Footsteps in the Furrow by Andrew Arbuckle, paperback 198 x 129 mm, 344 pages inc. 24 pp. photographs. ISBN 1-906853-05-1. IN STOCK at Old Pond Publishing, £9.95.
‘If you want to see the whole of Scotland but don’t have the time, then just go to Fife.’ In the county’s varied landscape with its rich, fertile coastal strips surrounding slightly poorer land in the centre all manner of farming enterprises are possible: cereals, livestock, dairying, potatoes and roots, brassicas and soft fruit.
Andrew Arbuckle has farmed in Fife or written about its farming all his life. He is acutely aware of the dramatic changes that took place in the course of the twentieth century and his book is an attempt to shine a light on the farming of the period. You can join him in the harvest field with horses, tractors or combines. You can laugh with him at the expense of the loon, the young lad who was always at the butt end of any farm joke in days when the chat or crack between the farm men was easy and humorous.
Andrew Arbuckle
From a Fife farming family which, like many others, could trace their roots back to the west of Scotland, Andrew is the third son of a tenant farmer who in the 1970s went on to farm with his father. The farm was mainly arable, growing malting barley, seed potatoes and before the closure of the local refining factory, sugar beet. The tenancy of the farm was given up in the late 1980s.
During his farming, he contributed to a number of farming magazines and this transformed into full time agricultural journalism with the Dundee Courier where he was farming editor for fifteen years.
A short spell as a member of the Scottish Parliament followed between 2005 and 2007. Over the past twenty years, he has been a councillor in Fife. Nowadays, he is a freelance journalist, combining this with agricultural public relations work.
On steep land, a trace, or second tractor was brought in to help. In this case, a Massey tractor helps an early attempt at the mechanical harvesting of sugar beet with a Catchpole machine which is taking place at Fliskmillan Farm, Newburgh, in 1950. (St Andrews University Library)
A busy time at the berries with a queue of full buckets waiting to be weighed in before being transferred to the barrels on the trailer. Payment was made after the berries were weighed and the little girl is checking to see she gets the right amount of cash. (Andrew Arbuckle)
A sale day at Cupar mart in the 1950s with Jimmy Garland in the auctioneer’s box with a pen of Suffolk cross lambs from Peter Skimming, Airdrie Farm, Anstruther, being sold. (Garland)
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