Rog Wood's farming diary: Hill farms in the winter

As a result our grass typically started growing a month later in the spring and stopped growing a month earlier in the autumn. A winter that's two months longer than a lower lying farm was made worse by heavy rain, strong winds and snow.

Another feature of many Scottish hill farms is that they tend to be in high rainfall areas. The West of Scotland bears the brunt of the Atlantic storms and is the windiest place in Europe, so the recent stormy weather didn't take us by surprise.

Having said that, there's nothing more unsettling than lying awake listening to the noise of a stormy night and wondering what damage you will find in the morning. Sometimes I miraculously escaped without any damage, but more often than not a stormy night left expensive repairs bills in its wake.

Slates and cast iron gutters would be lying broken in the yard, or wooden sheep troughs smashed as they blew across the fields.

Trees were regularly blown down across fences and roads, and often tidying them up to clear the farm road or make fields stock proof again were priority tasks. The extra firewood was a bonus that rewarded you for the inconvenience.

Another annoyance was the way tree roots that grew under nearby drystane dykes moved as the tree flexed in the wind and disturbed the foundations causing sections of the dyke to collapse. A good way of preventing that from happening again was to incorporate a lintel into the base of the dyke over the offending roots to eliminate the impact of their movement.

Then there is the water and mud to contend with after a stormy, wet night. Yards flood as drains become blocked with leaves, straw, bits of polythene and silt, or the hardcore on steep farm roads gets washed away.

My long-suffering wife also suffered as the Aga became surrounded by chairs hung with sodden coats drying out. Wet scarves, gloves and bonnets would cover the top of the Aga, as well as wet wellingtons packed with newspaper, while draped over its front rail would be jeans, boiler-suits and woolly sweaters.

To keep us supplied with dry clothes, the tumble dryer worked flat out and the pulley that hung from the kitchen ceiling would be constantly loaded with wet clothes, while clothes-horses and chairs laden with wet garments surrounded every radiator.

I suppose to the untrained nose of a townie, the smell of a damp farm coat steaming next to the Aga is over-powering. Even I have to admit that the smell of wellingtons drying out is hardly a pleasant one. No wonder my wife became demented by it all.

Another problem with cold wet weather was that I suffered badly from chapped hands and gegs. Those little cracks at the corner of your finger nails can be irritatingly sore. No matter how often I rubbed appropriate creams on my hands those gegs invariably persisted until the return of warm, dry weather.

After suffering a spell of wet weather most would welcome clear skies and a touch of frost. It's grand to be able to wear warm leather boots instead of squelching through mud in cold wellingtons.

Frost may well lead to frozen pipes that need to be thawed to allow cattle a drink, but it is a necessary part of the farming calendar. It kills off slugs that eat seedlings, insects that spread plant diseases and fungi that damage crop leaves. Better still, in moderation it checks plant growth during the winter, resulting in more vigorous spring growth from rested plants with well-developed root systems.

Frost is also necessary to break down clods in ploughed land in order to make it easier to break down into a fine seedbed in the spring.

One of the risks of a cold spell is snow, and few hill farmers want that as it restricts grazing for their sheep and can lead to increased hassle getting fodder to them.