With the family all working together, of course there were quarrels and wrong turnings

It was a turntable made of steel that a car could drive on to and be very easily turned. But try as we could the idea never caught on. Had we been able to afford a vast advertising campaign, perhaps it would have but this Henry was not prepared to do. It would make life too complicated. All he wanted to do was make something serviceable, enjoyable, strong and of a price people could afford.

Eventually he hit on something that did all of these things – wood-burning stoves. He was kept busy with these especially in winter.

The water tank/machinery repair shop stood at the back of the house near the old Dutch barn. It had a wonderful outlook to the east across the wide Carse land to the burgeoning city of Dundee.

Neighbouring farmers, miles away, would remark on Henry’s blue flashing welding lights being visible late into the winter evenings when few other lights pierced the bramble blackness.

Henry knew what was necessary in business. “You must be able to make something enough people need and at a competitive price. This is getting more and more difficult to do with mass production but there is always a gap somewhere if you can just find it.”

The farm was in a good position from which to sell goods. It stood in the centre of the Carse of Gowrie between two towns; 12 miles from Perth, 12 miles from Dundee, and had the well-populated Fife, Angus and Perthshire on its doorstep. Our local paper was also important. It served them all and its small ads were very reasonably priced.

Demand

Grant was given a bit of the old stable for his workshop, in front of which stood a long open-fronted cart shed. Once it had held a dozen horses and as many carts and faced on to a large stack yard. There was plenty of room should his business ever expand.

Grant loved working in wood, was good at it, and had had a lot of practice in Canada. To begin with he concentrated on small things like garden furniture mostly – chairs, picnic tables, bird tables, anything that there might be a demand for.

However, as much as he loved the work, he was finding it hard to make ends meet. The profit on each item was low, too many people were doing the same thing and garden centres sold a lot of these things.

However, he was kept busy. So much so, that he asked if Ronnie would help. One day he decided he needed a different sort of saw.

The Courier newspaper was advertising what he needed at a reasonable price. He went to get it from a man in Dundee whom he found to be making garden sheds out of old wood.

“Can’t make enough of them,” he told Grant. “Why don’t you try that then, Grant?” I said when he told me and so the first garden shed was made.

Off he went in his old car with trailer, improvised by Henry to deliver and erect it. The delighted purchaser gave them 100 ten pound notes. As soon as they were round the comer they stopped the car, counted out the notes and then threw the lot up in the air to hit the roof of the car and come fluttering down again.

They were in business. And they were. They had hit on something enough people wanted and were willing to pay a reasonable price for. Big superstores sold them but the wood was not of such good quality and people mostly had to erect them themselves.

Here, service was given and if anyone wasn’t satisfied they could be easily contacted and would rectify anything that was wrong.

Pressures

Judith was now with Ronald in the bothy. For a while she cycled the 12 miles every day into the university. Her first job as house doctor was in Bridge of Earn. On the days she didn’t have to stay there overnight she cycled there. She was a country girl at heart and fit.

She began to realise, however, that she didn’t really want to be a doctor. This was not the life she wanted. All the silent pressures had kept her going. But she didn’t really like it; the hierarchy of doctors, the possibilities of things going wrong, but most of all, being cloistered for so long in antiseptic corridors.

She was an outdoor girl, loved the fresh air and freedom. Besides, she began to see shades of the prison house and how doctoring would begin to dictate her life. It wasn’t all that easy to get a job and you had to keep going.

Judith decided she would stop for a year and go into the making of sheds to help Ronnie and perhaps, one day, they would do something about their winemaking and get a winery started.

So Judith joined the shed-making team and, rather to the boys’ surprise, was a great asset. She went out with Ronnie and Grant to erect the buildings. Roofs had to be put on on site and before they could argue Judith was up on top of sheds as lithe as any squirrel.

The farmers around were amazed at her versatility. I think Judith must have been brought up, as I was, to believe a girl could do anything if she really wanted to. Her folks were of that persuasion.

Ronnie and Judith, however, really wanted to set up a winery. They still had wine bubbling away in every available nook and cranny. They needed more space and a bit of money to get what was required.

The farm couldn’t help with money. We were badly overdrawn with the new improvements, but once again we could help with space. On either side of the old brick bothy ran even older and more dilapidated cart sheds. They would need a lot done to them but could be utilised.

All the boys helped; Grant with the plumbing, Richard with the electricity, the farm boys with the building using the lovely old sandstone kept from other demolished buildings.

Between them all, it seemed, they knew or learned how to do everything. No outside expensive tradesmen needed to be called in. Ronnie and Judith did a bit of everything. I had often said, as my mother had said before me: “A house together stands, divided falls.” It was coming true.

Arguments

With the family all working together, of course there were quarrels, and wrong turnings. Many of the arguments took place in the farm kitchen. Often I stood in as mediator. Being equally interested in all the points of view, I could more easily see the overall picture and what was going wrong.

Knowing all their diverse characters, I could point out why each acted the way they did. There was always a good deal of humour around. They could all laugh at each other’s foibles and, more importantly, at their own.

The boys had diverse ways of doing things on the farm. They wanted to grow different crops. Michael was keen to grow potatoes even though we were allowed to grow only 10 acres because of government quotas. Having worked with his uncle, Michael knew about potatoes. Not quite enough, as it turned out. After several years they almost brought us to disaster.

They involved a tremendous amount of work and prevented the other crops being attended to properly. Merchants had the potato world sown up. Few individual farmers grew them these days and instead rented out the land to the merchants who could afford to buy the big potato machines.

It was no longer profitable to hire in pickers and planters, even supposing you could get them. Gone were the good old days. Now workers had to be bused in from the cities.

More tomorrow.