JOHN is awash with nostalgia tonight. Reliving memories of his youth. Reminiscing over a good malt whisky. Lost in reverie.

Today we have been back to the farm John was brought up on. His father was the farm manager and responsible for an award-winning Jersey herd. Winner one year at the Royal and then the Great Yorkshire Show and the Smithfield milking trials.

His prize cows, not the entire herd, were milked three times a day, something John never emulated when we were in milk. But milking them so regularly increased the yield and yield was all important for prize winners.

We have in our kitchen a copy of an oil painting of John's father with his prize bull and three of the cows and a heifer. Bill is in a white coat leading the bull. We are very proud of the picture.

The reason for our visit was an invitation to John to shoot over the land he wandered over as a child, then youth, but not as an adult.

By then the family had bought their own farm. But when he was first invited to shoot there, John felt uneasy. He had actually worked on the farm as a labourer straight after leaving school and had often acted as a beater on farm shoots.

Going back as a guest, took him quite a time to adjust to. I found it hard to understand his feelings and would chide his uneasiness. But now he is quite relaxed about the journey back and thoroughly enjoys revisiting his old haunts. Good job. None of this tugging his forelock business I told him. I have a very bossy streak.

Even though John was being hosted on the shoot, along with about eight other guests, work on the farm was in full swing with the maize harvest. I counted 11 tractors at the start of the day, trailers full to overflowing with chopped maize being transported to a biomass factory, involved I presume in producing green energy. But all did not go smoothly.

By the end of the day, one tractor had tipped its trailer over, another collided with a following tractor putting both of action and a fourth was ignominiously stuck in a boggy piece of the field. I bet the atmosphere and air were not green and environmentally conscious but blue and full of unprintable expletives by the finish of the day.

But the green credentials for this farm are high. Far higher than we have ever achieved. Much of the farm is higher level stewardship and John delighted in the wealth of wildlife around the farm and the abundance of ponds and woodlands.

All this might seem incongruous when he was there to shoot partridge, but strange as it seems, conservation and game shooting do go hand in hand. Far more birds being put down and reared than are ever shot.

Back home I would like a little game shooting to take place in my poultry huts. Once more one of my guinea fowl keets has fallen foul of an unseen killer. Head chewed off and half the breast eaten. Nothing environmentally sensitive about a rat.