Prominent Fife farmer Jimmy Robertson has died aged 88.
Jimmy and his father bought Shiells Farm, near Ladybank, in 1959 at which time only 200 of the 430 acres were being used.
The rest were punctuated with the stumps and roots of trees felled during the First World War
This was where Jimmy and his wife Anne Brunton began married life and built their family. Neighbouring farmers doubted his sanity in taking on the project but Jimmy spent 10 years clearing the roots and whins, building nine miles of fences and putting it under the plough.
Jimmy Robertson went on to become one of Fife’s most successful farmers but his birth place was Coleshill Hall, near Coventry.
His father had moved south from Lanarkshire where his family had farmed since the 1600s when a good farm with a cheap rent came on the market. His mother’s family, the Lohoars, had also farmed in Lanarkshire for generations and had moved from France at the time of Mary, Queen of Scots.
By the time Jimmy was five, the Second World War had started and the family farm was only three miles from the Spitfire factory at Castle Bromwich. Jimmy and his sister had to shelter during bombing raids and watched their father fill in craters left after the raids.
Towards the end of 1940 he had a horrifying experience on what would become a momentously dark day for the area.
Terrifying encounter
His daughter, Susan Dun, said: “He was walking home from school when he heard a German plane coming from behind
“He hid in the hedge, and as the plane flew over him it was close enough that he saw not just the Swastika on the side but the pilot’s face which he never forgot as long as he lived.
“He used to say he could still feel the fear more than 80 years later.”
The plane was a German reconnaissance aircraft and this was November 14 1940. Later that night more than 500 German bombers attacked Coventry. It was the worst night of the Coventry Blitz with more than 40,000 homes destroyed or damaged.
Shortly afterwards, Jimmy and his sister, Helen, were sent to live with relatives in Muthill while their parents looked for a farm in Scotland.
They found one in 1942; Uthrogle, near Cupar. Jimmy went to school at Castlehill primary and then Bell Baxter High School and left at 15 to start as a orra loon on the farm, rising at 5.30am to fire the generator to power the farm.
He was heavily involved in Bell Baxter young farmers, taking part in ploughing matches, turnip-thinning competitions, speechmaking and stockjudging.
It was at at a young farmers’ inter-sports night that he met Anne Brunton from east Fife who held the Scottish schoolgirls’ 100 and 200 yards records.
They were engaged and married in 1959 and moved to Shiells to a small house with an outside toilet and went on to have three of a family; Susan, Jane and James.
One of his proudest memories was when the 1983 Fife Show was held at the Shiells. During the wet spring of 1983 the committee faced cancelling the show because of the sodden condition of the showfield at Balcormo Mains.
However, Jimmy stepped in to offer his own farm, the sandy-soiled Shiells, which had remained bone dry despite the rain, and the show took place after all and was a great success. Jimmy himself was president of the show 10 years later in 1993, ironically on another wet day.
By 1985, he was making the most of the farm’s sandy soil to grow carrots to supply Kettle Produce and, from the 1990s onwards the farming business expanded by taking over Lathrisk, part of Unthank, Grahamstone, Westerton and Nochnary.
Away from the farm, Jimmy curled with Falkland, Pitlessie then Kinross Seniors and played golf in later life at Thornton with a group of farming friends.
He had been an elder at Freuchie Church for more than 60 years and served 30 years as property convenor.
Jimmy was predeceased by his wife two years ago after 62 years of happy marriage.
Susan said: “He was a true man of the land; one of the few people who could still plough a field with a pair of Clydesdales or a £150,000 computerised tractor.”
You can read the family’s announcement here.