AN ageing Land Rover, the heyday of tattie picking and how the father of a rugby legend helped revolutionise beef farming will feature in a programme to mark the 40th anniversary of BBC Scotland's countryside magazine show Landward.

The one-hour documentary, which airs this Friday, charts the vastly changing landscape within Scottish agricultural and rural life over the past four decades.

It is fronted by Euan McIlwraith who makes an emotional return to the dark days of the 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis as he revisits a farm near Lockerbie.

The veteran Landward presenter admits to getting "a tear in my eye" and "choked up" at remembering the jarring sight of affected livestock being shot and burned.

There are happier moments too, however, as McIlwraith lovingly restores a rusting 1960s Land Rover, which had sat forlornly in a field since failing its MOT 30 years ago, taking it on a colourful tour of Scotland.

"We have been leaking oil all around the country," he laughed. "It fairly piled in the miles and brought smiles wherever we went.

"It was a great icebreaker. We started in Ullapool, went down to Stranraer, across to Edinburgh and up to Forfar.

"The scariest part of the whole trip was going down the Royal Mile with 1960s brakes. I was terrified."

Many viewers will fondly remember the days of tattie picking: a once popular activity that has all but disappeared in the years since Landward first appeared on BBC Scotland in 1976.

McIlwraith recalls his own short-lived attempts aged 11 to make some extra pocket money. "I lasted a day and got paid 10 shillings for it," he says. "I didn't go back."

The famed berry picking industry around Blairgowrie, Perthshire, is among the nostalgia-inducing archive footage featured in the programme.

"Whole families would go out and pick berries," he says. "A lot of people did it to help pay for the new school uniforms.

"One year the berry crop was late and the local authorities moved the school holidays back a week to accommodate it. That brings home how important it was. You couldn't imagine that happening now."

McIlwraith also meets with Kelso-based James Jeffrey – the father of former rugby star John Jeffrey aka "the White Shark" – who was one of the first Scottish farmers to import French Charolais cattle.

The breed dwarfed the native cattle of the time and caused quite a stir, but ultimately was pivotal in helping revolutionise the nation's beef farming industry.

"It was radical because back then cattle were tiny – probably only about up to my chest," says McIlwraith. "James was one of the first to bring in those big continental animals. A lot of people were quite upset and saw him as being a traitor to the Scottish cause."

The programme delves into some of the kookier and off-beat farming diversifications over the years such as snails, ostrich and buffalo-rearing.

McIlwraith, meanwhile, returns to the site of his Landward debut in 1991 where he covered a story about farmer John Strachan who was spearheading a pioneering wildlife conservation project near Oldmeldrum in Aberdeenshire.

"He took prime agricultural land in the north-east typically used for growing barley and put in trees, hedges and ponds," he says. "A lot of people shook their heads, but it was revolutionary and he was ahead of his time. Going back and seeing the wildlife thriving on the land now has been fantastic."

Muck, Sweat and Steers: 40 Years of Landward is on BBC Two, Friday, 9pm