Book excerpt: This is an affectionate and humorous look at the life of the small Aberdeenshire farmer through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is full of folk wisdom and anecdotes from the people who made that farming community the prosperous thing it became from Nature's rather meagre bounty. Part social history, part family biography, we trace the history of the farm and it's farmers from 1837, when the author's great, great grandfather arrived, through six generations to the present day. It is the story of a time forgotten, of an evolution in farming techniques and attitudes and of a family living and growing through it all.