Life at Bogmyrtle Farm is hard for the MacKinnons and, as soon as she's old enough, it's the city for Helen MacKinnon. There she picks herself a husband, but back in the country Audie Foubister's drawbacks become painfully apparent.

As the First World War gathers in its grim harvest, Helen finds unexpected passion in the arms of Meldrum Spark, the tinker who entices her to follow him for a life on the road...

Blown Seed is the evocative saga of rural life in Buchan written by David Toulmin and made vividly real by his many years working on the land as a farm labourer.

David Toulmin is the pen-name of John Reid, who was born at Rathen in Buchan, Aberdeenshire, in 1913. His father was a farm worker, and at the age of fourteen, John left school to work on the farms as a 'fee'd loon'. He married in 1934

An interest in writing which began in his schooldays developed into an absorbing hobby and in 1947 his first article was published in a local newspaper. Since then, he has had nine books published; a number of his short stories have been broadcast on the radio and he has made several appearances on television.

In 1986 he was awarded an Honorary Degree as Master of Letters (M. Litt.) by Aberdeen University for his services to Scottish literature.

In December 1992 he was incapacitated by a stroke which ended his writing career and on 13 May 1998 he died at his home in Aberdeen.

His Collected Short Stories were published in 1992.

'Fascinating ... the reader can practically taste the oatcakes, feel the raw wind'
-- Sunday Mail

'His literary talent is a thing of wild and simple beauty, rippling like corn in the wind'
-- Daily Express

'The vigour, the roistering and the bickering, the comedy and the tragedy of North East Scots rural life half a century ago'
-- Aberdeen Press and Journal