“Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful and most noble employment of man.”
GEORGE WASHINGTON
For the Mackenzie family farming is a way of life where fortunes, rich or poor, are dictated by the unpredictability of the seasons. Farming requires skill, patience, constant care, good temperament, perseverance, trust and hope. Others might add a spattering of good luck and a good degree of humour to that by no means comprehensive list. Above all farming requires the farmer to love the countryside and possess in his or her soul a burning passion to grow and nurture both plant and animal in the art of producing food for the sustenance of oneself and mankind. Kenneth and his eldest son Peter live and breathe farming – monitoring the crops and feeding the livestock on a daily basis. From the moment a calf is born or the soil is prepared for planting seeds a labour of love is employed right up until the harvested grain or fattened calf has left the farm and the whole process has begun anew. The cycle of the farming calendar is constant and enduring, but with crops and animals vulnerable to the unpredictable forces of nature the pattern of farming life sees no two days them same. For the Mackenzies, it all just adds to the excitement of daily life.