WE farmers are gluttons, not only for food and drink, but for punishment. Last week we had the annual Ythanside farmers' dinner which is all that is left of the great Ellon agricultural show, which ran out of steam in the 1970s.

The self-inflicted punishment was that the main speaker was a politician. Politicians are so ready to stand up and so sweir to sit down, it is a great risk to offer one a captive audience and a steak dinner.

Our guest was Alex Ferguson, the MSP for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale. He had come 250 miles to speak so we were prepared for the worst.

We needn't have worried. Our guest started by making us laugh. He had been a farmer himself so he would need a sense of humour. Ferguson's sons didn't want to follow him so he was able to give up the uncertainties of farming, though he had to admit that politics wasn't exactly a guaranteed living either, especially for a Tory in Scotland.

When the former convener of the Scottish Parliament's rural development committee got round to the political bit of his speech, rather than cut it down he spoke very quickly. That was a grand idea and much appreciated, though it did make it hard to take notes.

Ferguson struck a chord with his audience when he described Scotland as a country of three halves. There was the sparsely populated Borders area and the sparsely populated area north of Dundee. However, those halves were dominated by the wee densely populated bit in the middle.

There was a bit of suspicion that the MSP might be among the ignorant majority who think we are in the Highlands. North-east Lowlanders don't like that.

He told us that nothing would be done about Highland tourism until something was done about the Highland midge, as though it were not too cold on the east coast for midges.

And we wondered if the story about the old couple, in their but-and-ben celebrating the last of their 15 children leaving home had anything to do with us. The old man reminisced romantically and in a distinctly West Highland accent: ''Losh Jeannie, it seems like yesterday that we arrived here. You with your nightgown and me with my King James bible.''

''Aye,'' interrupted Jeannie with spirit. ''And if you'd lifted the King James bible more and lifted my nightie less we'd have had an easier life altogether.''

I remember my grandfather, Maitland Mackie, of North Ythsie, responding to the question ''do you like a lamb chop?'' with ''I used to like it for a change.''

The old man grew anything that would yield a profit - he even kept hens, which many of his fellow big farmers regarded as vermin only fit to be raised by wives and crofters.

But he was reflecting a prejudice common in Aberdeenshire, that beef was the thing. Sheep were fit only for land that was too thin to fatten cattle. I must confess to having the remnants of that prejudice, but now I have to get used to sheep.

Potions, the son-in-law who has taken over, gets his pal George Connon to put over a few sheep to eat up the rest of the grass after he has taken his cows in at the back-end. It works well.

George has an outrageous party about Christmas and the deal entitles Potions and the Investment to a seat at that table. Lord George, as he is sometimes known on account of his imperious demeanour, farms Skillmafilly, the place from which my great grandfather John Mackie put four sons into big farms before going off to Rhynie to found a second family.

So it's good to have his crack as he tends his sheep on Little Ardo's new grass. There are 64 ewe lambs, Border Leicester cross North Country Cheviots off the Caithness hills.

He'll put a Suffolk tup on them next year to get a nice early lambing ewe to put to the Texel. ''That gies ye an awfu bonny lamb.''

George has a new job. One of his hobbies is catching moles and we had a colony making a terrible mess of the bonny new grass on the Methlick cricket pitch, which you may have noticed has been the Farmer's obsession this year.

Not one of nature's cricketers, George has now joined the Methlick Cricket Club and been appointed Honorary Mole Catcher. He uses the old-fashioned traps which the Farmer thought were cruel until Tich, Methlick's last official moley, told him about his dog's death when it somehow ate some poisoned bait.

After clearing out our moles in one day, Lord George told the Farmer: ''I never thocht, fan I left the school, I'd be catchin moles for the MCC.''

moles@charlieallan.com