WELSHMAN Kevin Evans was top dog on price yet again at Skipton Auction Mart’s first online working sheep dog sale of 2021, selling three fully broken dogs for a combined £35,600, while his father David established a new world record price of £6,100 for an unbroken pup. While none of the top-notch Evans trio was able to get near the £20,000 all-time world record price he established at Skipton last autumn with a red bitch, Henna, almost four-years-old, all three dogs at the latest sale achieved five-figure prices for the legendary breeder and triallist, who has been setting the working sheep dog world alight of late with his charges, many related to the handler’s high profile trials champions.
Establishing a viable agricultural business from scratch is far from easy, but share farming with a good working contract, is certainly working a treat for former freelance shepherd, Neil Sandilands. A finalist in the 2020 Sheep Farmer of the Year, Neil entered a shared partnership agreement with Jedburgh-based arable and livestock farmer, Stephen Withers, from Upper Hundalee, and his feet haven t touched the ground since. But, after much, blood, sweat and tears and some extremely long, long days, Neil who lives with his partner Lorraine Gotterson, and their young family of Harris (8) and Isla (5), admits they are making money having transformed what was once a mediocre commercial sheep unit into a extremely productive, progressive enterprise that has more than doubled in size.
WILDFIRE raged through the Galloway Forest Park GROWING BARLEY for whisky is a mainstay of Scottish arable farming – but under lockdown, maltsters and distillers had to put the brakes on production, casting doubt on what harvest market will be waiting for the crops that many growers had just finished establishing. It costs a lot of time and money to completely shutdown and restart a distillery, so many of Scotland’s were still open with a skeleton staff to keep them ticking over, with some producing ethanol for hand sanitiser, but none were going ‘full bore’ at whisky production. Distillery bosses were understood to be keen to resume full production, but were awaiting an indication from the authorities that their business was sufficiently important to justify bringing a full staff back in.