Our Wild Farming Life, Adventures on a Scottish Highland Croft, by Lynn Cassells and Sandra Baer

 

 

Lynn and Sandra took part in BBC2's This Farming Life, and this book was published to accompany the series.

The two meet while working for the National Trust and realize they share a dream to live closer to the land.
First they find jobs in Scotland, then they start their search for the perfect location. They fall in love with a property which they believe is beyond their budget, however, in the end a friend lends them the money. I found this quite hard to believe as, by their own admittance, they had little idea as to what they were going to do with the land. Having worked out how much money they would need to pay the bills they feel the only solution is to get jobs: 'It is clear to us now that in spite of all the early planning, thinking, researching and endless spreadsheets, the reality was we didn't actually know what we were doing other than following our hearts and dreams.'

In 2016 they receive the keys to Lynbeck croft. Where to start? There are so many jobs that they have no idea which to tackle first. In the end, noticing trees that need attention,  they decide to spend some time tending to young saplings. Next is the kitchen garden. Meanwhile they both find jobs locally.

 

 

Eventually they dedide to apply for the Young Farmers Start-Up Grant Scheme, which helps new entrants into farming. In April 2017, much to their own surprise, they hear they will receive the grant.  They also receive woodland funding, enabling them to plant 17,400 trees.

As for farming, they find inspiration in the work of other farmers and study books on regenerative agriculture, a way of farming that regenerates the land and the communities that live on it.
Pigs and chickens arrive and they start to sell eggs and pork locally.

 

Then it is time for the Highland cattle. 

By this time I was beginning to wonder what on earth they lived on and how they paid the bills, both haven given up their jobs. Surely you can't live on grants alone? On page 161 Lynn starts to tackle this subject. The solution is a subscription club, with people signing up for a weekly box.  They start off with selling eggs, gradually adding pork and beef, and, using their passion for food to turn their limited amount of produce 'from something good into something incredible', homemade sausages and bacon. This means taking out a loan to build a butchery and taking courses. The new products, again sold through subcription, are an immediate success.

The book ends with them applying for and being accepted by This Farming Life (while I am following the current series, I did not see this earlier one). Response to the programme is overwhelmingly positive.

  

Lynn includes lots of interesting facts and stories about the history and the people of the area and about agriculture, but the book is also strangely bland. I wonder if a ghost writer was involved? You just don't get the "feel" you get when reading some of the more amateur publications covered on this blog. 

 

Lynn and Sandra's website can be found here . 

The Moon's Our Nearest Neighbour by Ghillie Basan (2001)

 

Ghillie and Jonathan Basan have always longed to live in a remote spot. For two years they have been looking for a small cottage with some land and outbuildings. By chance, a friend spots an ad in Exchange and Mart and they set off to view Corrunich Cottage, in the Eastern Highlands.  

'The track seemed to go on and on, over pot-holes and through snow-drifts along the side of a dense plantation of spruce.' 'To our eyes it looked enchanting. Set in open moorland, 1,500 feet above sea level, with hills rising steeply behind it, it was indeed remote.' At last they have found what they were looking for. The cottage has no central heating, no mains electricity and no phone. By selling their Edinburgh flat they can buy it outright and live off the proceeds for a year. In the long term they plan to organize photography workshops in the converted outbuildings.

The book consists of a series of very short 'chapters', observations, of a few pages, concerning: The Move, Settling in, and Making a Living.

Slowly they settle in to the cottage and get to know their neighbours. They are surrounded by sheep, lambs and ponies (including a wild stallion) who eat their washing. They get used to struggling with the generator and doing without electricity from time to time. Ghillie is an experienced cook who is used to working in primitive surroundings with basic equipment.

