394 AYRSHIRE: EARLY POTATOES 



women to milk, and a harvester or two in the season. 

 Often the cows are let to a " bower," i.e., a dairyman 

 and milk seller who has no farm. The farmer finds 

 the cow and certain rations of meal, hay, straw, green 

 meat, and pasturage, for all of which he receives 14 

 a year. The bower not infrequently supplements the 

 food himself in order to keep up the flow of milk, 

 and as the farmer also gets back the dung made in 

 the byres he profits by this extra feeding. 



The very special Ayrshire farming is, however, 

 strictly localized on a narrow strip near the coast, 

 beginning about Irvine and extending to a mile or 

 two south of Girvan, perhaps 30 miles in all. The 

 actual shore is fringed with sand hills and given over 

 to golf; Troon with its six courses, Prestwick of 

 championship fame, Turnberry, and others of lesser 

 note form a pretty continuous strip that is never, 

 perhaps, more than two miles broad. Inland of the 

 blown sand comes another strip of light land, the 

 best of which is reddish and stony, drift derived from 

 the Old Red, just as in the Lothians on the other 

 shore. This stretch of low land, never very broad, 

 and narrowing in places to the width of a single field, 

 is backed by the hills, up the sides of which the 

 plough creeps but a little distance before sheep walk, 

 bracken, and heather set in. Even on the cultivated 

 area a further division is made between the land that 

 is farmed on a rotation and the choice fields that 

 carry potatoes every year, and it is only towards the 

 south about Girvan locally known as the land of 

 Goshen that the whole or the greater 'part of any 

 farm can be given up to potatoes. The distinguishing 

 feature of the Ayrshire potato-growing is its restriction 

 to earlies, with perhaps an acre or two of main crop 

 potatoes for the use of the house and the farm hands. 



