Around the Rowan Tree, Day Two

I’d like to change things a bit, but it won’t be easy with Dad in that house half a mile away watching everything I do

Ilooked at the boys. “Now wait a moment, one at a time,” I said. “Mrs Stockall has sorted things out. You, Richard, being the oldest, can have Grandpa’s old room looking out to the barn. Michael and Ronnie you can share in the meantime and Mahri and baby Grant will go next to our room.” Our room looked out over the River Tay to the Fife hills and Mrs Stockall had borrowed a cot for Grant and put it in there.

“How very kind of her,” I said, tears coming into my eyes at the consideration of everyone compared with our early beginning in Canada when we had been so very much on our own.

Next morning we woke to autumn sunshine pouring through the wide bedroom window. No one was up yet.

The huge sun had just risen over the eastern horizon as I stepped outside into the freshest of air alive with a tingle of frost.

How colourful everything was, I had forgotten; the grass vibrant green even at this time of year; the stubble a pale shining gold contrasting with the rich brown shade of the new ploughed land. And how full of detail.

How could I ever have thought we were coming back to a flat uninteresting stretch of land? How could the memory have played such tricks? Different sounds After the flatness of Alberta, where we had lived on a prairie farm, this was a land surrounded by hills. The Sidlaws rising a couple of miles to the north and to the south the Fife hills stretched for miles and miles.

From a tall green fir tree a pigeon crooned and from the oaks in the driveway an unruly crowd of crows, their black wings shining in the sun, were busy looking for acorns.

Different sounds above made me look upward. As far as the eye could see the sky was patterned with wavering lines of geese, short lines, long lines and occasionally V-formations, Greylag and Pinkfeet on their way from resting grounds in the river reeds looking for fields on which to graze. I was home.

Late that evening when the children were all tucked up for the night, Ronald and I had a serious discussion.

“Well, what do you think, Margaret?” asked my husband. “Do you think we should stay here and farm or sell up and go back to Canada?”

When Ronald’s father had come out to get us he had told us: “The doctor has given me three more years to live. I am retiring – the farm is yours now to do with as you wish. You can sell it and return to Canada or come home and farm it. It’s up to you.”

“I had forgotten just how much I loved Scotland,” I said. “Perhaps you need to go away for a while to realise just how much your home land means to you. Perhaps nowhere else can quite take its place.

“I would be happy to stay here, but what about you? How do you feel about it?”

“Well I’ve been thinking I would like to give it a try,” said Ronald. “It could be the wrong decision. If we sold up and went back to Canada it might be possible to make a fortune with the money.

“Being in real estate in Edmonton taught me what terrific bargains there are going in all kinds of property and nobody with the money to buy anything.

“We’ll never make a million off farming here but does that matter? What kind of return are we looking for? Uncle Ronnie used to take me round the fields when I was a youngster and show me where all the drains were. Fascinated “He was fascinated by field drains but this land would be useless without them. They are under all the fields and drain into the waterways that the monks began to dig all those years ago – 16th Century or something.

“Uncle Ronnie hoped I would farm here. I see that now. He left it to me initially. Did you know that his sisters got him to change his will?

“My mother bought the other two out and left it to me. Dad had the life rent but no money goes with the farm. We’ll have to borrow to begin with which I don’t like doing but there’s no other way.

“I won’t be able to give you a lot for housekeeping and we’ve a lot of young ones to feed.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I replied. “I have always had to be thrifty and if Canada taught me anything it was how to be very thrifty. I like it.

“It’s a challenge and perhaps things will get better as the years go by.”

“I would hope so.” Ronald sounded not altogether convinced. “But farming is always so up and down. There are good years when you think you are making some headway then the bad years come again. It’s unreliable but this is a good farm – some of the best wheat land in Scotland.

“Father just played at farming to a certain extent. A miller to trade, no one knew more about grain than he did but I don’t know if he really understood farming.

“Just as a publisher often would like to be a writer, millers yearn to be farmers. Dad had a big herd of pigs at one time. I looked after them for him. I don’t know if they ever really paid.

“I’m glad he’s got rid of them. He used to have a lot of cattle for fattening. But again I think he paid a bit much for them.

“He like winning prizes and got the prize for the fattest beast from time to time but was it really worth it?” Ronald added.

“I’d like to change things a bit but it won’t be easy with Dad in that house half a mile away watching everything I do. Simplify “I’d like to simplify things. Do some of the things I’ve learned in Canada. Take out a lot of the rotten fences altogether, make wide prairie land that’ll be easily worked.”

“Well I can help,” I said, “like I did at the Shanry Farm before we went to Canada. I liked being assistant shepherd. It’s a pity there’s no sheep here.”

“No, I’m afraid there won’t be sheep,” said Ronald firmly. “Breeding animals are hopeless here. They get too fat on the rich grass.

“But I won’t really need you to help outside and you will have more than plenty to do in the house,” he continued. “Actually, we’ve inherited too many farm workers as it is.

“We can’t really afford so many, but I know Dad will not be pleased if I sack anyone. It won’t be easy. The old never take kindly to change but change must come.

“One other thing. An idea that came into my head the other day. Do you think you could cope with another mouth to feed?” “Who?” I asked hesitatingly. “Henry.” More tomorrow.