He’s a Creetown stalwart who’s planted and harvested thousands of trees with the Forestry Commission.
And Eric Houston is old enough – he admits that himself – to see great logs cut from trees he grew from seed half a century ago being shipped along the A75.
These days Galloway’s vast forests, almost entirely man-made, have become Scotland’s biggest source of supply for its wood products industries.
It’s a matter of some pride to Eric that he’s a dyed-in-the-wool forester.
And sitting in his Creetown home we have barely begun his story when his wife Betty comes through from the kitchen.
She sets down a steaming mug of tea and an ashet of cakes, which I offer to Eric.
“No thanks mate, they are all for you,” he smiles.
They treat their guests well in the Houston household.
Eric tells me he is 72 and 12 years retired, his pension hard earned after a tough 45-years in the woods.
And it seems he was cut out for life as a forester right from the start.
“From the womb to the tomb,” he smiles, describing the title of the book about his forestry years he has yet to write.
“Aye, I was even born in the middle of a forest – outside of Laurieston on the Gatehouse road,” he laughs.
“Summerhill was a gamekeeper’s cottage and was owned by the Forestry Commission. My step-dad Tam Ferguson was a shepherd and my mum Ina Houston was a nurse at Laurieston Hall, which
was a TB hospital in the 1950s.
“TB was still quite common back in those days and I have never been down to Laurieston Hall, even as a child.
“I supposed I would not be allowed to mix with the folk that were ill.”
Eric was the middle child of three and had sisters Elaine and Elizabeth for company, with the forest their playground.
“I loved going into the woods with this old boy called Billy Brown, who was known as the horsey man fae Laurieston,” he recalls.
“He contracted for the Forestry Commission and hauled the logs out with chains pulled behind his horses.
“That would be before I started school, in 1954 or 1955.
“He was a hard working man and worked the horses with his father, Billy senior, and his brother Jim.
“That was the way it was done before the big machines arrived.
“It was single horse power rather than multi-horse power. I went to Laurieston Primary School where Mrs Lang was my teacher and Mr Lang her husband was the headmaster.
“My dad Tam was a Moniaive man and was an ordinary forestry worker, ploughing the peat bogs and planting saplings.
“He had been a shepherd then went back to the herding when I was five or six.
“We moved from Summerhill down to Dinnans cottage on Gatehouse Farm at Laurieston.
“He was a general farm worker for Mr Dan Clement, who lived there until he was over 100.
“I mind catching a lot of rats, they were everywhere, in the calf sheds especially.
“It you hit them with a stick that would kill them.”
Eric chuckles at the memory of driving his first tractor at the age of seven, with his dad in the trailer.
“I would be steering while my father was feeding the beasts and throwing out the hay.
“It was a wee grey Fergie [Massey Ferguson], 30 horse power.
“That was how I probably finished up driving machinery in the forestry.
“We were only there two or three years then my father went to be the herd at Milnmark at Dalry, which was owned by Peter Fingland.
“It was a massive sheep farm, the best in Britain, and took in Duchrae, Knockman and Lochinvar.
“There was a herd in every one and a herd in every cottage.
“I had my own wee bit of the hill and was right into the herding, did a bit of lambing here and there and learned about sheep husbandry.
“We would gather them in for the clipping which were big days on the farms.
“All the neighbours would come and help out and my mother would make the teas and dinners for all the workers.
“There could be 20 men there from all the places round about. It was all hand shearing in those days and some of those men could fair skelp through the sheep – they were really rapid.
“I was a catcher and a wool rower, bringing the ewes over to the men for clipping then gathering the fleeces up when they were done.”
Winters were harsh in the hills then, Eric recalls, but that didn’t stop romance.
“Once at Duchrae we got snowed in, I think it was ‘63, and the snow was level with the dykes.
“We had a young herd there who had a motorbike and was courting at the time.
“He was that desperate to see the lass that he dug out a path to the road just wide enough to get his bike through.
“It must have been worth it because he married her!”
Workers often changed farms in those days, with the opportunity to do so coming up twice a year, Eric explains.
“There was the May term and the November term – it was the done thing.
“A contract between the worker and the farmer allowed the worker to move, but only at term time.
“It would give him a chance to shift if he did not like the farmer – and the farmer a chance to get somebody else in that was maybe better.
“It worked both ways but a lot a farm workers could have been at a place for years – and then that would be it.”
Aged 12, Eric recounts, the family moved to a Sykefoot cottage on Unthank farm near Langholm, a couple of miles from the Roxburghshire border.
“The hoose was right on the roadside and mother hated it,” he says.
“She couldn’t get away quick enough.
“You opened the front door and you would be straight onto the A7.
“We were forever getting lambs killed on that road.
“I went to Langholm Academy in first year then we came back to the Cairn at Gatehouse.”
On leaving school at 15, Eric tells me he walked straight into a forestry job which, after growing up among woodsmen like
Billy Brown, seemed preordained.
