Waiting on a ewe to lamb

Waiting on a ewe to lamb, I find myself thinking.

We’re in the Easter school holidays. Noah is away at his lambing job and, from the messages, pictures and calls, is extremely busy and tired, but seems to be enjoying it for the most part. He’s also living on his own for the first time, which seems to mean surviving mainly on caffeine, toast and the sort of housekeeping standards only a young shepherd could justify. Bethany is in full swing here in Bragar and is away on another croft. I can see her in the distance — she looks to be lambing a ewe — but I’ve had no phone call, so it can’t be one she needs a hand with.

It’s often when I’m by myself, with nothing but sheep and time to think, that I wonder: how did this happen? How has life come to this stage already? How is this island shaping us — and how does it continue to shape my children?

Living on an island obviously has its differences to living on the mainland — the stretch of water is the most obvious one. But when you grow up on an island, it can sometimes feel like it’s the centre of the universe, and everything you see on the news is happening on another planet.

Growing up, the mainland felt like this mythical place — somewhere the famous and the rich lived, where life was somehow shinier, faster and better. And in some ways, I wasn’t wrong. The mainland has its clear advantages: big supermarkets open late, shops where you can buy almost anything the same day, concerts and football matches on your doorstep, hospitals and specialists close by, trains and motorways that can take you anywhere, and the luxury of not having to plan your life around a ferry timetable.

That far-off world over the sea was where people like Eric Cantona, Green Day and Oasis seemed to exist — not just celebrities, but proof that there was this bigger, louder, more exciting place out there.

I’m not sure at what point I realised it wasn’t actually that far away. Maybe it was after enough crossings, or maybe just with age. But our two-and-three-quarter-hour ferry journey — which to some can feel like forever — suddenly didn’t seem so vast. What had once felt like crossing into another world started to feel more like simply going next door.

And yet, for all the romance and independence of island life, the mainland still plays a huge part in how we live — especially when it comes to the croft.

For all our talk of self-sufficiency, the reality is that the mainland and its produce are central to what we can do and how we do it. Most of our feed and fodder has to come across the water, sometimes brought in directly, and thankfully we have a few wholesalers on the island who buy in what we need, so for the most part we can get by without having to source everything ourselves. Even so, almost everything has travelled before it reaches us.

The cost of things is simply the cost of things. On an island, you learn quickly that nearly everything carries an extra price — in freight, in waiting, in weather, in patience. There’s no point grumbling too much about it, though of course we still do. “We choose to be here” is something that comes off my lips almost as often as hello. It’s part acceptance, part defence, and part reminder.

Because that’s the trade-off, really. You pay more, you wait longer, and you work around what you have rather than what you’d like. But in return, you get this life. You get the space, the quiet, the community, the sense of belonging to a place that shapes you in ways you don’t fully understand until you’ve been away from it.

And nowhere is that more obvious than with the sheep.

Taking sheep to the mainland to sell — never mind to show — was something I only ever dreamed about. If I’m being honest, I never really thought we’d get to that point at all.

I think it was 1999 when we first sent lambs away to Dingwall market rather than through what was then known as H.I.L.L. — Highland and Islands Livestock Limited. We sent nine lambs, our very best, I might add, and after freight was taken off, we got £17 a head. At the time, that felt like a milestone. There was pride in it, even if the figures wouldn’t exactly make anyone rich.

Times and markets have moved on since then. We’ve evolved, changed our practices, and grown in confidence as well as in numbers. Our flock has grown, our ambitions have grown, and our expectations have changed too.

But has the island changed?

In essence, no — not really.

The rocks are still in the same place. The Minch still decides whether you’re going anywhere or not. The wind still comes at you sideways in winter. The road still bends where it always bent, the sheep still find the one gap in the fence you swore you fixed, and the weather can still undo a week’s worth of plans before breakfast.

What changes is us.

The people change. The methods change. The paperwork gets thicker, the markets get broader, and somehow the days still never seem any longer. Old ways give way to new ones where they have to, but the bones of the place remain exactly as they were.

That, I think, is the strange beauty of island life. You can spend your whole life adapting, improving, modernising, stretching further than you ever thought you would — and still be standing on the same ground your people stood on before you, looking at the same rocks, the same sea, the same stubborn horizon.

The ewe I’ve been watching has delivered a new life onto the croft by herself. Bethany is on to another croft now, with a different ewe, and still no phone call.

And me?

I’m swelling with pride.