Tommy Dale must have more hours in each day than the rest of us.

He's run Forth Resource Management and Caledonian Horticulture since 2002, when he started both as an SRUC student project to recycle, compost and re-use garden and landscaping waste.

He heads up Brose oat milk, works with Heriot-Watt University and others to run a lobster hatchery, and has a mission to clear plastic from Scotland's beaches, Scottish Coastal Clean Up.

And there's plenty more charity and social enterprise work beside all that!

He’s also been very generous in this chat for Farmstrong Scotland - sharing with Sarah the difficult lessons he learned in 2013, when he had a serious mental breakdown.

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Welcome to Blether Together from Farmstrong Scotland.

I'm Sarah.

Stephen.

Thanks for being with us.

Our chat this time is with Tommy Dale.

He's from East Lothian and he's got his fingers and toes in an awful lot of businesses and initiatives.

Just don't call him an entrepreneur.

I'm dyslexic.

I don't even know how to spell entrepreneur.

Tommy's thinking is rooted in farming, but spills out into social enterprise, culture, conservation, charity, his one true love, compost.

And his business, producing the only Scottish oat milk on the market.

We try and do good whilst making a pound, I suppose, would be the way to do it.

He's been so generous in this chat, sharing the difficult lessons he learned when he had a serious mental breakdown a few years ago.

You know, one day, just a black cloud came down that just overwhelmed me.

They broke me mentally.

It was unbelievable.

It was just so intense.

He's a ball of energy.

Here he comes.

Tommy Dale.

Tommy, welcome to the Farm Strong podcast.

It is lovely to have you with us.

I could see you cringing as we were trying to give you, you know, an ID when you were talking there.

So East Lothian entrepreneur doesn't work for you, does it?

Not really.

I'm dyslexic.

I don't even know how to spell entrepreneur.

Well, thank you for joining us.

You've had a busy morning, have you?

Not too bad.

It's been relaxing.

I've been out with a friend, showing him around a farm along the road.

Fraser's.

He's in a wheelchair, so he cannot get out and about much himself.

So we're on a mission to visit every farm in East Lothian.

So every fortnight we go and see a different farmer and get them into Fraser's van and we interview them.

So it's now it's my turn to be interviewed, so it would seem.

What was your takeaway from this morning's tour?

Fresh set of eyes.

So the lovely lady farmer and her husband, they've been down south for a long time.

He's from down south.

They've moved back to the family farm and they've sort of taken a look at the business and they're making lots of changes and they're doing great things, really into the environment.

They've got a social twist, getting folk onto the farm, helping plant hedges and we campsite.

No, it's great.

Well, I'm sure Fraser loves his time with you and we'll come back to that giving back later on in the chat.

But I typically start these chats with a bit of a rapid fire question round.

Are you up for that?

Yeah.

Okay, so it's just one word answers, whatever comes to mind.

If you were to be a sport in the Winter Olympics, which sport would it be?

Oh, the one that jumps off the big ski jump is this.

I don't know what it's called.

Eddie Eagle.

I would be Eddie Eagle Mark too.

Eddie the Eagle Mark Two.

All looks pretty scary when they go up high and they jump off these things, doesn't it?

Okay, what's the.

What's the first thing you do in the morning?

Think about how I'm going to spend the day.

What is the favorite thing about your job?

The flexibility, the variation.

Would you rather always be underdressed or always be overdressed?

Oh, you've obviously never met me before.

I'm an absolute scruff.

So, yeah, underdressed.

One subject.

Well, I mean that carries on to this question.

One subject you would like to learn more about.

Compost.

What do you think people misunderstand about you?

They maybe think I'm cleverer than I am or no, richer.

They think I'm richer.

People tell me you must be a millionaire all the time.

I says, you've got no idea.

And they don't.

Okay, well, that's it.

So you're not a millionaire?

No.

We've got a lot of finance agreements.

Yeah, I think is that that's the case probably across the board when it comes to farming.

Well, Tommy, well done.

You're few.

Few.

You can breathe a sigh of relief.

It's over.

So to.

I was looking at what you do and I thought, well, rather than me list it, I thought it'd be better if you gave us a brief outline.

If someone said, tommy, what do you do?

Just tell me a bit about what do you do?

We try and do good whilst making a pound, I suppose would be the way to do it.

I mean, I'm an environmentalist at heart.

So everything's about what we can do to sort of help the countryside and the environment, nature.

And then I'm a great believer that if nature's going to thrive, humanity needs to too.

