With over 4,500 churches and chapels, Wales can justifiably claim to have some of the most beautiful and historic religious buildings in the world. You name it - ancient churches, medieval cathedrals, and hilltop chapels - Wales has got the lot!

Broadcaster and journalist, Huw Edwards, recently remarked: “The churches and chapels of Wales must be some of the most beautiful religious buildings anywhere in the world.”

To celebrate and raise awareness of Wales’ religious heritage, the National Churches Trust - the UK’s church building support charity - has launched ‘Sacred Wales’ - (Cymru Sanctaidd) giving people a chance to choose Wales’ favourite church or chapel.

They include St. Davids Cathedral, Capel Als - the first non-conformist place of worship in Llanelli and St. Winefride at Holywell - a shrine marking the spot where, supposedly, Caradog cut off St. Winefride’s head in the seventh century and one of the oldest continual pilgrimage sites in Britain.

In launching the search to find your favourite place or worship, the proposals are also designed to start a debate about their future. Once the centre of Welsh society, many churches and chapels are still vital for community life but the task of maintaining all these religious buildings is becoming virtually impossible as congregations continue to decline.

A new report, Supporting Places of Worship in Wales -Survey 2017, produced by the National Churches Trust, and just published highlights some of the problems being faced by many faithful members.

Keeping churches and chapels open and in good repair is often up to volunteers. however, 50 per cent of churches and chapels say that they are not attracting new volunteers because of dwindling congregations and a lack of young people.

Sixty per cent of churches and chapels need funding from external sources to pay for repair and maintenance projects to keep their buildings in good condition but fundraising skills are in short supply - 28 per cent of churches and chapels have no experience at all of making funding applications and 54 per cent very little experience.

One of the best ways of preventing the need for expensive repairs is quite obviously to carry our regular maintenance, but almost half of churches and chapels surveyed do not have a maintenance plan and over three quarters said they desperately wanted help with funding to carry out maintenance.

We would do well to remember that all our churches and chapels are historic buildings - with the help of government, heritage bodies -such as CADW, the Heritage Lottery Fund and local people, they can be part of our future, too.

Make mine a 99!

According to national survey, consumers are indulging more selectively, and more than half of Americans said they either do not eat ice-cream or limit their consumption due to health concerns,

It is now being predicted that volume sales of ice-cream in the US is expected to decline slightly year-over-year for the 2016-2021 forecast period, with the biggest obstacle being that Americans are simply not consuming as much ice-cream.

However, the survey also showed that consumers have not lost their taste for the frozen sweet treat as two in seven respondents said they crave ice-cream at least once a week, while a quarter crave it daily.

Nearly one in five shoppers reported regularly avoiding the ice-cream section because they do not want to be tempted to purchase ice-cream.

While indulgence still occurs for almost every surveyed consumer, more than half reported they are becoming more selective with how they satisfy their sweet tooth and 60 per cent have resisted an ice-cream craving within the past month.

The top reasons they are avoiding ice-cream is because it is either too high in calories, sugar or fat and contains too many artificial ingredients that make them feel ill.

In addition, more than half of those surveyed reported that they either always or frequently read the ingredient labels on ice-cream or frozen desserts before eating or purchasing.

However, almost half of respondents believe frozen dessert sweetened with organic cane sugar or monk fruit is healthier, compared to one in every five who think ice-cream containing sugar alcohols such as erthritol are healthier.

Not so convenient

A contributor to the Observer’s letters page recently raised one of my points about the cost of living ‘in the back of beyond’ or ‘out in the sticks.’

An urban cousin once told me that I was ‘lucky’ that I had a car and could chose to go where I wanted when I wanted.

Truth is living in the countryside you rarely have a choice - having your own means of transport is not only essential, but comes at a huge cost.

My town cousin could walk, catch a bus or take a taxi to just about anywhere she needed to go and the fare would be the end cost - having a vehicle of our own comes with the expense of insurance, road tax, garaging, fuel, tyres, maintenance and depreciation that rally does cost an arm and a leg.

House talk

A woman had gained a few pounds. It was most noticeable to her when she squeezed into a pair of her old blue jeans.

Wondering if the added weight was noticeable to everyone else, she asked her husband: “Honey, do these jeans make me look like the side of the house?”

“No, dear, not at all,” he replied, “Our house isn’t blue.”

He is almost over the cold he caught sleeping in the garage for three nights.

Old times well remembered

The ink was barely dry on the pages of the Observer when I received a ’phone call from a gentleman living near Pembroke who claimed that he had actually worked on the thresher which illustrated my column last week.

He recalled that, in the countryside where he grew up, fields of wheat and oats were cut with a binder - with everyone watching for rabbits as the machine drew into the centre of the field - then there was the task of stoking (usually four sheaves, sometimes six) to allow the grain to mature, then placed into mows of 40 or more sheaves before being carted to stacks either at the corner of a field or near the farmstead.

Weeks later (and sometimes in the spring), threshing was an exciting time when the humdrum routine of farm life exploded in a frenzy of noisy activity as monster engines and machinery huffed and roared.

Threshing teams came into the house at high noon, washed sweat and grain dust from sunburned arms and faces, and settled in at tables heavily laden with bowls, plates and platters of home cooking.

Hungry workers consumed roast beef and ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, stacks of freshly baked bread and home-churned butter, gallons of home brew, then fresh-baked pie for dessert.

Women from neighbouring farms would assist. Youngsters would be pressed into service as water carriers, with buckets for the steam engines and gallon jugs with quenchers for the thirsty threshers.

The next day, the thresher would move on and the farm would return to a more normal routine.

A generation later, the steam engines gave way to tractors with nameplates that included Fordson, International Farmall, Allis-Chalmers, Massey-Harris, Oliver, Case and others.

He recalled: “I was at least a generation removed from steam-powered threshing, but learned a lot about tractors at an early age on the farm. Youngsters were supposed to do what they could, and a 10-year-old boy could always drive a tractor with little or no prompting.”

For a few years, the old threshing machines (sometimes called separators) chugged along, soon replaced by tractor towed ‘combines’ that cut and separated the grain in one operation, and finally with self-propelled models.

The old steam engines and separators were relegated to the back of barns and along hedgerows, where most of them rusted into the ground

On the subject of reapers and binders, the first reaper (a very crude machine) was designed by McCormick in an old blacksmiths shop in 1831, but it was not until 1880 that a binder mechanism using twine was introduced by Deering. Originating from a Scottish design, the first portable steam driven threshing ‘mills‚ - as they were then called - were produced by Ransomes in about 1841.