Travel Scotland
Farming Travels in Laurencekirk by Janice Hopper Laurencekirk is a small town in the Howe of the Mearns, situated between Aberdeen and Dundee. Many people drive past it, whizzing from one city to another, but if you have time for some rural relaxation, Laurencekirk and its surrounding villages offer learning, literature and libations in the tranquil Kincardineshire countryside. For something different make your first stop the Flower Field. Many travellers have experienced pick-your-own-fruit but few have picked their own flowers. Just off the A90 is this unexpected
The flower field
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farming nugget, offering blooms from spring though to late summer. The season starts with daffodils, tulips, iris and alliums, followed by sunflowers, gladioli and dahlia. A display board advises visitors when and how to pick each flower, and costs range from 40p-£1.00 per stem. From the customer’s point of view, this small field offers a colourful oasis of flowers to choose between, at a reasonable price point. I found it a calming experience to spend time selecting blooms at my own pace. From the farmer’s point of view,
it’s a relatively simple business model featuring a few cutting implements, info boards, an honesty box and PayPal account, yet no staffing costs. The Flower Field is part of N J McWilliam & Co farm, which has evolved over the last 130 years from a traditional mixed farm of cereals and livestock to a 500 Ha intensive arable unit made up of cereals, potatoes and flowers. Alongside pickyour-own flowers, McWilliam supplies winter barley and winter wheat for feed, spring barley for malting, oilseed rape, cut flowers for supermarkets, daffodil bulbs destined for the USA and Europe, and potatoes heading as far afield as Egypt, Israel and North Africa, as well as England. From a field of blooms, our next stop was the ‘Farming in the Field Education Centre’ at Burn of Balmakelly Farm. This venture offers a learning experience primarily aimed at schools and nurseries, schoolchildren with additional needs, the Scout
Farming in the field
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movement, pension groups and care home residents, but any family that would like to give it a try are more than welcome. Look out for family friendly events over the summer months, such as farming treasure hunts. At Farming in the Field Education Centre children are introduced to the knowledge and skills of farming, which they can transfer back to their home and garden. The centre is run by Marie Thomson, a farmer’s daughter who studied and worked in the care profession. Now she combines these two skillsets and passions, working primarily with local pupils with active assisted needs, giving them hands on experience and rural education. We dropped by with our own two mini volunteers (aged 8 and 7). The kids had fun meeting the pet Kunekune pigs, Pinky and Dotty, but the educational angle was always present. The children had to monitor the pigs’ gait as they watched them run for the feed, check the animals’ skin and hair,
