Cancer: Farmer sells cattle for charity after wife's death

"When you watch someone you love slip away you've got two choices. You're staring into a black hole and it's very easy to fall into. So I decided I would do something useful."

Emyr Wigley had big plans for retirement.

He and wife Evelyn bought a caravan to go travelling after many long years running their farm. They had no children and looked forward to "slowing down".

But it was not long before she began to feel unwell. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died in 2015, aged 69.

Emyr, 78, from Deytheur, near Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain, Powys, said: "All her time and years were taken off her. What hurts me the most is all the work, all the sacrifices she did to get us where we are."

With the caravan bought for retirement untouched for nine years and gathering dust in a shed, Emyr instead threw himself back into work, establishing a small, closed-breeding herd of British Blue cattle.

The money Emyr fetches from selling the herd, known as The Old Stackyard Blues, will be donated to the Ovarian Cancer Action and Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution charities.

So far, those sales have made more than £120,000 for charities, and the final 33 cattle were auctioned in Shrewsbury on Saturday.

The Old Stackyard Blues pedigree charity herd sold for £81,000.

Emyr said: "There's more pleasure in helping other people than helping yourself."

Emyr had always planned to sell the cattle, but that process was sped up after he was seriously injured by a bull while preparing it to be sold in Carlisle in January.

His niece Laura Pritchard said: "We are incredibly lucky because Em was a hair's breadth from death.

"I will always feel lucky that I was in that pen when the animal spooked and he was ultimately crushed and trampled on. I was able to get him out and I have some medical training so I was able to look after him."

James Evans, of Hall's Holdings, which runs livestock auctions in Shropshire, said: "It is a bittersweet end of an era whenever anybody is selling up.

"Due to his age, Emyr would probably still have been retiring in the next couple of years.

"But the fact that it's happening now when the beef trade is at probably the highest it's been for a long time is great for him, so hopefully he'll have a great sale and there'll be plenty of support for the sale."

As for Emyr, he now plans to write books about life in farming and judge cattle, so the caravan may be staying in the shed a little longer.

After the auction, Cary Wakefield, chief executive of Ovarian Cancer Action, said: "It has been an absolute privilege and honour to be here to see what Emyr has done.

"He has turned something so devastating into something inspirational."