It took three years, £40,000 in costs and tenacity to secure planning permission for free-range egg housing at Castle Farm, Bishton.

It was one of many hurdles that Kevin and Sian Rickard have had to overcome to develop their farm enterprise.

The farm is on the urban fringes of Newport, close to the Tata steelworks, and that urbanisation is inching closer with thousands of new homes built in recent years and many more planned.

Yet the local authority took a lot of convincing that a chicken shed would not be visually intrusive.

The same is true of the new farm shop they are hoping to build soon – a successor to the unit they already have at the farm but which has outgrown that physical space as footfall has increased.

Kevin says the resistance by planners is at odds with the Welsh government’s messaging on encouraging farmers to diversify as direct subsidies are phased out.

“Family farms like ours need to diversify to survive but when you actually try to do that it is really difficult, it has been a very stressful process for us.’’

The poultry shed is built on a piece of land they had named ‘The Tip’, that name a reflection of its unproductiveness as farmland.

As such it was the perfect spot for the development, providing the 32,000 Lohmann Brown hens with 40 acres to range on.

The family has a gritty determination to see through the plans for the farm shop development too.

“We are at the right age to do this, it offers a future here for our children,’’ says Sian, mother to six-year-old Archie, and Maya, aged four. “Dad worked hard to buy the farm and keep it in the family.’’

‘Dad’ – Martin Webber – is in charge of the day-to-day running of the poultry side of the business and is more philosophical about the obstacles the family encountered along the way, acknowledging that planners are constrained by the straightjacket of local development plans.

“The policies are out of date, when local plans are renewed there will be more of a focus on rural regeneration, business like ours offer a future for family farms,’’ he says.

Martin’s parents came to the farm as tenant farmers, renting the holding from the University of Wales.

They farmed the 160 acres with beef and sheep as did Martin and his wife, Sue, when they took on the tenancy.

In 2000 the family took the opportunity they were offered to buy the farm.

Sian had been working off-farm as a depot manager for a fuel company when she decided to give up her nine to five job to farm.

“Farming is in our blood,’’ she says.

Her brother, Ben, balances the running of the sheep flock with his job as a lorry driver.

The family has invested heavily to make the farm financially viable for the future – they spent £1.2million on getting the free range egg business up and running.

They are now on their second flock cycle, with eggs sold to Oaklands.

Another recent investment has been in a small dairy herd to supply milk for a vending machine at the farm and another in Newport city centre.

Dairying is where Kevin’s interest lies and he was keen to establish a milking herd for direct sales rather than buying in milk from other farms.

“It was important to us that the milk came from the farm, that it was produced here,’’ he says.

The herd currently consists of 15 Holsteins and Jerseys with plans to scale up cow numbers in future.

Milking infrastructure was installed to support the dairy enterprise – five milking units and a bulk tank with a pasteuriser and a holding tank for the vending machine.

The vending business has to be signed off by the environmental health department before milk can be sold to the public.

While they wait for that the milk is fed to the calves and pigs instead of being sold at £1.50 a litre.

“That hurts,’’ Kevin admits. “But we should be up and running soon.’’