The final member of this year’s Contractor Comment cohort is Stuart Wilson of Ross-shire outfit Allan WJ Wilson.

Farmers Weekly finds out the highs, lows, tos and fros of running a business in the Scottish Highlands.

See also: Contractor Comment: Tough decisions help grow Cornish farm

How did you get into contracting?

Dad moved up to Tain from Ayrshire in 1976 and, after helping a local lime spreading contractor for a few years, he took on his customers and went it alone.

Soon after, he bought his first self-propelled forager, and since then the business gradually expanded. It has always been a steady accumulation of work, rather than any single, big contracts.

Since day one, dad had two priorities: good service and good communication. He always turned up, knew the customers well, and spoke to them long before he was due to do any work.

We’ve always found it helps to be proactive in arranging jobs rather than waiting for the phone to ring.

These days, 95% of our customers are well organised and easy to plan for; 5% want their baling done yesterday.

For that reason, and to beat the weather, we always like to have spare capacity. Some customers still consider us the fifth emergency service.

Main contracting enterprises today?

We now do the lion’s share of arable and grassland contracting in Easter Ross and travel up to 25 miles from our base in Fearn.

The services we offer tend to dovetail nicely, such that we roll from spring sowing right through to Christmas without much of a break.

But we’d like to get into contract farming. It would give us the chance to do the jobs for ourselves, rather than for customers, and reap some of the potential financial rewards for our good work.

There may well be more opportunities on that front.

Farmers are getting older, and the inheritance tax changes might encourage some landowners to have their ground farmed by someone rather than selling up.

One thing we have had to swallow is the loss of forage harvesting work. The region’s dairy sector all but disappeared in the mid-1990s, and our last self-propelled chopper went in 1998.

We still lift about 280ha, but it’s only enough to warrant a trailed JF 1260.

Around the same time, we also gave up spraying. Customers still ask, but ProCam is just down the road and they’re very good at what they do.

Plus, it would clash with silage, and we’d have to find another member of staff who is well qualified and happy to work long days and unsociable hours.

Do you expect any major changes to the business?

There’s a new anaerobic digester plant going in a couple of miles away, which could offer a great opportunity for growth.

The work, which includes the sowing and harvesting of 800ha of rye and spreading of the waste, is currently out for tender.

Aside from that, our future will be shaped by the government’s attitude to farming.

If farmers aren’t rewarded for growing crops then we’ll have to adapt accordingly. At this rate, we might end up with a fleet of toppers and strimmers.

Any forms of diversification?

Diversification opportunities are somewhat limited by our location.

The most successful has been verge mowing for the Highland Council; it’s just a shame it doesn’t have the money to commit to a multi-year contract.

We’ve also got into winter maintenance, gritting and snow clearing for a local distillery.

Drainage used to be big business, but government grants have dried up and farmers now tend to repair bursts themselves.

Most profitable contracting enterprise?

“Profit” is the magic word. And it can be elusive – every year we’re pegged back by a breakdown or bad weather.

Our most reliably profitable service – and second only to sowing in terms of income – is verge mowing for the local council.

For this we run two hedgecutters, which start in the east in mid-May and finish on the west coast at the end of August. It’s not as far as it sounds, though one of the lads did once send us a postcard.

When that’s wrapped up, the men help with harvest for a couple of weeks, then go back out cutting farm hedges until the turn of the year.

The arrangement works for both parties, as we get the same amount of work every year – paid weekly on an hourly rate – and they love the efficiency of farm contractors.

Given the distances the lads are travelling, and to avoid stress, we run the trimmers on newish tractors.

Breakdowns cost money and are especially inconvenient if they occur on a single-track road in the back of beyond.

Most of the work is on link roads around the North Coast 500 route, and none of us fancy causing a major hold-up with 12 Italian motorhomes queuing to get past.

Least profitable contracting enterprise?

Lifting grass. It doesn’t lose money, but nor does it make much. And it causes the most headaches.

It’s never going to be a big earner on the scale we’re operating, and we’d probably be better off having another hedgecutter. The forager driver would take some convincing, though.

Of course, that could all change if the AD job kicks off. It would give us more than enough work to warrant a self-propelled.

Biggest threats to your business?

For me, stress. For the business, it’s government policies, fluctuating markets – not helped by Trump’s splatter-gun taxes – and the weather.

