Co-published with the European Ethnological Research Centre in the Flashbacks series. Andrew Ramage was the son of a farm servant and he himself worked on the land in the Lothians and Berwickshire, in Scotland. Subsequently he became a dock worker, lorry driver and railwayman. Of the diary he kept over many years only three notebooks remain. The first covers Andrew's early life from 1884 until the mid 1870s and the period from November 1888 until April 1889. The last two cover July 1914 to June 1917. In his account the uncertain realities of rural employment and dwelling are revealed and they dispel the bucolic image often attached to descriptions of 19th-century country life. We learn of the travails of a young man making his way in the world at a time of great social and economic change and, later, of the concerns of parenthood and aging at a time of war-time strife.

Pickers come from near and far, year after year, for the berry-picking season, and from a variety of backgrounds. In the 20th century, for local people, both adults and children, it was an opportunity to supplement the family income; Glasgow folk combined it with a holiday. For the Scottish Traveller community it was an annual opportunity to meet up with friends and family, and forge new relationships. Roger Leitch encouraged many of those berry pickers to share their (mostly happy) recollections for this book - which is published at a time of political change with challenges for the soft fruit cultivation business. He also interviewed workers in other seasonal employments: potato picking; working with crops: hay/bracken/reed/flax cutting and sugar-beet lifting; fencing; repairing drystone dykes; being a deer ghillie or a river ghillie or water bailiff; salmon fishing.

Topics discussed in these recorded oral interviews with residents of Stranraer and district, in south-west Scotland, include tattie howking, war, the capsizing of the Larne-Stranraer ferry and the stormy winter of 1947. The interviews took place over a period of time, the first being with Helen Davies who was 87 when recorded in 1997.This is the first book based on research carried out by the European Ethnological Research Centre (EERC) as part of their current research programme: Dumfries and Galloway: A Regional Ethnology - part of a wider research programme, The Regional Ethnology of Scotland Project.Co-published by NMS Enterprises Ltd - Publishing and the EERC.