So we have a social twist.

You can't expect the Hebridean folk to look after the corn creeks if they can't heat their houses, or the African villagers to look after rhinos if they can't feed their children.

So I'm just very interested in how nature and humanity get along with each other.

Where did that impetus come from?

I've always loved Nature can remember being at primary school and you know, that was just the only thing that's ever really interested me.

Right the way through that.

Well, and farming, I love farming.

So did you always know you were going to farm?

Well, I'm not really a farmer, I'm a composter.

You would dabble in a little bit of farming on the side, but I always wanted to be a farmer.

So how.

Tell me a bit about Tommy, the wee lad growing up.

What was your childhood like?

Oh, it was amazing.

Just living.

Live at a place called Seacliffe, which is just where the first, the fourth meets the North Sea.

My mum's got equine compulsive disorder so ponies were a big part of life, you know, galloping around ponies.

And my dad's been involved in shellfish, so it was like catching lobsters off the rocks.

So sort of a bit of a weird hybrid between fishing and farming.

And then I got a chainsaw of 16, got into timber, so a lot of, lot of cutting trees down as well.

When I was a wee, we were older, you know, sort of 17 and yeah, just great, great fun.

Loved it.

And now my kids are getting to enjoy.

Grew up in the same place too.

Did you always have a clear vision, a clear path?

Not really.

All I knew was that I wanted to be a farmer and helping uncles on the farm.

Went to agriculture college and then became a composter instead.

So tell me, come on, just expand on that a little bit.

You're not, you know, there's a lot, you're involved in a lot and you've got a lot of fingers in a lot of pie.

So just tell us a little bit about what you're involved in.

So fourth, resource management.

That's the business that pays my salary and we're a resource management company based across southern Scotland and that is mainly composting, but we also do a bit with aggregates and wood and biomass and different materials.

And I started ephrem.

I was at college at the Scottish Agricultural College.

So a lot of that's sold online.

It's also sold through landscapers and a few little garden centers, but mainly through our online Caledonian horticulture website.

And then alongside that we've tried different things over the years.

Some have been successful, lots of them haven't.

Timber, haulage, farm shops.

I'm looking at one of our newer projects, although I say new it's taken us seven years to get this far.

Which is the mighty Brose oat milk.

Scotland's only oat milk.

And Scotland, as we all know, is famous for oats.

And brose is a modern twist on an old drink.

You know, brose was made in farmhouses across Scotland for hundreds of years back in the day of, you know, the horse, really, and the oxen, and when folk were needing to be hydrated in hot harvesters, a brose was made of water and oats and honey.

The ice had taken out to the farm work.

Oat milk is part of it.

There's quite a lot of charitable stuff as well.

We've got an environmental charity called Balance Horizon.

We've got various projects that form the pillars of our community that we're building around that work.

We've got Scottish Coastal Cleanup, where we're busy cleaning up all the coastline.

Scotland.

I'll just show you.

I've got.

Talking of props, my birds have never been on a podcast before.

I do a lot of talks and these birds have been all sorts of places, but they've never actually been on a podcast.

They're a pair of.

A pair of guillemots.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this guillemot here, sadly got caught up in a face mask in Covid, a tartan reusable face mask, and was pulling it round the Firth of Forth like a parachute until it starved to death.

And this one got caught up in some fishing net and then it starved to death as well.

And that's horrific.

And the fact that's happening by the Bass Rock, which is one of David Attenborough's 12 wildlife funds of the World, I thought, you know, we can't have that.

So we started the Scottish Coastal Cleanup with the intention of removing 70% of the detritus from around Scotland in five years, which, it turns out was completely ridiculous, because Scotland's got the longest coastline in Europe and the rubbish on the west coast is far, far worse in many places than east coast.

So we might get it done in 50 years, but we're on the case.

We've also got a lobster hatchery, Scotland's only lobster hatchery.

So we put lots of lobsters back into the sea, but we're now going to native oysters.

So we're going to be rebuilding, hopefully working with.

We're working with WWF and Hero University to rebuild the lost ancient oyster beds that were off the city of Edinburgh, the first of fourth.

They were 20 miles long, up to six miles wide, and they were one of the first fisheries ever fished to extinction by.

So we're trying to get them back on the go, which is.

That's the biggie project and there's a few other bits and pieces.

It sounds exhausting to be honest, Tommy.

I mean, who sits alongside you?

Who's sharing that vision with you?

Oh, the most incredible bunch of people.

They are amazing.

