In my last year at school, I managed to talk myself into a lambing job at Carrie on the north shores of Loch Tay.
I learned a great deal, have fond memories and will forever be grateful to Fraser Wilson for taking a chance on a young loon as green as leeks.
The previous summer, in anticipation of the road ahead of me, I took on a black collie bitch pup. At the time the TV show Ally McBeal was popular and I called the little dog Nell after a character my young self admired.
I was under no illusions, this black dog wouldn’t be near ready for real work by lambing time but she would be a good hand nonetheless, and it was a start.
Every spare minute I had, she was on sheep in the fields around the village (the local shepherd was another great man who encouraged youthful learning). She was a lovely dog and although she didn’t have the greatest outrun she did her best and always came back to me smiling.
On the first steps I took to becoming a man I couldn’t have wished for a better companion as I lodged in a wee caravan. One day, as I tried to coax the best out of Nell in the village fields, a man I recognised as a regular visitor to his widowed sister approached me across the plain.
“Laddie,” he exclaimed. “It’s just great to see a young loon working so hard to get the best out of that little black dog. You are both making mistakes but you’re both trying!”
Poor Nell didn’t enjoy a long life, when I went to college my father took her on, and he was giving her a clap one day when he felt little bumps all along her ribs, it was cancer and we did the right thing by her. She never stopped smiling.
These bletherings from the kitchen table come to you this Easter from a gie trachled chiel.
At my feet in the heat box is a ewe lamb found cold, and drookit this afternoon.
This end of the estate doesn’t officially start lambing until the 25th but you’re not really hill farming unless you have a few earlies! We find ourselves in strange times indeed.
We sold fat cattle last week and it was the dearest beef we have sold since we started finishing the cattle.
I haven’t yet tapped a calculator as it scares me, but our gross margins will be far slimmer than they should be.
I won’t bore you about the cost of inputs; it’s the same as every business and home in the land but it is fearsome.
Most businesses will be anxious for the coming year but for now a “plod on and keep the heed doon” attitude will be employed.
Today I hauled some stirks in to market for a neighbour. I thought I would take the chance to study form a bit. Store cattle seemed sound enough with the forward types reflecting the lift in beef trade.
However, I was saddened to see a run of beautiful Blackie/Swale ewe hoggs offered for sale as another hill unit disappears under the mounding bucket.
Our politicians remind me of the Blackcock lecking along the road – pruning, pontificating and basking in glory, all the while selling a fairytale. At least something fruitful will come from the grouse, while the craturs in Westminster and Holyrood have disregarded food security and the resilience of supply in favour of some abstract notion of greening, carbon capturing and “regen”.
Don’t misunderstand me. I wholly endorse integrated woodland and livestock possibilities but they simply are not on the table and as far as I can discern, branches and twigs make for a poor broth.
Food prices are set to rise, and as the stores dwindle it is essential that our industry is viewed as the answer and that the stratification essential to all our successes is acknowledged and once again encouraged.
I was fortunate to inherit a beautiful 1952 Fergie tractor this last month from a crofter in Bohuntine that used to visit his dear sister in Rannoch and watched a young loon coax out the best of a young dog.
I feel Donnie’s hand on my shoulder whenever I drive that little grey tractor. The tattie ground has already been ploughed and the “howking” will be a great excuse for a ceilidh.
Easter is a time for hope. This last while I think we have needed it more than ever.
For now I’d better get this lamb back to its mum, it has recovered well.
Perhaps we should all be like the little black dog Nell and keep smiling, for we have little control over the fates.
Finlay McIntyre is farms manager at Dunalastair Estate.