documentary

Crofters

There must be few places left in the UK where the direction from which the wind is blowing still matters, but North Uist is surely one of them. You watch and pay attention to what the weather presenter has to tell you, for it will determine what you do the next day. You pay particular attention to the wind, how strong it is and where it blows from. The mighty Hebridean wind can call off school; prevent you from buying your essentials from the nearest grocery shop, half a mile down the road or stop you from collecting the seaweed which otherwise would have gathered on the sandy beaches, ready to fertilise the island’s naturally acidic soils. It can even cancel the burial of a recently deceased islander. So you watch, devotedly and without the slightest cynicism, for if you’re a crofter the wind will be one of the many natural events which keeps reminding you of your inevitable connection with the land.Look up a definition of crofting on a search engine or encyclopaedia and you’ll be presented with a rather aseptic description, something like this: ‘an agricultural and farming system based on small holding tenancy’; or ’small agricultural unit situated in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland’. Crofting is much more than that. It is a lifestyle. To some extent one could argue that you cannot become a crofter, that you need to be born one. Crofting is a fully-fledged social system. It positively sustains remote rural communities and contributes to the life, landscape, cultural heritage and social economy of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

There are over 17,000 registered crofts in Scotland, sustaining a total population of about 33,000. The largest concentration of crofts is on the Western Isles, with over 6,000 of them.

However, crofting communities are dwindling; migration to the mainland is rife. The majority of crofters are aged between 50 and 80, hardly a promising prospect. Most young people, overwhelmed with lack of expectations, jobs, and increasing housing prices – fueled by the second-home phenomenon creeping from the mainland – don’t have the courage nor the determination that a minority of them, like Ivan McDonald, have. Still in his twenties, he epitomises the crofter of the future: driven, passionate and in love with his homeland. I could not stop thinking what in this world it was that he had and felt about this land that made him stay here; what it was about his bond with the land that I, as an outsider, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

So it’s hardly surprising that Ena McNeill is skeptical about it all. Not even the implementation of the New Scottish Land Reform in January 2004 seems to have had a positive effect on how she sees the future. Ena is the archetypal crofter. Daughter of a crofter, mother and grandmother of crofters. As Ena pointed it out, whether crofters own the land they work or not, is irrelevant, for fishing and stalking rights – the most lucrative of the Estate’s activities – will still be beyond the control of the crofters. They would also lose out on government grants, which can be as much as £70 per acre per year.

Angus is made of the same stuff as his mother Ena, and so is his young son Fraser. Playing truant has got a different meaning up in North Uist. Fraser, a diligent student, doesn’t think twice about taking a ‘day off’ in order to get up at 5am and help his dad on his 14-hour day harvest day, an important event on the crofters calendar. He’s not the only one. He’s joined by a school friend who for a day swaps his seat at his class desk for a seat on a 500-horsepower tractor.

So I reflect and ponder about what Ena, Ivan, Angus, John and others have told me. I ponder in the security and lethargy induced by the roaring peat fire in the old Rayburn in Ena’s house, so close to the beach that on a rough day the waves crash against her front door.

Because in North Uist, the earth literally warms you: the ultimate connection with the land.