I was told a long time ago you should surround yourself by people that are much better at things than you are.

And I think that's probably where I've, you know, be most successful, to be honest, because I'm really, you know, I don't know how most things in what we do work.

I spend most of my time just picking up bits of rubbish and talking to folk and everyone else just gets on with it and things happen.

So what's your strength then?

Litter picking?

I'm pretty good at that.

Ideas, but not all good energy.

Play energy.

Well, I'm just thinking you've come across as.

You're very enthusiastic and very passionate.

Are you always.

Are you a very upbeat person?

I mean, are you always very on, you know, you seem very, you know, in the moment or is it.

Is that, you know, do you have.

Your off days as well, chronically optimistic about things?

I don't think I have off days, no.

Sometimes you're a bit tired, but other than that, I'm all right.

And what of those jobs, which one are you most passionate about?

I do honestly have not got a favorite.

It's like asking someone if you've got a favorite child, you know, it just, it's.

No, I love oat milk compost, native oysters, equally.

I was looking.

Well, the chocolate oat milk looks fantastic.

I'm a. I've got massive sweet tooth.

So that's the one I'd be taking off the shelf.

Oh, it's.

It is amazing.

I've got a dangerous addiction to this stuff.

Is that the last of your problem?

Made with oats from Aberdeenshire.

Oh, fantastic.

Well, that's.

Yeah, yeah.

So how do you switch off and wind down?

Take the dog out for a walk, maybe a little trick on the beach or in the woods.

Do a bit with quite like growing trees, like tending young trees.

What else about your well being?

I mean, obviously this is what, you know, we're here to talk about.

Well, being emotional, physical, you know.

Do you think about it a lot?

I'm very aware of it.

And one day just a black cloud came down that just overwhelmed Me for about a month and I just remember literally crying for days and it felt like everything was lost, but actually, again, being surrounded by great people, loving family, you know, I kind of got through that and I realized that I need to be quite careful and not push myself.

I just pushed myself far too hard and was trying to do far, far too much and burnt myself out.

And so, you know, I learned a massive amount through that.

And so I'm now, although I'm busy, I just make sure that I'm not doing too much.

Did that catch?

You must have caught.

Well, I mean, I suppose you can't, you know.

Did you see it coming?

Did it catch you unaware?

Yeah, completely.

But it just.

There's a real lesson in that.

So, yeah, and with young kids and, you know, with lots of people depending on me with the businesses and everything else, you know, got a responsibility not only to myself but to everyone else just to, you know, to keep myself, you know, on the straight and narrow.

So would you mind sharing what caused that?

So I think part of it was my good friend Johnny, who was captain of our rugby team, broke his neck playing rugby and he recovered well to a degree in terms of got out of hospital, but he was.

He just couldn't use his limbs really, and he was getting more and more depressed.

Social media was just coming on and he was watching everyone else's lives on social media and I said, look, Jonny, we need to get you doing something.

So we started a social enterprise together called Growing Forth so that we could create opportunities for people like Jonny and others, people recovering from drugs, addiction or alcohol, people with learning difficulties to contribute and feel they were involved with something.

So we started that and try and preserve some of that last market gardening heritage that you slothing was so famous for.

So Growing Force and we built up a.

A veg box scheme we had.

I like the model.

So with frm, our model is good that we charge the councils and landscapers to bring us their garden cuttings.

We then make it into a compost and we sell it back out the door.

So we tried to find a model like that.

So the idea was that we would charge the kitchens, the restaurants and the hotels to take away their food waste, which is something my great granddad used to do.

Used to have a swill run up in Edinburgh pig farms on the edge of the city.

So collect the food waste Feed it to pigs.

So we were doing that, but it was going to anaerobic digesters.

And then we were selling back the vegetables to the kitchens, which on paper sounds amazing, but chefs at the end of their shift generally just want to put an order in with a 24 hour food service company and get their carrots delivered, washed, clean, chopped up in a bag, whereas ours were wonky and covered in compost.

And so they loved the concept but they didn't really want to use the service.

So it was struggling a bit.

We took on the local farm shop so that we had a market and thought, well, we could sell our compost there.

Still involved the lobster.

So we had like tanks selling our lobsters there as well.

We had three different market gardens.

One at the farm shop, we had some more converted polytunnels on a mushroom farm or just full of tomatoes and cucumbers.

And, you know, we had a walled garden, Archfield, that had been redone and we were growing there and it was just insane.

Like we had the most incredible bunch of people involved.

