Agricultured

"Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit."
--Robert Burns

After we met Hetty at Waverly Station in Edinburgh, Chris and I hurried back to the hostel to fetch our bags before jumping on board a train bound for Glasgow. Our stop was not Scotland's other big city, but rather an ancient little farming town between the two called Linlithgow. It was here, at Bonnytoun Farms, that Hetty had some "relatives." The reality of the situation is this: Hetty's family is good friends with a woman named Ruthie who they grew up around and called their "cousin." Ruthie some seven years ago met a nice Scottish boy named Ben who had come to America on holiday and decided to stay. They married, and a little while later moved back to Scotland to take over the family farm. At the time we were arriving, however, Ruthie was actually on holiday herself in the States and thus Ben and two of their children (five year old Casper and 2 year old Poppy) were the ones to greet us along with their sheep dog Dash and family dog Rover.

Ben is a friendly man, and he made an excellent host as we settled in for a night in the large, aged farmhouse that sat on the edge of 200 arces of pasture land where cattle, sheep, and horses grazed. The place reminded me of my own family's farm in Flordia, but considerablly larger and Scottish. We arrived late afternoon, and Ben sent us to the polytunnel (greenhouse type structure) to pick ourselves some green veg for supper. He already had the potatoes pulled up, and was about to prepare the amazing, enormous cuts of steak we had chosen. The entire meal we ate came from the farm, and it was probably the best I had the entire trip. The next day, we made an attempt to repay Ben's hospitality by helping him take a few fresh sides of beef he had just slaughtered and process them into mince (hamburger meat), diced, and his own special reciped sausages. He was glad for the help, he told us, as the hour we four spent working together would have taken him the entire day by himself.