This watercolour is a quintessential realist Glasgow Boys work, both in subject matter and style. Cabbages were a staple diet of rural workers and cabbage fields, or ‘kail yards’ were a ubiquitous feature of the Berwickshire landscape. The ‘kail yard’ was a subject much favoured by the Glasgow Boys and was treated by Arthur Melville (A Cabbage Garden), Sir James Guthrie (A Hind’s Daughter), as well as George Henry, Edward Atkinson Hornel and William York Macgregor. This work draws on these immediate precedents, as well as Whitelaw Hamilton’s experience of working from landscape at Cockburnspath.