I'm David Ralston, I'm a tutor with Argyll College
covering agriculture and the land-based courses.
The farm's been in the family for 3 generations,
my papa farmed it, my dad farmed it and now
myself and hopefully one day one of my children
as well.
We're a family based farm, so we work as
a unit together. Here we have 200 acres of
low ground land that we farm between 250-350
sheep, and about 50 suckle beef cows. We grow
them from birth to 10 months old or thereabouts
and sell them at the market where they move
on to the east coast of Scotland mainly where
they then go on to be finished. Here we grow
about 20 acres of oats every year, for feeding
ourselves and for straw for bedding. We also
have about 100 acres fo silage as a first
cut and 50 acres of silage for the second
cut to feed the animals through the winter.
We also contract rear about 100 Ayrshires
from our neighbours locally on a dairy farm.
The course is a 20-week course starting in
January, 1 day practical and 2 days theory.
After the course you should be able to go
straight into Agriculture to go on to further
education and the HNC. 2 days in the classroom
with cover health, welfare and legislation
for animals and will also cover soils and
groundwork, being able to produce crops and
understand how they grow.
So here at the farm, we cover a lot of maintenance
- I'm a builder, a plumber, a joiner, an electrician
all in one. As well as covering veterinary
care and animal care. We have to maintain
the fields, we have to maintain the boundaries
fo the fields so that entails fencing, drainage
and a lot of plumbing in terms of water troughs.
Hopefully, when the students are here they'll
be learning a bit of everything. They'll be
looking after the animals, how to look after
them from day to day, week to week, from start
to finish. I'm hoping when they come out fo
this they should be able to look after their
own stock without any risks at all.
Part of the course will be machinery maintenance
and tractor driving. They should be able to
come out of that being able to safely operate
any parts of the machinery and maintain them.
Here you'll be able to do numerous types of
work on the fields and round about the farm
including feeding animals, scraping animals
and groundwork. Preparing a field for a crop,
lifting a crop and storing a crop.
The best thing about being a farm is you're
out and about, you're free to do what you
want outside, you can come and go as you please,
but at the same time, you're looking after
all the stock on your own ground. I like to
think I can produce the best stock I can possibly
produce which in turn hopefully produces the
best food that I can produce.
You don't have to be born and brought up on
a farm to go into agriculture as long as you're
willing to put in the effort and learn everything
within the sector it's not impossible for
anyone to go into it. 72% of the students
we had last year were female, it doesn't matter
whether you're male or female in this industry
as long as you're willing and able to do the
jobs at hand.
Agriculture can be a reasonably well-paid
job, it's not just the financial rewards from
it, but you also get the rewards of getting
to look after and care for something from
start to finish.
