Jinty's Farm

An everyday story of farming and gin-making.

Jinty’s Farm is my fourth People’s Friend serial, now available for pre-order an e-book; publication date 26 June.

I’ve written a farming serial before. A Time to Reap was set in 1963; this one is contemporary, set in the Kingdom of Fife on Scotland’s east coast.

These days, farmers have to diversify as never before to make ends meet. That could mean having paying guests, cheese-making, opening farm shops, making crisps or preserves or ready-meals. Or, as in my story, making gin.

I did enjoy finding out about gin-making … I read articles about various craft gin makers and how they come up with ideas for making their product stand out. I read about the process for making gin and I visited a couple of distilleries; and I had the occasional glass – in the interests of research of course.

There’s another aspect to the story which I liked researching too – the deployment of Polish soldiers to work on farms in Scotland during the Second World War.

I remember a Fife minster, some years ago now, telling me that when he visited elderly ladies in his parish they always talked about that time with a definite twinkle in the eye … the innate good manners as well as the good looks of the soldiers had left a lasting impression.

That inspired me to include one such soldier – whose existence is known about from the farm diary and the entries by Jinty, late grandmother of the present generation.

So, farming and gin-making – plus arguments and accidents, romances and break-ups, and family history echoing through the ages. It's all happening down on Jinty's Farm.

My previous three serials are now available as a (Kindle) boxset.

Jinty's Farm

My latest People's Friend serial, Jinty's Farm, is set on – surprise! – a farm. The first instalment is in the bumper issue dated 21 December.

The setting for my last serial, A Time to Reap, was also a farm, although the scenarios are quite different.

Whereas A Time to Reap was historical (1963 – yes, a story taking place before 1970 is now deemed 'historical') and the farm was part of a large estate in the Scottish Highlands, 'Jinty's' is a small farm in Fife which, in 2019, the Watson family have run for a hundred years.

All farms have to diversify in some way these days and so Isla and Kerry, wives of the Watson brothers, have begun an artisan gin company in the old byre; Jinty's Gin (named after the brothers' granny) is flavoured with local rosehips and rowan berries. I did have fun researching how to make it!

Then there's Isla and Bill's elder daughter Rosalyn and her boyfriend problems; an entry in the farm diary from the WW2 years which has a link to the present day; and Isla, the main character, who's run ragged between managing the house and the family and school farm visits and the gin company and the holiday cottages and her part-time teaching job ...

I was brought up on a farm but that doesn't mean I know anything much about farming as I blogged here when A Time to Reap came out. However, as I can't seem to stop writing about it, it would seem you can take the girl out of the farm but not the farm out of the girl.

A large glass of Jinty's Gin (or your chosen tipple) to all my readers. Cheers!

Living vicariously – or not

One reason I like writing fiction is that I can live vicariously through my characters. I can look different, travel to other times and far-off places, and have talents that I certainly don’t have in real life. For example I have been an archaeologist, played the fiddle, been a glamorous redhead, and travelled back to the 1950s (not all in the same story ...).

But I’ve never wanted to do what my heroine Elizabeth Duncan, in A Time to Reap, does – be a farmer.

My father was a farm manager so I was brought up on several farms in the Scottish Highlands. Most of my uncles were farmers, on both sides of the family. But get up early every single morning, be outside in all weathers? Not for me, thank you very much. I was roped in to help at some unearthly hour of the morning when it was time to gather the sheep off the hill and, I am shamefaced to recall, I did nothing but moan about it.

Sometimes I’d watch what Dad and his colleagues were doing, whether it was sheep-dipping, lambing, ploughing, making hay bales or milking the cow, and with my siblings and neighbouring children I roamed around over a wide radius, untroubled by traffic or worries about bogeymen.

My much-preferred occupation though was to read (in the garden on warmer days, hugging the Raeburn the rest of the year). The books I liked best were set hundreds of miles away geographically (in rambling houses in Cornwall, tapping walls for secret passages and finding buried treasure), or light years away from my own experience (having midnight feasts in a boarding-school dormitory). When, around the age of ten, I tried to write stories myself I aped my favourite authors. Write about life on a Highland farm? It never crossed my mind for a minute.

So no one was more surprised than me when many years later I found myself writing a serial for The People’s Friend – about a farming community in 1963. Despite my upbringing, research was required. Online I found a ‘calendar’ of a farmer’s year from around the right time-period and place. I asked a cousin how a haystack was made. In a second-hand shop I found a copy of The Farm as a Business: A Handbook of Standards and Statistics (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, seven shillings) and an item in it, about cattle-rearing, gave me an idea for a plotline.

I got rather obsessed with remembering life on big estates – not just the farming side; there were gamekeepers, foresters, gardeners, the wider community – and trying to think of it from the perspective of a grown-up, not as the child I was when actually there.

I enjoyed writing A Time to Reap more than anything I’ve ever written and of all my characters (in over 50 short stories, two other serials and a novel) I’d like to be Elizabeth Duncan.

That’s on paper only though – I’m afraid the intervening years have shown no improvement in my bad temper when I have to get up very early.

It’s April 1963 in the Scottish Highlands. Elizabeth Duncan, widowed with two small daughters, is the farm manager on the Rosland estate, the job previously held by her husband, Matthew. Following a hard, snowy winter, her working life is made more difficult by the unpleasant estate factor.

Elizabeth enjoys support in the small community from family and friends, including her cousin Peggy and local vet Andy Kerr. The arrival of an American visitor at Rosland House unsettles her in a way she hadn’t expected but, after Matthew’s mysterious death, a new relationship has been the last thing on her mind. However, as she dances at the annual estate ball in September, that may be about to change …

A Time to Reap is available in a large-print edition in libraries, and on Kindle.

A Time to Reap – again

I told in this blog post last year how I wrote a poem called Cousin Hugh, turned the poem into a short story called Jack’s Lad (of which more here), and then turned the short story into a People’s Friend serial called A Time to Reap. 

What could be next, I asked myself? A musical? A cinema blockbuster??

Well, as to those possibilities, watch this space (but don’t hold your breath).

In the meantime, I’ve put the serial on Kindle:

It’s April 1963 in the Scottish Highlands. Elizabeth Duncan, widowed with two small daughters, is the farm manager on the Rosland estate, the job previously held by her husband, Matthew. Following a hard, snowy winter, her working life is made more difficult by the unpleasant estate factor.  

Elizabeth enjoys support in the small community from family and friends, including her cousin Peggy and local vet Andy Kerr. The arrival of an American visitor at Rosland House unsettles her in a way she hadn’t expected but, after Matthew’s mysterious death, a new relationship has been the last thing on her mind. However, as she dances at the annual estate ball in September, that may be about to change …

And there’s a large-print version for libraries published by Ulverscroft:

In another blog post last year I confessed that I was ignorant about many aspects of farming (despite having been brought up on a farm) and that I'd consulted a cousin (wearing the hat) for advice. He kindly wrote a lovely article for me (and you) on how to make a haystack – now, sadly, a lost art.

 Here’s the illustration The People’s Friend gave the first instalment of the serial: 

And if a musical or a film are ever on the cards you’ll be the first to know.