Farm Names

What I learned this week

I get brownie points if I drop a farm name into conversation. 

In the run-up to the festive season, conversations that started “What are you doing for Christmas?” used to be quite straightforward. Friends’ responses would be along the lines of, “at home for Christmas and at my parents on Boxing Day. How about you?” It’s slightly more confusing now. 

No-one in the farming community answers in such straightforward terms. No siree. They answer with riddles. 

“Oh, we’re at Balmacleuch on Christmas Day and then down at The Gowan for Boxing Day.”

I’ve no idea what that means. Are they at home? With relatives? In prison? 

I nod and smile and hope that’s appropriate (which it obviously wouldn’t be if it was prison right enough.…). It’s not that I’m not interested in people’s plans or don’t want to know who lives where, it’s just that details aren’t my strong point.

Not a real sheep apparently

To give you an example, years before Ivie and I were together, a big group of us went to a pop up restaurant. I can’t actually be sure what town I was in but I was wearing my orange dress and was so warm, I had to go to the toilets and take off a layer in between courses.

There’s also the problem of pronunciation. How it’s written and how that translates into a Wigtownshire accent are often completely different. So much so that I can’t even give you an example. 

And don’t get me started on which farm names are preceded with ‘The’ and which aren’t. It’s like trying to learn French noun genders… 

So, this week I casually dropped into conversation that I’d been speaking to a colleague about Markdhu (which may or may not be how you spell it). And I got farm points. They’re like brownie points but worth more. I will endeavour to keep doing it to keep my farm point quota high for when I ask stupid questions. 

At least I know where I’ll be on Christmas Day. I’m at The Spittal.