A lot of them were volunteers, but as they spent more and more time with us, they deserved to get paid.

So we started to pay them because they needed to be paid.

And then economically it just didn't have legs and it was so stressful and I was just running harder and harder trying to keep it going because.

And then poor Johnny died with two young kids.

Passed away.

So.

Johnny passed away?

Yeah.

No, thank you.

And the farm shop, you know, oh God, we had free range hens and yet like, you know, the eggs were like proper pasture eggs, so they're always filthy.

So like cleaning eggs.

I remember paying my kids, like, I think it was two pen an egg to, to wash, washing dry eggs.

I know maybe not meant to wash eggs, so maybe shouldn't say that.

So, yeah, it just, it was awful.

It was too much.

And then one day, just the black, the black lives just came down and consumed me.

It broke me mentally and it was unbelievable.

It was just so intense.

And as I say, you know, I cried for a month.

Just like it's been raining for a month here.

It was like me, but just tears.

How much of a challenge?

I'm just wondering how much of a challenge it was to put your hand up and say, this is just too much, it's overwhelming.

Well, I think that was part of the problem.

I didn't do that because I kept thinking until that point I was a believer that you could pretty much achieve whatever you wanted just by trying harder.

So I just kept Trying harder and harder until it completely broke me.

I was just mentally and physically exhausted.

So, yeah, there wasn't a lot of thought went into it.

It was just go, go, go until you break.

Tell me a bit about it.

Just, I'd love to know a bit about, obviously acknowledgement and the recognition.

Right.

This is.

Yeah, I'm in a.

And then recovery, you know, what did you do to recover?

So my partners in frm, basically, Alex and Ben, just take a bit of time and I suppose over a month, I just slowly but surely sort of re.

Emerged from the darkness and we had to make some pretty big decisions.

Unfortunately, the social enterprise had to be shut down.

And telling folk in wheelchairs or folk that have, you know, like got their first ever job because they've got quite severe learning difficulties or, you know, recovering from addictions, that they no longer have a job or a purpose was awful.

But it had to be done, there was no other option.

And we restructured the farm shop and eventually got short of that and, yeah, just made the changes that needed to be made and a lot of learning was found in a short period of time.

And I promised myself at that point that all the other businesses going forward, we'd run for the triple bottom line because we'd had to get shot at that social enterprise, because I thought we've got the social enterprise, we've got the commercial businesses.

So we just restructured it and I just said, well, look, if I'm going to be involved in businesses, they're going to work for the triple bottom line.

People plan it in profit, not in any particular order, but just those three things are what we're about and that's what we've tried to do ever since.

And do you carry those learnings, as you say, every day?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I've probably got a tendency to forget a little bit and then you push yourself.

Oh, just calm down here.

But we've tried a lot of things, a lot of things haven't worked.

So I've not got as many ideas as I used to, which is probably a good thing.

Oh, that's okay.

I mean, they come and go, don't they?

You know, Tommy, they come and go and, you know, thinking about your young children and your family, what age and stage are they at?

So three girls, 16, 14 and 11, and they're.

They're amazing.

I bet they are.

I bet they are chip off the old block.

But I'm just.

You mentioned their social media and I wonder, what is your approach to social media?

What.

What do you think of it, do you use it and how do you control it?

If you knew me, you would know that I do not use social media.

I can't even turn the telly on in the house anymore.

I have to get a child to put the rugby on for me because there's like three remote controls.

My dad's 76 and he's totally embraced AI and he gets it to write letters for him and all sorts of things and I can't turn the telly on.

My dad's all over social media.

I've never had any social media.

I, you know, I had to get someone to set this computer up.

Well, I just don't like technology.

I should have been born in the Victorian era probably.

It's not for me.

And don't get me wrong, I can see the absolute upside of it.

I mean, social media for us business wise is fantastic.

It's a huge thing for Caldeni horticulture and for balance to rise and the environmental community.

It's so important for us.

Well, I'm just thinking there, you mentioned about your.

So sorry to hear about Johnny, but Johnny Doom scrolling on social media and then thinking about your girls and how, how do you sort of manage that within your household?

I don't think I really have any say.

I mean, I thought I was gonna be one of these dads that would not allow their daughters to go to school with a short skirt on.

Completely overruled.

Like, you know, it's unbelievable.

They just don't listen.

Social media.

Lorna.

Yeah, just, you know, Lorna's good with that.

