Rain-soaked pastures bring old memories flooding back

The blether this month comes from the kitchen table looking out on to a sodden landscape similar to that which made Methuselah’s grandson consider the art of shipbuilding.

At the moment a mouse would poach a field after weeks of pretty constant rain. October was however the most productive month of the estate hydro scheme’s six-year history, so it’s an ill wind...

My late grandfather was born at Dalshochnie in around 1916. The translation of this productive little farm is “field of victory” – what a great name! How it got it is a story for another day.

Dalshochnie supported a few hundred hill sheep, maybe a score of hill cows and a herd of dairy Shorthorns that supplied a milk run covering the south side of Loch Rannoch and Tummel river.

In his youth my grandfather saw the clans of the travelling people come through Rannoch as they migrated in the spring to the north and west, and Dalshochnie was known as a place on the route where they could make camp and get work.

One early spring morning the weather was coorse and the chief of the family was in the field working in a threadbare jacket. Feeling sorry for the old cratur, my great-grandmother took an old jacket of a peg and gave it to him. He was loath at first to accept charity but the auld dame was likely determined and he relented and accepted the gift.

The following back end, as the travelling folk made their way south and east for the winter, a knock came to the door.

It was the auld chief with

a 10-bob note that had been found in the pocket. In broad Perthshire Gaelic he plainly stated: “To meet such a kindness with dishonesty wouldn’t be a shame I would bear.”

These words that would in later years prompt my grandfather to say, with a twinkle in his eye: “There’s many a lad with shiny brogues in a pinstriped suit who could take a lesson in honesty from the travelling folk.”

The same old chief was reputed to have a bit of the “sight” and once, when they were lifting turnips, he stopped and looked away into the near slopes of Craig Varr and said: “Peter, I don’t know what all those

ropes they will string across the hillsides will be for.” Where he looked all those years ago, great pylons now straddle the braes, but yon auld botach died before folk could flick a switch for light and rests eternal, unmarked on Rannoch moor.

Here now the stags have finished the rut and most look well run and black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat.

The stalkers in the locality all agree it’s been one of the wettest stag stalking seasons they mind of. Ewes are still out on the high tops and corries and will need some gathering to bring them down before the great white dog comes.

They are looking not too

bad, but the wet weather scunners them and shepherd alike.

One highlight of the backend is getting to the tup sales where we usually end up spending too much, blethering too much and maybe even drinking too much. However, it’s a long winter and it’s a good thing to see folk and be among it, carefully selecting this year’s purchases.

I saw the fiery cross that NFU Scotland sent out to support the rally in Holyrood to highlight to our political class that Scottish farmers can deliver sustainable food and biodiversity and are still worth supporting. We are lucky to have Martin

Kennedy as our farming leader, and when he spoke in front of farmers and politicians extolling our virtues, he illustrated why he’s the best man for the job.

Alas, any glimmer of faith I might have had in those chiels down there melted like snow off a dyke when they stood to reply to our woe. So we must engage with our customers and stop preaching to the converted. I bet that if you asked 100 folk in Sauchiehall Street what concerns them most, rewilding, reforestation and reintroduction wouldn’t feature very highly.

We have a great story to

tell and a fantastic product that shouldn’t be slaughtered on the alter of a Green agenda.

I wish I could ask yon auld chief now resting on the silent moor of Rannoch if he saw the Drumchastle ewes among those distant ropes or did he hear the cows bellow on the home farm braes?

He cannot answer from his peaty grave and his kind are alive only in the memory, yet yon chiels in the pinstripe suits and shiny brogues still threaten our bosom interest yet.

FUTURE SHOCK: Electricity power lines straddle the braes where sheep and cattle once roamed, as foreseen by the auld Gaelic chief.