As it stands, it feels like farming is under-appreciated. It’s frustrating, as simply charging an extra £1 for each bottle of whisky would put more money in farmers’ pockets – and a raft of industries would benefit as a result.

Machinery prices are also scarier than ever, particularly given wheat and barley are at rock-bottom.

Like most people, we’ll be looking to squeeze a year’s extra service out of all our kit.

Having said that, we’ve never had a rigid replacement policy, anyway. Instead, we appraise every machine each winter, assessing its value, the grief it’s causing and the cost of a replacement.

This year, we’ve upped our charges by 5% across the board to try to offset the cost of machinery and spares, wages and National Insurance, and fleet insurance.

It has to be done if you’re costing things properly, but it’s very difficult to get our prices where we’d like them.

The silver lining is that, with margins as they are, farmers aren’t going to have the finances to buy new kit; they’ll either have to make do or lean more heavily on contractors.

That will probably mean they pass their staffing and machinery problems on to us…

Difficulties with staff recruitment?

It’s a major issue, having really come to a head over the last three years. There’s very little young blood joining the industry, especially in this area where we have a low population to start with.

It’s not got to the point where it’s limiting our growth. But every year we run it close – we have to fill our five tractor and two combine seats at harvest, and that means finding two extra pairs of hands.

Though we try and offer the best rates for agriculture, we’re competing with more lucrative industries and nine-to-fivers.

Recruitment might be easier if we provided accommodation, but we don’t fancy having a caravan here, nor all the complications that might come with it.

And whereas it might be simple to get an overseas worker onto a farm for a season, contracting isn’t so straightforward.

We work over a big area, expect high work standards, and need to make decisions on the go. I don’t have the time to be running around hand-holding – it’s hard enough to get any time off the tractor seat as it is.

What excites you about the season ahead?

I love the start-of-season buzz, which tends to dissipate after the first hassle.

Nothing beats silage time, as it’s always busy and a real team effort with plenty of good crack.

The same goes for combining: love it at the start, want it done by the end.

New machines in 2025?

The priority was to streamline the drilling fleet, which we achieved by trading in 3m and 4m Lemken Solitairs for a new 6m model.

This ran alongside another Solitair and a Vaderstad Rapid (both 4m) in the spring, giving us the same sowing capacity but with one less driver. As it was, the weather was kind, and we weren’t under too much pressure.

We’re now waiting for our new-to-us Claas Lexion 650 to arrive. It’s replacing a Lexion 550, which had done us well but had clocked 3,500 engine hours and was starting to suffer from the odd niggle.

Our local dealer, Sellars, tipped us off about the 16-plate 650. It should suit us well – the straw walkers produce an easy-to-bale crop and the 22ft header leaves a smaller swath that dries that bit quicker.

One of the perks of the new machine is the year’s warranty, which is effectively a free season.

Also new is a Kverneland Geospread fertiliser spreader. Its predecessor was 15 years old and needed new parts in the two gearboxes.

We couldn’t buy the bits individually, so we’d have had to replace the whole units at a cost of £4,000 plus labour.

The spreader itself was only worth that. Retirement was the only option, but some of the components on it will fit the new one, so we’ll keep them in stock.

Recent major breakdowns?

Our four-year-old Krone 1270 big baler has been a source of major irritation.

There was a problem with the variable rotor system that took ages to diagnose and, annoyingly, it had just drifted out of warranty.

Nonetheless, we were disappointed with the lack of support, and it ended up costing £15k to put right.

It kept breaking down, both us and our customers lost faith in it, and, in all, we lost a week of baling in a catchy season.

If it plays up again then it’ll be down the road. It’s just a shame that second-hand values for Krone big balers are so poor.

Overwinter projects?

Nothing major last winter, but a new machinery shed has been on the list for several years.

As it is, we’ve got some off-site storage for out-of-season kit, but we’d like to get everything under cover in the yard.

Current contractor frustrations?

We’re lucky in that we have loyal customers, we get on well with them, and they are good at communicating and paying promptly.

But what really irks me is when we spend a lot of time and money getting a machine set up – the forager in particular – only for it to pick up a foreign object that shouldn’t be there.

Everything breaks down, but it’s the problems that could be avoided that are the most annoying.

It often means we have to work through the night to repair it, and it affects all the other customers down the line.

Last season, we went through three sets of chopper blades in a day and a half – two caused by stones in unrolled fields and one by a sheep hurdle pin, which caused no end of damage. The joys of contracting…