There will be 13 year-old boys all over Scotland who are spending their school holidays sleeping, when they’re not giving the Xbox a hammering. But Angus Watt is not like other boys.
The Perthshire farmer’s son persuaded his parents to let him have a strip of land on the edge of a barley field this spring.
He ploughed it, grubbed it, sowed it, rolled it.
And now the sunflowers he planted there are bringing in a tidy profit.
Angus, from Aberuthven, is supplying florists across Tayside and Fife.
And on Saturday he and his big brother Henry, 14, parked their 1963 Massey Ferguson at the farm road end and sold sunflowers by the bunch to passing motorists.
The stems proved so popular they had to send back to their parents for fresh supplies several times.
And by late afternoon they’d sold every last sunflower that was ready for picking at Drumtogle Farm.
So far, Angus is £400 in profit. And now he’s eagerly awaiting the next lot coming into bloom so he can set up the Drumtogle Farm Sunflowers stall by the roadside again this weekend.
“It was all my idea,” said Angus, who goes to Auchterarder High School.
“Last year I sowed some sunflowers by hand, just to see how they would grow, and sold them at the road end. So this year I thought I’d try planting more.”
He added: “The bees love them, so they’re good for the environment.”
Sunflower success is all his own work
At 7ft tall, the Drumtogle Farm sunflowers now tower over their pint-sized picker. But dad John says what Angus lacks in height, he more than makes up for in ambition.
“He did it all himself this year,” he said.
“We rebuilt the engine on a little Massey Ferguson 35 last year, so that was his tractor for the sunflowers.”
John added: “He sowed them in two batches, so there should still be plenty to come for the end of the road.
“He’s got a strip of pumpkins in there too. So that’ll be his next thing.”
Drumtogle Farm sunflowers are just the beginning
Angus has supplied sunflowers to a number of florist shops, including Pine and Twine in Auchterarder, Terra Botanica in Perth and Victoria Bloom, which has branches in Crieff and St Andrews.
Drumtogle Farm sunflowers are also on sale in the village shop in Dunning and at the Farmton farm shop, near Auchterarder.
Ellen said she and John were very proud of their budding entrepreneur.
“School’s not really his thing, but he’s full of ideas,” she said.
“He had us all grafting at the weekend. We were rushing up and down the road on the bike replenishing his supplies. But it’s been great fun.”
Asked what he was planning to spend his profits on, Ellen suggested Lego and pointed to the half-finished model of the Titanic taking up most of the kitchen worktop.
But Angus had other ideas.
“Oh I’m putting it back into the business,” he said firmly.
