Leaving the Land

Anne Ewing

Description

With humor and emotion, this memoir provides an account of a farming family’s way of life in twentieth-century Scotland, reflecting the best of oral tradition.

The lives of Scottish farmers Jim and Joey Rutherford spanned most of the twentieth century and encompassed great social and economic change. In this memoir, their daughter and author Anne Ewing provides a testament to her parents’ steadfastness to each other and to their family and friends.

With humorous anecdotes, rich details, and images, Leaving the Land shares the heritage of the Rutherfords, who were born during the First World War and married during the Second. From a very modest start, they built up their farming business over thirty-five years, always with an adventurous and enterprising approach. Their personalities combined the thrift and work ethic typical of their generation, with an openness of mind, generosity of spirit, and sense of humour not always associated with the Scottish character.

Not only does Leaving the Land communicate one family’s legacy, but also provides insight into Scottish history and gives commentary on signs of the times such as the socioeconomic trends, the shift from rural to urban living, and the effects of two world wars and the Great Depression. It also serves as a remembrance of lives well lived in a time and place that will soon exist in memory only.

Sujets

• Culture of Scotland
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 21 mars 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781450296359
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 13 Mo

Extrait

Leaving the Land
Anne Ewing



Leaving the Land
 
 
Copyright © 2011 Anne Ewing.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
 
 
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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.
 
ISBN: 978-1-4502-9634-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4502-9635-9 (e)
 
 
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 11/28/2022

Contents
Introduction
Prelude: The Unfurrowed Field
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part 1: Ploughing
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part 2: Drilling
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part 3: Seed Time
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part 4: Growing Time
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part 5: Harvest
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilude: The Unfurrowed Field
References

Preface
This chronicle is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Joey and Jim Rutherford. It is an account of their lives and those of their parents and grandparents. It is based on my memories, partly of the stories they told, partly of the events that happened, and partly of the characters that peopled my childhood and young life. It is a true record but, naturally, technically accurate only to the extent that the reliability of my memory allows. While I accept that others may have a different interpretation of events and individuals described, I trust that nothing in its telling will cause offence or unhappiness to anyone. It may be that time and distance have lent enchantment to the view, but my intention was always to portray my parents as truthfully and objectively as possible.
The title of this account, Leaving the Land , is also the title of a song by the Scottish-Australian singer-songwriter, Eric Bogle. Joey and Jim left the land, of course, when they left Pitkinny in 1976—an experience so closely mirrored in the words of that song—and their links to the land were broken finally when they died, Joey in 1999 and Jim in 2000. In a wider context, the family history of most people born in Scotland over the last three hundred years has involved a leaving of the land, as economic and social conditions necessitated a move from the country to the towns and cities, and from work on the land to work in an increasingly industrial and urban landscape. Jim and his family were among those who had retained their links to the land, and Joey came to love the farm life she shared with Jim. I have grown to value my upbringing at Pitkinny more and more and to feel privileged to be part of that continuum, and of a way of life that has become ever rarer.



Pitkinny Farm

Acknowledgements
I am indebted to my family: my husband, Bill; my son Calum and his wife, Maria; and my son Donald and his wife, Aoife, for their unfailing encouragement and enthusiasm for this project; to my sister Margaret, brother-in-law John, and my three nieces, Pamela, Alison, and Lynda, for their invaluable contributions. The cover for this book was painted beautifully by my daughter-in-law, Maria. In addition, thanks are due to the many people who have related their memories of Mum and Dad—in particular, to Lena Imrie and her late husband, Robbie; the late Dougie Imrie and his wife, Chrissie, who all worked at Pitkinny over many years; and in general to the numerous family members, friends, and acquaintances who have, either directly or indirectly, shared their recollections of Jim and Joey.
Shortly after the house at Cadham was sold following Dad’s death, Betty and Jim Henderson, dear lifelong friends of Joey and Jim, described how, in passing the house one day, they felt, not for the first time, the acute pain of losing close friends, as they realised they would never again be welcomed in that home. “All the doors are closing,” said Betty. At the time I felt that was such a sorrowful but inevitable accompaniment of increasing age and frailty. But now, nearly a decade later, I am aware that as the years pass a new generation is growing up. Joey and Jim’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren are creating new homes of their own with new doors opening up to their families and friends, and the spirit of my parents lives on in them. If some of their progeny, however occasionally, dip into this account of the lives of their antecedents, recall their experiences, and mention them by name, my motivation in making this record will have been vindicated and my time and effort well spent.
I would like to thank, in absentia, Eric Bogle, the Scottish-born Australian song writer and folk singer, who graciously granted me his permission to use the name of one of his songs, “Leaving the Land” as the title of this work. It mirrors so closely the experience of Joey and Jim as they left behind their farming years at Pitkinny. Only her name, Jenny, and her constant battle with the dust differ from that of Joey and her perennial war with the mud. In every other detail the song represents so vividly the emotions that must have accompanied them as they drove along the farm loan for the last time.
I appreciate the kindness of the late Dan Imrie in allowing me to reproduce some of the photographs from his publication, Around the Farms , in which some of the folk who worked at Pitkinny over the years are featured.
Also, I wish to express my gratitude in acknowledging, in memoriam, the debt I personally owe to Lewis Grassic Gibbon, aka James Leslie Mitchell, the author of Sunset Song . By way of paying homage to him, I have used his arrangement of headings and chapters, which follows the farming calendar. The inscription on his headstone in Arbuthnot churchyard stands as my introductory quotation. But more than that, Sunset Song , his seminal work, with his heroine Chris Guthrie and his description of her growing up in the farming community of the Howe o’ the Mearns, had a great and lasting impact on me as a young woman and perhaps subconsciously inspired me in later life when I came to write this chronicle. Like Chris, I can see I am a product of the conflict between the pull of the land, with its timeless and unchanging quality, on the one hand and the lure of the academic and intellectual life and its insistent modernity on the other. That, and the nature I inherited from my parents and their forebears, combined with the wholesome and selfless nurturing I enjoyed, when set against the unparalleled economic, social, and political changes of the second half of the twentieth century, made me the person I became.
Finally, I am immensely grateful to my husband, Bill, who has been a wonderful emotional and practical support in all aspects involved in the production of the text and images in this work.

Introduction
“The kindness of friends, The warmth of toil, The peace of rest.”
My father, James Rutherford (Jim), died on 7 July 2000 and was buried five days later. He had lived for eighty-three and a half years, surviving into the first year of the twenty-first century and of the third millennium. He had been widowed eighteen months before, on 15 January 1999. My mother, Johann Barclay Mitchell (Joey), was buried then in mid-winter, the grief that day raw and cruel for her family: her husband denied his life partner after nearly sixty years of marriage; her children, my sister and I, bereft of a mother after more than fifty years of selfless parenting; her grandchildren, three girls and two boys, adults now and conscious of her influence on them, but still young enough to remember her unconditional joy in them, their births, and their growing; her great-grandchildren, three generations removed from her and too young to be aware of the pain and finality of this parting, unaware of the significance of their existence in relation to hers.
In contrast, my father’s funeral was on a summer’s day of benign warmth, calm air, and gentle sunshine, as the passing clouds would allow. Accordingly, the harsh edges of that day’s sorrow were softened by a sense of a circle closed, a journey completed, a resolution achieved. My parents lay together now for all time, sheltered by the earth that bore them, nurtured their growth, and sustained their endeavours and achievements. In turn, they had tilled that same earth, treasured its fruits, and now finally enriched it, as they had enriched the lives of their family and friends.
My mother and father were back where they belonged. There could be no more fitting resting place, and we left the flower-shrouded grave reassuring each other of th