You know, I, I think they probably spend too much time on their phones but thankfully that they've got their sports and you know, they got their granny with the ponies and they've got a lot going on, but I just feel for so many kids that aren't fortunate enough to have that, you know, and if you've not got these other things, how you could just be sucked into that all the time, which is a terrible thought.

You've mentioned sport a couple of times.

You mentioned rugby and your girls being sporty and horses.

I mean, what do you do to keep, you know, yourself fit?

Just keep active at work, I think.

I don't.

Are you a gym goer?

No, I don't see the point in that.

Like why?

No, I did a.

Again, this is probably reckless, I shouldn't say it, but my cousin wanted to do a beer a thon before Christmas so we did a beer a thon dressed as Santa Claus.

Well, we had to.

I'm sure that counts, Tommy.

Well, it was.

It was a lot of exercise in a day, wasn't it?

It was 26 miles and 26 beers.

It took us all day long.

And my.

My first toenail fell off last night.

A lot of my toenails died that day.

It was awful.

So more thinking about your liver than your toenail?

Yeah.

Yeah, they were just wee beers, but still.

Oh, well, that's.

That, that, that's.

That's relief as well, isn't it?

It's.

It's being among friends and, and doing things and letting your down sometimes is very cathartic.

Exactly, exactly.

So we've got an old boys team called the Puffin Gannets in North Berwick.

So we've got a rugby match on Saturday, which I'm looking forward to.

I've not played for a year.

Is that contact?

Aye.

Yeah.

Okay.

I was thinking maybe at your age it might be in touch.

My age, My age.

Oh, dear.

I still think I've got some games I played.

I had to stop a year ago because I got such a bad head knock playing for North Berwick up against Dunfermline.

And on the bus home, I realized that I'd been playing for the club four years longer than most my teammates had been alive.

I was 44 and they were like 18 to 22.

So, yeah, no, I am getting a bit old for it, but I like it.

Well, well done you, you.

I mean, you've spoken a bit about your dad and your grandfather and I know we spoke before we started recording about what they achieved in terms of.

They were very pioneering in East Lothian and your dad sounds like, you know, embracing AI.

How fantastic 76 is.

He's way ahead of you, it seems, in terms of technology.

It seems to be a real.

I know you don't like the word entrepreneurial, but enterprising spirit within your family.

Yeah, I would say so.

And is that, I mean, is that quite.

I mean, I wonder.

With that becomes, I suppose, comes the encouragement that they've done it.

So you see them and you want to emulate that.

But is there pressure there as well?

Oh, no pressure.

No, definitely not.

I'm just so lucky that my mum and dad have been so supportive for every turn right the way through.

But there's definitely never been any pressure from anyone.

I mean, When I was 20 and started FRM, a lot of people said, look, come on, just go and get a job, you don't need to do this now.

But I didn't listen and they all came back and said they were sorry and they were wrong.

That so.

But no.

And how do you approach that with your girls coming?

I mean, are they interested in farming?

How involved are they?

So the oldest, Hannah, she is interested in animals and, you know, might go and do, you know, veterinary nursing at uni.

Yeah.

So they're interested.

I wouldn't say they're particularly interested in the composting side of things.

Ellen, the.

Our youngest, she invested.

One day she heard me saying that Bruce was really tight for money, which like most businesses, you know, it's the case a lot of the time.

And she said, dad, I've got some savings, I could help you.

So she went upstairs and she got all her money.

He came back down with £45 and invested it in Bros.

So, yeah, that was very sweet.

So I think Ellen, she's also got an old trailer that she's trying to turn into a pizza wagon to sell pizzas, which I think given she's 11, it's pretty good.

I think that's pretty good.

So that spirit's.

That spirit's carrying on.

Yeah, hope so.

I mean, I think it's interesting, isn't it, what, what children, what you see and what they pick up as well and how that can really affect them.

Yeah.

She's worrying about her dad, isn't she?

Or, you know, and.

And then the business.

Yeah, yeah.

I think she's trying to make money.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

I think that's what, that's what we're, we're all doing now.

Right at the beginning of the chat, we spoke about Fraser.

You explained that you'd been out with him this morning, and there seems to be a bit of a theme from the word go from your, you know, university early, early days of wanting to give back and, and help and be very much part of the community.

That's.

That seems very important to you.

And where do you think that comes from?

Well, I think just, you know, raised to know the difference between right and wrong.

And it's not all about money.

And I suppose, like people, I just.

I don't know.

How rewarding is that for you?

Oh, very rewarding.