'Indeed, the life that first winter was fairly idyllic. Simple and solitary. Time to think and reflect.' Although: 'There was the continual fixing and filling of the generator, digging the car out of the snow, walking up and down the track for mail and supplies ...' Much later in the book, Ghillie observes: 'And it is staggering how time-consuming just living can be. There's the walking out to fetch supplies, the wood to chop and ailing machines to fix. There are gas tubes to drag up and down and vehicles to drag out of snow. There's no end to the chores (...) We can't just call in a plumber, electrician or mechanic, as no one would come.'

Their plan to organize photography workshops does not convince the man from the Enterprise Board ('The way I see it is to open the barn to bus parties and to offer tea and cakes'), so they will have to think of other ways to make a living. So Jonathan starts working in Edinburgh a few days a week and does freelance photography work.  They also decide to revive a cookbook typescript, Classic Turkish Cookery, which has already been rejected by many publishers. But it is not easy keeping in touch with publishers and employers when you live up a track, with no phone or fax! In the end the book is published and it is even nominated for an important award. 

I found this book a very entertaining and easy read, perfect bedtime reading in fact, apart from the descriptions of the delivery of Ghillie's babies. She had the hardest time, with both her daughter (Yasmin) and her son (Zeki), and I found myself gripping my e-reader *) and wanting to close my eyes. Poor woman. But fortunately in both cases she takes home a healthy baby. They find the arrival of a baby changes the attitude of some of the locals: 'A couple on their own can cause suspicion and rumour. A baby makes sense. It conveys a degree of permanency'.

After a while they start converting some of the barns into a studio, dark-room and office, they build a greenhouse and make a kitchen garden, all the time struggling to stay afloat.

'So why do we stay? People often ask us this. Wouldn't it be easier to live in the city and come to the cottage for weekends? Maybe. But now that we've had a taste of the wilderness  and isolation, it's difficult to step out of it. '

'For here, in the depth of the highlands, more than any other place we know, we can give our children the chance to run free in the wild open spaces. And, to us, that's the biggest dream of all.'

Ghillie seems to have found her calling in Scotland and still lives in the cottage, without Jonathan. She writes cookery books, gives workshops and rents out a converted barn. Her children have their own businesses in Scotland but also join forces with their mum. You can read all about it here

*) I prefer to buy paper copies of all the books I write about on this blog, but in this case I was not able to.

The Kerracher Man by Eric MacLeod (2007)

 

 

In 1976, after Eric MacLeod's father inherits his brother's croft in a bay near Kylesku (Sutherland), Eric and his wife Ruth impulsively decide to go and live there. The croft is accessible only by boat or by a 1,5 mile walk from Kylesku. At the time their two daughters Ruthie and Clare are aged 5 and 3. The decision means Eric, who has been working as a management accountant for an international company, quits his job.

'My mother was horrified and so was Ruth's. Indeed we soon discovered this was the reaction we would get from most people. Neither of our mothers could understand why we would give up such a comfortable and secure life for something akin to living in a cave.'

In the hot summer of 1976 they pack their belongings and move north. The house is in such a bad state that at first they move into a caravan (which had to be floated in on a raft!). Later kind neighbours offer them their house to stay in during the winter.  Bit by bit the house is restored, and a water supply and, much later, electricity are installed. Meanwhile Eric tries to earn some money by doing the school run and by gathering and selling seaweed and lobsters. Ruth works as a hairdresser.

 

 

Eric and Ruth get to know many people in the area and find that there are always neighbours willing to help them and offer hospitality. For a while they keep sheep, and they also develop their kitchen garden, using John Seymour's book as a guide. The children go to primary school locally (this involves a long walk to the road) and later board during the week in Drumbeg.

'Ruthie and Clare explored the surrounds of Kerracher with great freedom, and they learned about the natural world when they were very young. Their proximity to nature meant they discovered at first hand what other children could only learn from books.'

'We were conscious from the start that we were sharing our lives with the wild creatures which had always inhabited this landscape - and the sea.' They share their surroundings with otters, porpoises, seals, killer whales, birds, badgers, deer and foxes.

