A positive spin

By Nick Joy

My grandkids came to stay last week and I am currently sitting in a soft play centre in Forfar, having my hearing aids blown up by the sheer noise.

Somehow I still seem to have an enormous grin on my face, which made me think about the habit I have developed of looking at the world through rather dark and depressed glasses.

I decided this morning that I would pen something more cheerful, about how lucky we all are. By “we” I mean those of us lucky enough to live and work in the countryside.

In my other life in agriculture I am in the process of trying to find a new farm manager. It has been an education in so many ways. We had one candidate who nearly took the job but decided that an outer isle of Orkney would be just too much.

He was currently living in an area of England where badgers are infecting the cattle with TB. On the first test of his farm he lost 60 cattle out of 140, which were slaughtered immediately. Often the second test after slaughter was negative! He lost his best bull this way, being told 14 days later that it wasn’t really a positive. He was losing on average £400 per cow and a lot more on that bull as compensation is not paid at market value. Despite all of this he and his partner were a lovely couple, full of humour and country wisdom.

In the last days I have met a family from near Aberdeen who seem very keen on the job. Let’s hope so, as I like them very much! Again I have taken up references and had chats with farmers in various corners of the land. Each one has horror stories to tell about the difficulties of farming these days and how little money it makes. Yet somehow the cheerful nature of those who step outside in foul or good weather is constant and very infectious.

The public have lost sight of the people who supply their food but that will not last. Food is going to get much more expensive, because so many things are coming together to make it so. We will see respect for our profession again and there will be a great surge of people wanting to work in it again.

Holding our nerve and believing in what we do has created an extraordinary industry and will create a bigger one yet. I find the latest stats produced about our industry utterly amazing. That farmed salmon is the UK’s top food export is just as impressive, given that the industry I joined was so tiny, but such is the power of determination and positive thinking.

So here it is after 45 years of working in the countryside: I have been so close to a whale that I could play the noise of the blow hole to friends; my daughter remembers well watching an otter playing on the beach and creeping up on it so we could get really close; I have watched gannets diving and feeding about five yards from where I was standing; and I have seen mackerel herding sand eels into the corner of pens and flashing through them.

There are many more sights that have made my life such a wonderful one.

I have left till last the best of all. I have worked with and made friends with some of the most wonderful, decent people who – pretty invariably – have had a great sense of humour. The best times have nearly always involved a glass or two at the end of a hard working day, laughing at the daftness of what we do and why we do it. So thank you to all of those people who have made my life so special and here’s to a few more of those glasses!