William Emyr Jones doesn't know when he'll see his grandchildren again. They can't come to visit him for at least another two weeks. The Anglesey farmer and local councillor for Gaerwen is in the direct line of fire of the foot-and-mouth crisis.
Living so close to the infected abattoir at Gaerwen, he has been advised not to leave his home farm if he can help it, and not to go on to his two other farms at all. While he is not losing revenue at the moment because it's too early for his sheep to be sold, he admits to being nervous. State vets are checking his stock every day for signs of the disease.
All meetings and social gatherings in the village have been cancelled. "There are enough problems in farming today without this," Mr Emyr Jones says.
Sixty per cent of the north Wales community rely on agriculture, particularly sheep farming. Farmers, abattoirs, haulage companies, auctioneers and market staff are all affected.
"This thing is snowballing, the knock-on effects are beyond comprehension," Mr Michael Wynne-Parri, managing director of auctioneers Morgan Evans & Co, says. "None of us realises the full potential of the damage this is going to cause."
His business has ground to a halt, they have already had to cancel all livestock markets and several unrelated auctions of machinery and antiques are off. The crisis has also affected livestock hauliers "dramatically", according to Mr Huw Tudor, livestock Manager of L.E. Jones Ltd. `It's very bad, the boxes are all standing idle," he says. Other businesses, are already suffering the economic consequences.