Farmer Focus: Shooting, rugby and farm team building

October started with a bang for me. I took a day off (strange, I know) and went simulated game shooting with 11 others.

I don’t shoot much these days, but when a friend and fellow Beltex breeder asked if I fancied it I jumped at the chance.

It was a great day.

We were fortunate with the weather and enjoyed lovely scenery in the hills near Crieff before returning home with sore shoulders and big smiles.

This all took place on the Friday before the rugby, and when I say “the rugby” I think you all know which weekend I’m referring to.

To say we are into the game at Fearn would be an understatement.

I used to play and now coach son James.

Dad spends more time in front of the TV watching rugby than mum thinks is healthy and Ben, who works for us, coaches the senior side at the local club.

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Looking back on the weekend it was similar to the fortunes of the home nations in the world cup – mixed.

Ben’s side were thumped mainly due to them having more injuries than the Welsh squad.

James played in an away win for the under-14s and I juggled stock duty with taking seven-year-old Archie to his first mini-festival at our local club and popping in to pony club to see how the girls were getting on.

Sharing common interests helps in a close working environment.

We are doing some work here, I promise.

We had the rams out with Suffolk cross and cast ewes for one cycle to give us February-born lambs (early cashflow); harvest and associated straw clearing has almost been tidied up with straw being sent north to Caithness and west to the Western Isles and calves have had their second pneumonia vaccination.

By the next time I write, the World Cup will be over and I can focus again, well done England, you have hosted a tremendous sporting spectacle of which we should all be proud.

John Scott farms 200 suckler cows, 4,500 breeding ewes as well as some crops across 2,226ha. He also has two contract farming operations and generates energy from a small scale wind turbine and biomass boiler.