I mean, I'm far more interested in frm, like, you know, of course, profit is crucial.

Like, you know, you ain't got a business unless you can keep the profit coming in.

But, you know, we're not just about that.

And, and if you look at our team, a lot of the guys that are in the middle management now started with us as litter pickers when they're in their Teens or early twenties and things like that, I just find brilliant when you can see people progress, guys that are coming to you through a training scheme.

Well, the folk at Bros, it was a kickstart scheme.

And Josh, who's the MD at Bros, or CEO, he's American, he calls himself a CEO, but let's call him the managing director, took on all these youngsters that never had jobs before because he got them paid for by the East Louis Council.

And I said, josh, surely can't have all your staff from, you know, with no experience.

But it was unbelievable.

I was so wrong.

It worked amazingly.

And Brendan and Tyler and the team there, they just, they're doing so well and they've been there since.

Since the start.

So I think seeing that is, you know, I see businesses being able to be a force for good and that's what I like.

If you could go back and start again, go back to young Tommy University, would you?

Well, get another shot.

Knowing what I know now, how could you not?

I mean, like, oh, my word, what an opportunity that would be.

Just, yeah, a lot of time and effort spent on things that were complete waste of time.

We just got rid of our timber haulage business.

So if I could miss out certain things, I'd be quite happy about that.

Tommy, you've been very open with us today and the impression often is of farmers that they are closed books and they don't like to share because they don't like to show the weakness or the chinks in the armour.

Do you think that's getting better?

Do you think farmers are getting better at being more open and sharing?

I'd like to think so.

And I think it's important to, you know, likes of myself.

That's why I'm quite open about it.

My brother, he's bipolar and Robbie is fantastic at being able to talk about that as well.

And I think both of us recognize the power and being able to share experience and just encourage others because sadly, so many folk in the past and today don't and they try and keep it hidden and then they don't get the support from their loved ones that maybe they might have got if they.

If they had been more open.

So that's why I was happy to come on to the podcast and not just talk about the positives and what's gone well, but just talk about the challenges and what hasn't.

And I think that's the whole point of the podcast, is people like you sharing makes other people think they're not alone and that they can reach out to others and get help.

And I just wonder your sort of middle age, you know, sometimes, as you said, sometimes things bear down in you and I just wonder, you know, with your brother, that must, I suppose, I don't know where I'm going with this, but I suppose that means that you're very open and very sensitive to when people are not coping.

Yeah.

And that's maybe a factor.

And you know, having lost friends over the years to suicide and other, you know, mental health, the struggle with mental health, you know, there's so much of it about and, you know, we are getting, collectively getting better at speaking about it.

But hopefully the aim of the game has to be through learning and through speaking that in future we can try and get to a point where, you know, we can help folk before they get into such dark circumstances and people like me can learn and listen to others.

My younger Tommy, so that you don't just keep throwing yourself at something until you break, you know.

So going back to your question earlier, it's like if I change something, well, I would know where my breaking point is.

So if I was doing this again, I wouldn't maybe have broken like that.

And how does your, you know, what is your relationship with your brother like?

Oh, brilliant.

Great.

He's fantastic.

I'm very proud of him.

He had the idea for the oat milk.

That's his project.

Well, he's part of the team, but it was his idea.

Yeah.

And what, you know, the most valuable lesson you've learned along the way probably don't give up.

You know, there'll be a lot of folk that'll give up when, if they just kept plowing on or made a few changes, might have made it.

But the other side of that is, is knowing to when to give up.

You know, like for us, we're just coming out of agricultural contracting.

I thought that was going to be the dream, you know, not going to be a proper full time farmer, but we could be agricultural contractors.

We built it up, we had lots of tractors and we even had like a really big forage harvester, like a proper good one.

And this was going to be the dream quite quickly.

Turned out to be an absolute nightmare.

You know, when you started getting reports back of a video spied on TikTok of a trainee tractor driver racing another tractor driver down the M8 and putting it on TikTok Live and oh my God, just no end of issues.

So I've got so much respect for agricultural contractors and timber haulers and farm shop owners, Sarah, so, you know, because they're not easy gigs.

Thank you very much, Sarah.

It's been very nice speaking to you.

A huge thanks to Tommy Dale.

And of course you can find links to all of Tommy's projects and endeavours in the the show notes for this episode.

Find farmstrong Scotland online farmstrongscotland.org the how is it going?

Tool is a brilliant, easy access way to think about your mental well being and what you might be able to do to find help if you need it.

See you next time.