We were blessed with our first grandson recently and looking into his wee face I wondered what changes he will see in his lifetime.

My dad used to marvel at all the changes he had seen. The family came to Glenesk during the great depression when he was a boy, as did my mother when they travelled over the Cairn o' Mount to a new farm near Montrose, both farm flitting’s by equine horsepower, rather than mechanical.

My mother found electric light cold in the house once she married, as she was used to Tilley lamps growing up. My father-in-law spoke about taking a train from the Carse of Gowrie with a Clydesdale stallion to serve the working mares in the Howe of the Mearns and of also taking dairy cows by train to the Dairy Show, in London.

I am just old enough to have a faint memory of the last binder, stooks and our thrashing mill being replaced by a contractor and modern combine harvester.

I can just remember big shearing days, with all the team using hand shears, until the Lister machines came into vogue. I remember being thrown into the big tall wool bags and told to tramp or be drowned with fleeces.

Promotion came in the form of a tin of paint allowing me to paint the clipped hoggs – 'don’t make a mess laddie', was said as the communal enamel mug passed around for a gulp full of beer. Large groups of neighbouring shearers of local keepers and shepherds slowly dwindled till latterly, with the help of a teenager, I clipped them all myself.

Now, professional shearers in gangs come round with fancy clipping trailers and clip the lot in nearly a day and instead of the craic, there is the loud beat of background music to keep the shearers going.

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We walked sheep to the last Edzell sale in 1995 and shed them off at the mart into their respective groups. Edzell sale days were full of characters, be they estate shepherds, keepers, farm managers and old-fashioned drovers, and seemed to have a bit too much in the mart bar. Now with the advent of modern mobile pens and busy roads, sheep are easier transported to market and marts feel cold sterile places compared what they used to be.

Modern medicines over the years developed from the likes of the Moredun have transformed our national flock with their vaccines and wormers. However, with progress there is always another ailment we had never heard of before, and hopefully their research will continue to bring innovation for our futures.

NSA Scotland will give members an opportunity this year to improve the overall health of their flock by addressing ailing ewes with a blood test before witnessing a postmortem courtesy of Glasgow Vet School. This should enable said members to identify hidden problems and rectify them with appropriate treatment where possible.

Further information will be available in due course, however places are limited and will be awarded on a first come first served basis.

The advent of EID tags has transformed the management and recording of flocks and the software is becoming more and more sophisticated, also 'no fence' technology is on the horizon.

As for the future? Genetics holds the key more and more, between animal and plant disease control, composite breeds and new plant varieties.

The research done by the James Hutton Institute – helped by my daughter, Sally Myles, with her PHD project – should contribute to feeding her son and our grandson in the years ahead, not to mention the ever-increasing needs of the world population.