The FC Postings of John C. Keenleyside
My fifth posting in Dec 1970 was back to the three Northern Counties where I had served previously in the 1950s. The initial task was to move the base from Ardross Forest up to Lairg where a brand new house was provided on the shore of Loch Shin. The house had been built by a firm from Kiltarlity who won a contract to build several similar ones throughout the North Scotland Conservancy. The layout was similar to the previous Dorran Houses but improved to meet planning regulations, more substantial, they even had a few centimetres of insulation in the loft, also a Raeburn cooker in the kitchen and 3 electric storage heaters provided. Double glazing although necessary in that climate still had not reached those parts.
The office was a new building at Ord Croft, Lairg, shared with the Shin Forest and the Dept. of Agriculture staff. This base had a big yard for storage and parking facilities with a workshop along side for maintaining vehicles and machinery. Tool and chemical stores were provided and in the office, Research, were initially allocated two rooms. The area covered was the same as previously but two members of staff were left at Ardross to deal with the Black Isle sites, poplars at Brahan Estate and the South West out to Strome.
An unusual and interesting facet of the work here was the monitoring of pollution from the Invergordon Aluminium smelter which was newly established. The method used was to draw circles on the map and establish sampling points. Lichen was the most sensitive form of vegetation and sites had to be accessible and exactly the same point had to be suitable for re-visiting many times. At lower levels graveyards were ideal as one could find lichen on the North side of “Joe Bloggs” grave. This worked well until a new grass cutting machine arrived and the enthusiastic operator spattered the headstones with cut grass. Relatives and mourners moaned, a sympathetic Council arrived and power washed all the head stones so gone were our valued sampling sites. Their activities did not however reach our furthest out sampling point on the Fyrish monument on the top of Novar at Evanton.
From Lairg the work was spreading northwards; we were attempting to grow broadleaves near the Crask inn; many large Lodgepole pine provenance experiments at various locations from Shin to Borgie. Some varieties of these Lodgepole pine were collected following the visit of Hamish Maxwell (Conservator North Scotland) and party in I think 1965. The forest at Shin had huge planting programmes and tubed seedlings were fashionable as a means of extending the planting season and these were grown at Dornoch Forest nursery. Tubed seedlings were meant to be the answer to wind sway in Coastal Lodgepole pine but they were small and suffered from bird damage and if deer got in it took too many of them to make a good breakfast, damage was widespread and they fell out of favour. Shin Forest had extensive plantings west of Lairg beyond the Strath Oykell hotel and Research had plots up there. Cultivation work was still expanding and we set up plots on hard mineral sites in Helmsdale and near Forsinard. Loch More in Caithness was the main site of our work on deep peat - a very soft bog and difficult to plough because it was a triangular shape and bounded by roads and deer fences on two sides. Getting turned in with a tractor and plough to start the ploughed furrow on the narrow headland was a problem - the tractor and plough disappeared out of sight.
The nearest F.C. machine to help was in Lairg but he garage at Spittal were accustomed to hauling vehicles out of bogs that had run off the roads around there, they came willingly and recovered the machine easily as it was near the road side. They did not charge anything for their services as they were so pleased at our efforts in trying to grow trees up there!!!
I had plenty of young enthusiastic assistants on this posting. A. MacInness at Ardross, Neil MacKell and Richard Wallace at Lairg, followed by Jim Kirby and Neil Procter. This proved to be a short posting for me as I went to a promotion board and was successful. Shortly after I received a letter saying ‘You have been promoted to Chief Forester and will go to Ardgartan Forest in Argyll on 1 Apr 1972 and take over this post when R.S. Angus retires’. This was a shock to the system. I had never worked a day in a Conservancy Forest in my life. This was also the day we went metric, the day we went on to the computer and the day they started to build a new office at the entrance to the Ardgartan Forest.
It was a steep but very interesting learning curve.
The photograph courtesy of George Dey's family shows Dalchork Forest the site of many of John Keenleyside reasearch plots.
Groups: Forest Research, Forestry Areas