John Hamilton has been reading The Scottish Farmer since 1933

Having recently celebrated his 101st birthday, John, a retired dairyman currently residing in Kilmarnock, still get’s the newest issue delivered to him every week.

Born in a village just outside Traquair on August 2 1923, John’s father was a contract shepherd mostly working with Cheviots. The family would move around depending on where the work was. “My father was in high demand, he was always being offered jobs from folk so he was clearly good at what he did. It’s why we never got a farm of our own I don’t think because we never needed to, despite my grandfather and great-grandfather both owning farms.” John recounts.

John just celebrated his 101st birthday

It was when John’s family were living at Howgate that John started to work full-time in farming.

“It was June 1938 when I had left the school and my father had hurt his knee during lambing. I had to take over most of his work as he wasn’t able to with his injury. That all changed when the local schoolmaster came knocking on our door asking if there was a boy available to work at a local dairy in Kirkmichael. I jumped at the chance.” He said.

John started working for the South Ayrshire dairy just before the war where he would stay for 15 years.

He described the farm as “quite a fancy place, all the steading and close was all paved and tarmacked which was very uncommon at the time. We also had a milking machine, something I had never heard of back then. It might have been one of the first places in the area to have one.”

John worked through the second world war on the farm where he stayed onsite in a bothy with the other farm labourers. It was through working there that he met his wife, Agnes.

“She was a hairdresser from Glasgow but when I met her she was working on the farm as part of the Land Army. We worked together for two years before getting married.”

After briefly working as a dairyman in Dumfries, John and his wife moved to Moorfield Farm in Kilmarnock in 1953. Then owned and operated by James Caldwell and Son, John worked with Ayrshire cows but latterly Friesians were introduced as they became more popular.

“Ayrshires were always my preferred breed. I was always tying them up, washing their tails and combing them. They were used to me handling them, you can’t say the same thing now. Small dairies don’t survive because it isn’t viable for them commercially. It’s so different now with these big setups where dairies have 500 cows on a rotary parlour, or use robots to milk the animals automatically. Even cleaning the parlour I would wash it out with buckets of water, we didn’t have a hose or anything like that.”

One of John’s favourite jobs was on sale days where he would brush up the bull calves and lead them around the ring.

“Sale days were always a busy social event. I like to dress the calves and get them ready for the ring, we would also do quite a few dairy shows with the pedigrees which were always a lot of fun.”

In 1983 John was honoured with a long service award for 30 years service at Moorfield. Something he is extremely proud of.

“I worked at Moorfield until 1988 when I retired at the age of 65. I took great pride in working there for 35 years I wouldn’t have chosen to do anything else.”

Today dairy cows are no more at Moorfield, as most of the land was sold up and turned into Moorfield industrial estate. When John and Agnes retired they moved into a house in Kilmarnock, their three daughters Ann, Janet and Sheila all took work outside of farming. However John kept up with every issue of The Scottish Farmer to keep himself in the loop.

“I have never missed an issue as far as I’m aware. I used to go to the shop every week to get it and I remember at Moorfield it was the tractorman that would pick it up and it would get passed around all the farm workers. I think my father would have even read the first issue when he was younger.”

John has seen so many differences when it comes to agriculture but he highlighted the change he had seen in The Scottish Farmer newspaper itself.

“There is so much more to read now, it is a great showcase of what is out there. I always read every page front to back. Everything has changed so much since the thirties, all the new technology available, how quickly everything can be done. Whilst it makes farming so much easier in some way others it may not always be for the better. I for one got so much out of working for dairies and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”