THIS WEEK'S piece comes from the Borders where the Doyenne and I are visiting son James and his family. They live in a secret, out-of-the-way corner five miles from Peebles. It's well off the main road, so quite safe for grandchildren to race about in complete freedom.
FOOD FOR free from the countryside is one of life's fulfilling experiences. I was picking wild raspberries for a couple of days, which takes rather more effort than popping into the supermarket and lifting a couple of punnets off the shelf.
IT MUST have been a particularly successful breeding season for buzzards for we are nearly driven demented by their incessant, keening cries round the house. They're handsome birds to look at, but their whining, repetitive call is quite at odds with their fierce appearance. I can't think that there's enough feeding to support them all, so perhaps some will move on simply to survive.
THE PULLAR family who own and operate the salmon netting station at Usan, just south of Montrose, go out twice a day in their traditional salmon cobles to harvest the salmon from the bag nets, which are set in deep water just off the rocky shore between Fishtown of Usan and Ethiehaven. It's an ancient method of fishing which has changed little in its essential methods over several centuries, although nets and ropes are now manufactured from polypropylene and other man-made fibres.