It’s not easy being a farmer even for crime writing farmer James Oswald who has defended agricultural workers claiming it is a tough fight for today’s small-scale farmer to make big money.

James juggles rearing Highland Cattle and New Zealand Romney sheep on a livestock farm in Fife while penning his acclaimed Inspector McLean crime novels.
So far this unique ‘diversification’ has worked, with sheep numbers rising on his farm overlooking the River Tay despite his phenomenal success as the ‘new Ian Rankin’.
With his first contract with Penguin books, he bought a new tractor and is soon to move out of his ‘residence’ of a static caravan under a Dutch barn as he is having a house built.
However, as he gets ready to tour his new book, ‘The Damage Done’, the author confesses farming alone can be a struggle, particularly at a modest scale.
And he believes those who manage the land with a passion deserve the utmost respect for what they deliver, often with slender financial reward.
“Farming is hard work,” he said. “Some make a lot of money out of it and some make very little. You hear about the barley barons in East Anglia and there are some sizeable arable farms in parts of Scotland but you have to go bigger and bigger due to the staggering cost of equipment.
“If you make an investment of hundreds of thousands in a combine harvester, you have to use it.”
He added: “Due to the success of the writing, we are not having to farm particularly commercially at the moment. That has been a deliberate decision, with everything else that is going on.
“If we only had the farming income, we would not be building a house on the scale we are. We would be running a very different kind of farm with five or six times the number of sheep and a different breed of cow.
“Cross-breeds take much less time to mature than Highlands so that is less feed costs and money coming back in quicker. Farming during the day and writing at night is difficult and there are times you feel you could go completely mad. We haven’t had a holiday in five years.
“However, it is also very rewarding. I love seeing the lambs and the calves, especially if the lambing and calving has gone smoothly and I love going up the hill to check on the livestock.
“There are some damn awful days but, in many ways, it is an idyllic life.”