It's snow joke when weather hits the farming industry

THAT'S the first week of another year over and not much has changed on the farming front, apart from the weather. A cold snap and some snow over much of Scotland did its best as usual to demonstrate the inadequacies of coping with such circumstances. I suspect that age tends to warp the memory of those of us who regale grandchildren with how much colder the winters used to be and how much better the weather was during the summers of our youth.

I don't actually recall the winter of 1947 but have been repeatedly told by those who survived that great freeze that it truly did bring the country to a halt. The late Robert Grieve was the tenant of Southfield, just west of Hawick. In his presidential address to the members of the Teviotdale Farmers Club, on 13 November 1947, he said: "We have had one of the worst winters and springs in living memory. In fact the records show that there has not been another February or March like this since 1794. Disaster followed disaster and feed stocks had to be dropped by aeroplane."

In those days, the vast majority of hill sheep received no supplementary feeding other than a little hay in the most extreme circumstances. The perceived wisdom of the time was that feeding hill sheep would make them soft! In any event the lambing season of that year was catastrophic. The June census figures from the Scottish department of agriculture revealed a drop of 900,000 in the sheep population compared to 12 months earlier.

The summer of 1947, when it eventually arrived, proved to be a real scorcher. However, arable crops produced low yields as a result of delayed planting. Food was scare and even potatoes were rationed. Britain was virtually bankrupt and the Labour government of the day appealed to farmers to produce more food since it had no dollars to purchase imports.