“I went to work for the commission at their Fleet nursery, where Cally Golf Course is now, behind Garries Park,” he says
“It was massive, the biggest in Scotland then, 1966.
“There were maybe 40 or 50 men, women and young boys working there.
“The job was bringing on the young trees from seed.
“They would have two years in the seed bed then would be separated out singly, and planted again for another two years until they were 10 inches or a foot high.
“Then they would be pulled again and taken to the hill for planting.
“It was the very start of the cycle – four years in total before being transplanted.
“Ninety per cent was Sitka spruce. That’s what they wanted for this area then, for good or for ill.
“I wanted my chainsaw ticket but the youngest you could do that was 17.
“I got it and transferred to Kirroughtree forest and joined a chainsaw squad.
“You were properly trained to be proficient in handling saws but it was hard and dangerous work.
“One pal sliced the back of his leg right open when the saw kicked back.
“There were three of us and you had to go because it was piece work.”
Powerful storms brought a different set of hazards, Eric recalls, with swathes of uprooted trees left in their wake needing cleared up.
“That was the biggest thing for the chainsaw gang,” he tells me.
“I mind one year there was a massive wind-blow, maybe in late 1978.
“The whole of the Larg Hill round the Bruntis Loch at Kirroughtree was devastated, absolutely flattened.
“These big trees were lying like jack straws.
“I was on the machines and had to pull all these three-ton trees out with a Timberjack skidder [a big-wheeled tractor with articulated suspension and steering to handle rough terrain, and a powerful winch].
“You had to cut the trees and separate the stem from the root plate then drag the trees into a position where the saw men could deal with them.”
Eric shows me a pale scar on the back of his hand when I ask if he’d any injuries from his job.
“I got cut when the chainsaw wasn’t even going,” he laughs.
“I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing in my cab and the machine coggled [toppled] and the chainsaw fell on me, and cut my hand and arm. I had to get six stitches.
“I was at Kirroughtree years – there was a nursery there as well.
“Then I progressed as a machinist and went on to the forwarders and harvesters.
”The forwarders had a big grapple on them and you would haul the timber out and stack it at the road
side.
“The harvesters were brilliant machines but they did away with a lot of the jobs.
”You could sned a two-ton tree, strip it and cut it into set lengths, process it completely in 90 seconds whereas it would maybe have taken a saw man 15 minutes, and that’s being kind.”
By the late 1980s, Eric explains, big changes were taking place as former stand-alone forests at Glentrool, Bennan, Kirroughtree, Fleet and Clatteringshaws were amalgamated.
“After that you could be sent anywhere,” Eric continues.
“I got a bit of work in England and Wales too, at Keilder and Llanwrtyd Wells in Carmarthenshire.
“One day we went down to Burry Port near Llanelli.
“Pembrey race circuit was nearby and sitting having our tea you could hear this car revving and racing and racing.
“The boy I was working with said that’s probably someone testing for the Formula 1 season.
“So we went a run over and here’s this car flying round.
“I had never seen anything like it in my life – it was unbelievable.
“This fella watching said that’s the new McLaren getting tested – and the driver was Ayrton Senna.
“You have no idea the speed he was going at.
“How he knew where he was on the circuit is beyond me.
“And only months later, that would be 1994, he was killed while leading the San Marino Grand Prix.
“So I’m proud to say I got to see the great Ayrton Senna.”
Later in his forestry career, Eric recounts, he got the chance to become a bespoke trainer under a link up between the Forestry Commission Scotland and the Department of Work and Pensions.
“We had three bases at Straiton, Clatteringshaws and Culmore at Stoneykirk near Stranraer,” he says.
“There were folk employed to look after these young guys doing work in the forest.
“Depending on how they got on they were given training classes by me in strimming, cutting brush and generally working with small machinery.
“One laddie really excelled and got his chainsaw ticket.
“He’s a tree climber now and doing really well for himself. But some of them just didn’t want to be there.
“They got paid so much but a lot were drug users and did nothing. They’d be between 16 and 22 and from Cumnock, Auchinleck and Dalmellington.
“Sometimes they would even get picked up from the police station.
“That was Straiton - the Stranraer lads would come to Culmore and the ones from Dalbeattie and Castle Douglas to Clatteringshaws.
“Each bus had a minibus which would pick them up in the morning and take them home at night.
“I finished with the forestry in 2011 after 45 years. It was the best job ever.”
For decades, Eric has dedicated himself to another team – his beloved Creetown FC.
He tells me he started as a goalie with Fleet Star at 15, then played for Wigtown and Tarff before becoming Creetown’s No 1 between the sticks.
In all the years since – he played his last game at 50 – Eric’s unstinting work for the club off the park has never ceased.
What does Creetown FC mean to him, I wonder?
“It means everything, it’s part of my DNA,” he says simply.
“When I get up in the morning the first thing I do is go down to check everything is alright.”
Lining the park, cutting the grass, making the tea, digging new drains, everything – Eric will be available.
“There’s always work to do at the club,” he added.
“It’s the same across the South of Scotland League – without volunteers it would not exist.”
