Glensaugh News 8 November 2010
At Glensaugh the season’s livestock work is almost complete as we sell remaining lambs and calves and begin housing stock for the winter. The last of our spring born suckled calves will be sold at Forfar on Saturday. The one in the picture is not enjoying its pre-sale hair cut. Otherwise known as cattle dressing, this serves little purpose other than adding to the aesthetic appearance and uniformity of the stock. While others are indulging in this activity we reluctantly follow suit.
The main thrust of our work in the early winter will be the delivery of our biomass project. We are now ready to pour concrete and once this has cured the biomass plant can be installed. Here to help us with the biomass work and procurement of firewood is James Butler who is on secondment from his family’s business in Dumfriesshire. While we have James we will also make a start on the drystone diking project, which attracts a small SRDP (Scottish Rural Development Programme) grant, but which will require months of hard labour to complete.
Finally, an anecdote about my outing to the Conservative Party’s North East conference last Saturday. Not my politics I have to say but a welcome opportunity to speak on the subject of resource depletion and the dependence of our industry on oil and gas. Listening to two other speakers expound the importance of economic growth, Trump, oil, runway extension and concreting over Union Terrace Gardens I felt that I was well “off message” so it was a pity that there wasn’t time for debate.
