‘Crofting’ in the Scottish Highlands : Unique and Ancient Way of Farming Lives On

On these isolated hillsides overlooking Loch Carron, the dramatic quiet is interrupted by crofter Angus MacRae calling out to his herding collies in their own private language and by the excited bleating of sheep expecting to be fed.

Here in Scotland’s western Highlands, far from the rest of the world, a unique and ancient way of life called crofting, small tenant farming, endures despite threats from many sides--new taxes, competition from agribusiness and the encroachment of vacationers.

Time is almost meaningless on this late winter day. What matters is place.

The exterior of this life is stunning--cold and rugged, with sunshine slashing diagonally through clouds in a wide sky.

Metal-Colored Loch

MacRae stands with his back to subtly colored, peat-covered Strome Hill. Spread before him is the metal-colored loch. His croft is 70 miles from Inverness, the nearest city. About half the journey is down one-lane road. It’s not raining, for a change.

The interior of this life is revealed more slowly, inside MacRae’s white crofter house, spanking clean, the kitchen warmed by a coal-burning stove next to a more modern electric version.

The radio, a link to the world, chatters constantly.

Lunch is thick lentil soup, slabs of sharp Cheddar on oat cakes and warm scones slathered with gooseberry jam. And plenty of tea.

The interior of this life is also the poetry in MacRae’s mind.

‘We Can See Its Merit’

“In the modern world, it is difficult, perhaps, to understand the case for crofting, but for those of us who are crofters’ children and the grandchildren of crofters, we can see its merit,” he said.

“When the rain comes down day after day, we think how sensible it would be to live where there is less rain,” MacRae said. “But crofting really isn’t about being sensible. You can’t justify it on economic terms.”

What does this way of life mean, then?

“I work as a man where I played as a child.”

At 6 feet 3 inches and 238 pounds, MacRae is a big, gentle man, with very blue eyes and the glowing complexion of a lifetime spent outdoors. He is 57 and speaks with personal authority and poignancy in a story-telling, sing-song rhythm.

‘Lands on the Edge’

The clans that ruled Scotland until the 18th Century were destroyed by the English, and the Highland glens were depopulated in “The Clearances” to create grazing and hunting land. The evicted Scots crossed the seas to new worlds or were forced onto small plots mostly on the coastal areas, called the “lands on the edge.”

The people rebelled in the 1880s, and in 1886 the government designated certain lands for crofts to be worked by tenant farmers, who were guaranteed fair rent and security against eviction.

Today, 15,000 crofters are spread throughout the Hebrides and Shetland Islands and on the mainland from Argyll in the west to Caithness in the north. Some 2.25 million acres, about one-tenth of Scotland, are designated croft land.

Crofts can be just a handful of acres of steep, rocky grazing land, and rent can be as little as 10 pounds ($17) a year.

Total Land Has Shrunk

In 1976, an act was passed allowing crofters to buy their crofts but also permitting land to be “de-crofted” for other purposes. It stated that no more land would be set aside for crofting, and the amount of croft land since then has shrunk slowly.

Crofters have not rushed to buy their property, the very land that was taken away from them 100 or more years ago. Many still regard land ownership as evil.

MacRae was the youngest of three children and had two older sisters. His father was a crofter and also a fisherman, for there have been few full-time crofters in this century. His grandfather was a crofter and drover who herded stock to market at Falkirk and would pick up stray dogs on his way home.

“He used to encourage them to follow him,” MacRae said, his eyes smiling in fond memory. “I think it is probably from him that I got my interest in livestock and dogs.”

8th-Generation Collies

Two of MacRae’s four collies are direct descendants of his father’s bitch. Eighth generation they are, the crofter says with pride.

“It was an ideal environment, an ideal childhood.” Raised a Presbyterian, MacRae learned Gaelic, but he seldom uses it now. The pastime then was rowing.

Many crofters have scraped hard to help their children make their way in the wider world. But there was never any question of MacRae’s future.

“Even as a teen-ager I had an interest in livestock and in the area in which I was born and brought up.”

He always liked the cooperative way of life.

Helping One’s Neighbor

“Any activity, like planting potatoes--anything like that--if you were finished, and your neighbor was a little bit behind, you would go and help him.”

He left school at 14 and went to work on his father’s croft. Then he became a lumberjack, followed by military service as an aircraft-engine repairman.

“Nothing I saw in my two years convinced me . . . that I could enjoy life more away from here.”

He returned to Strome, his father’s croft and the forests.

In 1957, in Inverness, he married Sheila Hay, a young South African-born woman who happened to visit Strome.

“Soon after we were married, we were able to get this croft for ourselves,” MacRae said. His father’s croft went to the eldest sister.

The MacRaes’ daughter, Susan Anne, was born in 1967. She now attends college in Edinburgh. The three-bedroom house was built in 1968. MacRae owns it, but not the land it stands on.

‘We Worked Very Hard’

“We worked very hard, very long hours, in the first years of our marriage. Every pound we had spare we invested in our sheep.”

He earned some 7 pounds ($12) a week when he started out in the forests, hauling the timber with a horse. Lumberjacks now make about 100 pounds ($170). The income from the croft generally matched MacRae’s pay over the years.

The crofter has 35 acres of land plus some of his township’s “common” and owns more than 400 Cheviot sheep. He sells their lambs in Dingwall in September to other farmers.

The working day starts at 8 a.m. The sheep must be herded and fed, herded and dipped for delousing, herded and sheared. There are jobs to do around the place, such as mending fences. There are crofters’ meetings to attend.

It has been a life without television, restaurants, traffic.

Injury, Then Retirement

In November, a leg injury forced MacRae to retire early from the Forestry Commission.

“Now, I am a full-time crofter.”

He pauses. Something is weighing on that poetic mind of his.

It’s not the new property tax that will raise the cost of crofting; not the influx of English buying crofters’ homes for vacation cottages; not the rising competition from large-scale sheep raising in the south. These are all worries, but not the big one.

MacRae went to the library in town recently. He saw five people there. He knew none of them. That’s what’s really bothering him.

“People coming from outside, they may not be as willing to pass time with a passing stranger,” he said. “The whole way of life could readily disappear.”