Bob McLaren on Tillypronie Estate tractor
Image courtesy of Bob McLaren, Logie Coldstone.
A young Bob McLaren, circa 1959, driving the forestry Fordson tractor as he unloads the four wheeled timber bogie outside his grandfather’s croft of Ladieswell, on Tillypronie Estate. The timber on the bogie consists of ‘backs’ (the outside boards with the bark, taken off the logs on the first cuts) from the saw mill and to be used as fuel in the croft house fires.
Bob goes on to say:
‘The first job that I had at Tillypronie was when I and a few of the schoolboys got a job in the nursery at Reinachorn (about an acre in total) weeding between the rows of trees lined out the previous Spring. This would have been when I was 13 years of age.
The following Spring I got a job in the school holidays carrying plants to the men who were planting the Morven face. Planting this wood was to take 5 years and the roads were made with an International tracked tractor equipped with a blade (dozer).
In the Autumn and Winter we were sometimes given work gathering cones and being paid so much per bushel by the Estate. The cones were sent to Glentaner Estate where they had ovens to dry the cones and equipment for extracting the seed.
About this time the Estate started sowing the seed in seed beds in the Nursery at Kirklands where there was also an area for lining out the seedlings, in all about 2 acres in total. The seedlings were hand lifted from the seed beds, graded and all small and badly formed trees thrown aside. This work was mainly carried out by local women who were used as extra help and who also filled in the lining out boards for planting the seedlings. The actual lining out work was done by the forestry workers using the spade and a horse pulling a single furrow plough. In later years much of the hard work in lining out was done by a tractor and plough. The Estate also had a quarter acre set aside at Kinaldie Cottage for seed beds which had to be weeded. I often got this job to do by myself as I lived only a few hundred yards away.
When I was 15, I started planting along with the rest of the forestry squad which usually numbered about a dozen men. The tree planting work could last from September till April and in the Summer the new plantations were fenced to keep the hares and rabbits out. The timber for making the posts and rails etc was taken from a larch wood above Tillypronie House (The Seven Dials) which had been blown at the time of the Big Gale in 1953 and the lying timber was used just when needed.
The posts and rails were cut out at the Estate sawmill, the wood being transported to the mill with a tractor and bogie. The timber for the posts was loaded by carrying the timber on your back to the bogie then throwing the pieces on so that someone else built up the load between the pins. Longer lengths were rolled up on skids on to the bogie and then the load secured with a chain and dwang. In bad weather gates for the fences were made under shelter as also were water boxes for putting in the ditches below fences and across roads to keep the fences rabbit proof (the boxes were really channels with a little self closing gate flap that allowed the water through but prevented the rabbits etc from gaining access). Later on Scots pine (fir) was used for making posts and transported to Aberdeen to get treated. Timber for building work on the Estate was also cut at the mill.
Summer was also the time for cutting bracken, broom and grass from around the young trees with grass hooks but later on mechanical saws were often used. In the Winter following heavy snow, the fences had to be dug out with shovels to stop the white hares from getting into the plantations. This could be a thankless job as you often cleared them one day and then on the next day when you went back, the trenches had blown full again. In these conditions hunts and drives were often organised through the plantings on Saturday fore-noons to kill off any hares that went over the top to prevent them eating the young trees. Deer could also be a problem as they used to rub their antlers up against the trees taking the bark off and killing them.
The ground for planting came to an end and I along with others was paid off in 1965.’
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