Making a living remains a problem: selling seaweed and lobsters and vegetables from their garden does not bring in enough. Later Eric makes money odd jobbing and doing accounts work. Then for a few years they are successful fish farmers.

After the children finish school and leave to go to university they decide to sell up and move house, but much to Eric 's pleasure in 2011 his niece buys Kerracher.

When I heard about this book I ordered it right away as it is one of the few I know of to feature a family. I must say I was slightly underwhelmed by it. It is a perfectly nice story, but somehow it all is a bit bland and it did not grab me like some of the other books I own.

Katharine Stewart: A Croft in the Hills (1960, my edition from 1994), illustrated by Anne Shortreed

 

In the 1950's Jim and Katherine Stewart long to get out of the city and when they see an ad for a house plus 40 acres, they quickly set off to see it and buy it. The croft is situated in Abriachan, nearly 1000 feet above sea level and can only be reached on foot. When they move in (with their small daugher Helen) there is no piped water supply and no electricity. A winddriven dynamo provides them with light (after a few years a hydro-electric scheme will provide electricity).  They get to know their neighbours and begin to understand "what good-neighbourliness can mean in lonely places. Since that day, we have borrowed and lent everything from a loaf of bread to a broody hen and have exchanged services of every kind, from a hand at the dipping to the rescue of a snow-bound truck. We are all faced with the same fundamental problems and we have learnt how utterly dependent we are upon one another in dealing with them." During their first spring they buy a small tractor and a plough and start to work on their farm. They are able to buy a neighbouring property to extend it. This also gives them access to a road. This farm comes with cattle, hens, sheep, goats, ducks and Charlie the pony. From the start they realize that what they are doing can never be more than subsistence farming. "As a business proposition its appeal was abolutely nil, but, of course, we had never looked at it strictly in that light. As a way of life it had endless fascination and reward."

Their aim is to be as self-sufficient as possible. They need to buy little, except clothes. During the years that follow they sell and buy cattle, buy more chickens, grown corn, keep pigs, grow vegetables, cut peat and keep sheep.

To make ends meet Jim needs to take a job and Katherine starts to write. "In a flash it came to me: might not people who were forced to spend their working hours between walls like to hear about what went on in a hill-top croft, of how it was possible to get an immense amount of fun and satisfaction out of lifting loads of mud into a cart, even though your boots were leaking and you knew there was not enough in the kitty to buy another pair?" She sends off an article to a Glasgow newspaper, who are not interested, but much to her suprise and joy The Weekly Scotsman accepts it.

Daughter Helen thrives, making friends with neighbouring children, and walking home from  the school bus on her own: "She has always had to do the last bit of the road from school on her own, along the track, through the heather. Sometimes, if the day is really bad, we have hurried to meet her, for she still seems such a minute scrap of humanity, set against the vastness of hill and sky. But not once have we found her in the least disconcerted by snow, gale or thunder. She plods along, with a twinkle in her eye, taking whatever comes."

This is a classic, loved by many.

"There is certainly little room for dramatic highlights in this story of ours". This is very true. This is not a book to read if you want to know how to run a smallholding. This is about the rythm of the seasons and the joy in caring for oneself and sharing everything as a family. Describing it to someone the other day, I realised it sometimes reminded me of a children's book where there may be storms,  the farm may be completely snowed in, but inside all is warm, safe and cosy. "The following morning we awoke to the now familiar sound of a northerly gale tearing at us all day. We struggled out three times to see to the animals. The rest of the day we spent huddled at the livingroom fire, swathed in woollen garments, heating panfuls of broth and making tea and cocoa. Helen loved those days of storm, when we were marooned together cosily, in the firelight, with the world whirling madly outside the windowpanes."

My edition features a new postscript by the author, written in 1979. She describes how many things have changed in Scotland and some remain the same. Jim has died and Katharine now lives in the old school-house where she runs a (tiny) Post Office. Daughter Helen and her family live nearby on their small farm.

Kaherine went on to write many more books. She died in 2013. A very interesting obituary can be found here here .