58

‘Best to meet early,’ said Sheena, Iain Thomson's daughter, so I'm on the road at seven. On the way, a stag leaps in front of the car from a high bank on the narrow back road to Struy. On and on, it runs ahead, a Landseer monarch not at bay but sadly out of its element. Best to leave plenty of room in case he turns – which he does, suddenly. He rears up and I jam on the brakes, at which he skids ungracefully, bellyflops on the turf then staggers to his feet, clears the fence with a bound and is last seen heading across the flats towards the river in a lordly scamper.

Sheena won't be pleased to hear about this. She's just won a battle to have the deer fenced off from her ground and here's one back.

No one's about at the steading, a long stonewalled building with the little white caravan where Iain writes his books parked at the side. It's he who turns up first in an old red car. ‘I didn't know you were coming,’ he says. ‘Have a cup of tea. Sheena won't be here for half an hour.’ And he disappears into the caravan. No sooner said than she arrives and, not intending to waste a minute (there are a hundred large beasts to feed), she starts the day's work and my mug of tea is left untasted.

Most of the cattle are a cross between Aberdeen Angus and Salers, a French breed – ‘Good ranching cattle,’ she says, which means they're hardy and happy in the Scottish outdoors, and good milkers too. The Aberdeen Angus connection adds a premium to the beef price.

When Iain quit farming, he sold his cattle to his daughter to start her off. (‘She got them at a good price,’ he says later, sotto voce.) Now, since her partner died, he helps out. He says she's a good cattlewoman.

The bulls are fed first: Sean, Jack, Strathglass Oakleaf and Indiana Jones, three with the black sheen of Aberdeen Angus, one red-rusty – the Salers. Sean the Aberdeen Angus has a ruff of black curls on the nape of his neck – he's handsome and valuable too, £3,000 worth of muscle, bone and beef. Among the females, one, a 17-year-old grandmother to a good number of the younger generation, is clearly a favourite – she gets a kindly word and a pat on the ragged rump in passing. She's out to grass, sure of her keep for her natural life. She'll never find a place in the food chain, that's for sure. But, in any case, since she was born before BSE, mad cow disease, a cut of her rather stringy rump would be illegal eating.

A bull down the lane bellows loudly as we approach. ‘Just saying hello,’ says Sheena reassuringly.

Then she manoeuvres a tractor out of the shed and I perch on a wheel casing while she spears a bale of hay on the forklift and we trundle down the road with the bale hoisted aloft. She grumbles that these big tractors weren't designed for women – she has to stretch to reach the pedals and the gears aren't easy – but she drives it like a dodgem all the same. Meanwhile, Iain emerges from his caravan, mounts his bike and pedals off ahead of us.

Sixty cows and their calves await us in a compound. As the tractor noses through a welter of heaving black backs and Iain stands on the trailer shovelling out pellets of feed, the cattle close in behind us, jostling for a place at the trough. Iain jumps down among them, whacking and prodding with his stick to make sure all get a share.

Back at the steading, we swill muck off our boots in a burn and Sheena announces that she'll be spending the rest of the day spreading muck. I opt out of that to join Iain in his poky caravan. There's barely room for the two of us to sit at the table among a litter of books and papers including a fading copy of the Financial Times two months old. There's also a diminutive stove and a fridge for the milk. Iain puts the kettle on and gives a stir to the pan of porridge plop-plopping on the ring. This time I'll get my tea.

‘I wrote two books here,’ says he. And he's just finished a book of poems which he doesn't ‘suppose anyone will publish’.

There doesn't seem to be a handle on the door. ‘Kick it,’ he says, which I do and it swings open.

His parting words: ‘Give me a call next time and we'll have a pint.’