The Saw and the Sheep

Being a crofter means throwing yourself into every kind of job. From the outside, our life can look tranquil enough — open skies, fresh air, sheep on the hill, dogs at your heels, and the odd photo that makes it all look like some sort of peaceful Highland postcard. And, to be fair, at times it can be exactly that.

But if you’re trying to eke out a living from a croft, you quickly learn that peaceful and profitable are not always the same thing.

To make it work, you have to be able to turn your hand to whatever needs done. One minute it’s sheep, the next it’s fencing, then lambing, then paperwork, then hauling feed, then fixing something that broke at the worst possible time. Maggie tells me regularly that I’m terrible at multitasking — and she’s probably right — but crofting does have a way of forcing it upon you.

I was fortunate when I left school to do a four-year joinery apprenticeship. At the time, I don’t suppose I thought too deeply about how useful that would become later in life, but it has given me the chance to expand what we do here on the croft. It also gave me the comfort, I suppose, of having something to fall back on if I ever needed it.

These days, though, it’s less about having something to fall back on and more about trying to keep both things moving forward at once.

We’re now in that overlapping period of the year — the time when the saw and the sheep intersect — and I wake up in the morning wondering, what was it I said I was doing today?

Over the winter months I tend to do more joinery work, as the crofting side eases off a little. Most of the sheep are on the hill fending for themselves, and most of our hoggs — last year’s lambs — are on the mainland wintering. That leaves just a handful at home needing fed and checked.

Dad — the Hi-Viz Hero — keeps busy with that side of things, feeding the stock and letting me know if I’m needed for anything more serious, whether that’s a lame sheep, a sick one, or something that needs a second pair of hands.

That then allows me to crack on with whatever jobs I’m fortunate enough to get. This winter it’s been a real mixed bag: staircases, concrete, slates, shower rooms — a fairly varied back catalogue. I’ve always said it’s unfortunate that the hills don’t pay the bills. 

Although joinery is now a pivotal part of our crofting life, I didn’t exactly plan it that way.

I was terrible at school and never really liked it much at all. If some of my teachers had known I’d end up writing a blog for the world to read, they’d probably have had a heart attack. Growing up where we did, once we finished second year we had the choice of moving on to one of two high schools. One was seen as the more academic option, the other the more practical one.

All my friends chose the practical school.

Me — being far more practically minded than academic — chose the academic one.

Why?

For one simple reason: they had a football team that got the chance to go to the mainland. The other one didn’t.

So that’s how I governed my education choices. If you gave me the chance to kick a ball on the other side of the Minch, I was all in. Sign me up.

Thankfully, I did get into the football team, and I did get to play football on the mainland. We didn’t get very far, but I suppose I had a dream and achieved it.

I’m still not entirely sure why my parents allowed me to make that decision, because on paper it probably looked daft enough. But they have always supported the vast majority of the choices I’ve made, and I suppose they could see from the outset that once I’d set my mind on something, there wasn’t much point trying to shift me.

And now, without really noticing how quickly it happened, those shoes that were on my mum and dad’s feet are now on mine.

Noah is 16. Bethany is 14.

They’re both coming to that point where decisions start to appear in front of them — choices that may shape the rest of their lives, or at least the direction of the next chapter.

As a parent, that’s a strange thing to watch.

You can have all the ideas in the world about what might suit them, what might help them, what opportunities you hope they take. But the truth is, they’ll go their own way. They’ll make choices for their own reasons, just as I did.

And I think my job in all of that is simple enough.

Support.

I’m a great believer in trying things, and if they don’t work out, then that’s fine too. Not every decision has to be the right one first time. Not every path has to be the final path.

No matter what I or their mum might want for them, they’ll make their own road. My job isn’t to push them down it.

It’s just to be there if they stumble off it 

And if they happen to choose a road that involves sheep, saws, or a ferry to the mainland for football — well, they could do a lot worse.