AFTER seven weeks in which nothing has been done, as the Farmer's name got blacker and blacker for messing up the centre of the village, Mr 20%, the contractor, has restarted work on the cricket field.
Another 1000 tonnes of rock and rubble have been removed from the hole. Two hundred tonnes more and we'll be able to see the full extent of what we have done.
Another week to put on the top soil and we'll be ready to sow the seeds on the Methlick Superbowl.
Then the ladies of Main Street will be able to get their windows clean and they'll be able to sleep beyond 7am. Mind you, what they'll scandalise about I don't know.
The job of turning setaside into an idyllic sportsfield by the river has taken almost as long as building the Scottish Parliament, and has caused at least as much resentment among the residents.
They've even set up a special association to make life still more difficult for the Farmer. On one bad day the site was visited by four different lots of officials to check up on what the Farmer was doing.
I've only just realised myself why the job has taken nine months instead of three.
The Farmer drove such a hard bargain that Mr 20% can hardly afford to do the work. It is only when he hasn't got anything else to do that he can get on with the pitch. Even papering the spare room is quite attractive compared with finishing the pitch.
Then there's the fact that the contractor's main business is dealing. He buys diggers, dozers, and dumpers, adds his 20% and sells them. His machinery is only available for work in the interim between purchase and sale.
The reason that we're at last getting on at such speed is that he has got stuck with this excellent 20-tonne slew digger. The cricket field is right beside the Methlick to New Deer road, so what better way to advertise it?
What will one day be the Lairds cricket ground is not just a quarry. It's a showroom for second-hand civil engineering equipment.
We also have a problem with the wicket. We have got it made and sown in the best grass that Murray Duguid, the Meldrum seedsman, can supply. It has been watered every day through this drought so that it's the only green area for miles around. It's like a bowling green on the moon.
Sadly, this patch of green hasn't escaped the notice of the rabbits. The bowling green is well manured with little round pellets and it has five burrows in it.
The Farmer dare not follow his inclination and shoot the furry little darlings right in the middle of the village. It's easy to forget the freedoms we farmers enjoy on our own land.
It's a really wonderful summer on the farm. Potions, the son-in-law who has taken over the few paternal acres, is getting heavy crops and much better prices.
His cattle and pigs should be looking forward to winter, for they will spend it deep-bedded in the most gorgeous straw.
However, the drought has brought a problem. It's so dry that there's no hope of the oilseed rape, which should have been sown last week, germinating. Potions is scared that if he sows it, a shower of rain will produce just enough water for germination, after
which it will die if the drought continues.
The Farmer thought we had that one licked with the system of plough and plant. Up until now we have sent the drill machine in along with the plough. That has always thrown up some damp soil into which the seeds could be sown. The roller followed immediately to trap as much moisture as possible.
The lads think that this year there is not enough moisture for plough and plant. For some reason they have bashed on and ploughed the lot, drying it further, and still the seeds must remain in the bag.
I don't understand it but then I suppose that happens as you recede over the hill.
The drought is posing other problems for farmers and for fishermen.
Now they say that in tallying up the three score years and 10 allotted to us, the Good Lord doesn't count time spent fishing. In that case, folksinger Jim Malcolm, currently from Perth, should last a very long time, for when his guitar is not taking him abroad he is seldom off the banks of the Tay, the Earn, and the Isla.
The Folksinger is furious. He fished a pool on the Earn one day at the beginning of the drought and got on well enough, but when he went back the next day the pool had all but disappeared.
This he put down to the farmers deciding that it was time to deploy their irrigation equipment. If that seems a bit far-fetched, don't forget that irrigation is one of the many things that farmers have become very good at. The days of the watering can are well gone.
Anyway, what astonished the Folksinger was that Scottish Natural Heritage, which looks after such matters, told him that, while there is no end of legislation about what you can put into a river, there is no restriction at all on what you can take out, apart from fish that are out of season or undersize.
If Scottish summers are indeed going to get drier and warmer, bigger and bigger pumps will not be the whole answer.
I have seen rivers pumped quite dry in Kenya and been told by a missionary of starvation caused downstream by irrigation paid for, in the name of ''aid'', by your taxes.
People who want unlimited irrigation during droughts will have to find ways of storing the water in the wetter winters which some believe are the future.
Irrigation@charlieallan.com
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