and running a successful welding company, SEJ Engineering. Eifion started off repairing and creating agricultural equipment for the family farm before going on to set up a business designing and making all kinds of agricultural equipment.

“I’m Jack of all trades, master of none,” laughs Eifion, 19, who got his first welding machine as a Christmas present when he was 12 years old.

“I started the welding business some years ago now and I do a bit of everything – from feeders to shed doors and gates.”

Eifion has won many awards for the design and production of a wide range of agricultural equipment. He came third at the 2015 Wales Innovation Awards and last year he won the 2017 Wales YFC Business of the Year Award.

But Cefn Gwlad presenter Ioan Doyle, who also runs a fencing company, is most interested in a fencing machine Eifion invented while doing his ‘A’ Levels at Ysgol Caereinion School.

The Easy Fencer is designed to make life easier for farmers to install a fence using a mechanical process that means less labour for the farmer. But how did Eifion come up with the idea for such a machine while still at school?

“I made the Easy Fencer for a school project. Everyone else made things like coffee tables, but I wasn’t interested in that sort of thing – I wanted to make some sort of machine. Fencing is in my blood; my grandfather was a well-known hedgerow folder in this area. Most of the Dyffryn Banw hedges have benefited from his magic touch.”

But despite the awards he has won for his work, the job of inventing and improving his machines never stops for Eifion.

“I can use a machine and then, click, I think of something else that would be handy. That’s what I like about the business of trying to build things – you never stop and there’s always something else to do.”