The road to Lynbreck Croft winds through some of the worst farming country in Britain. It is in a very beautiful part of the Cairngorms but, to my lowland farmer’s eye, anyone would have to be certifiably mad to attempt to earn a living there. When I visited last summer, I arrived armoured by a number of prejudices about certain types of crofting stereotype, good lifers and starry eyed dreamers. On meeting Lynn Cassels and her partner Sandra Baer and seeing the bountiful kitchen garden and the pork, beef and eggs being carefully coaxed out of the barren hillside and the sensitive tree and hedge planting, I was swiftly brought down to earth with a bump. “The girls up the hill” know their stuff and could teach many of us a thing or two.
That is not to say that this book isn’t about dreams. It’s not especially lyrical but for anyone who has ever sat in a city office dreaming of owning a smallholding one day and living off the land, this book will inspire them to take the plunge. The story follows Lynn and Sandra as they give up their jobs as National Trust rangers in the South of England to pursue a wilder life they assumed would involve growing their own eggs and vegetables while they held down part-time jobs. They boldly go well beyond their comfort zones to buy a semi-derelict croft with 150 acres of “pure Scottishness”, mostly poor grassland, heather and bog with a few trees. Then, as they become sucked into a highland life lived close to nature, they learn the necessary skills to create a thriving business on the croft that supports the two of them well enough for them to give up their other jobs, something that a conventional approach to agriculture with extensive beef and sheep grazing would not provide.
However, Lynn and Sandra are anything but conventional. And in fact their almost complete lack of farming knowledge is turned to their advantage as they prove to be highly autodidactic in their quest to seek out solutions to the problems they encounter. They start with a simple, holistic philosophy that they want to build a rewarding life for themselves and work with nature. This leads them right back to first principles and the reader learns with them as they climb the farming ladder from business planning and financing to growing vegetables, then farming chickens, Oxford Sandy and Black pigs and finally Highland cattle, something that can be highly dangerous for the untrained. At each stage they realise they need to “add value” to all their produce, which leads them into innovative home butchery and marketing initiatives.
Fortunately at every step of the way they seek good advice from neighbours, read voraciously and attend every training course on offer. They follow the teachings of the great American animal behaviour specialist Temple Grandin on how to handle their cattle safely and they become disciples of the growing regenerative agriculture movement that focuses on soil health.
At every stage they agonise about the ethics of what they are doing and they seek to enhance the wildlife on the croft by improving the habitat and planting native trees, which will one day be their lasting legacy. Killing their animals is a traumatic rite of passage for them and the reader sits inside Lynn’s conscience as she obtains a firearms licence, attends a stalking course and shoots her first deer on the croft.
Their own enthusiasm for food is infectious and their philosophical digressions on the detailed planning, difficult choices and sheer hard work behind its production give the reader a better appreciation and understanding of good, wholesome, ethically reared food. As their reputation as food producers grows they become subjects of BBC2’s This Farming Life series.
They refer to land reform, a contentious issue in the highlands, not helped by recent legislation deterring landowners from creating tenancies. But the fact that these young people have succeeded, helped by government young entrants’ scheme and other grants, shows that there is nevertheless a route into agriculture for those with the grit and determination to persevere. If you are really set on leaving your warm office to live off the land in the middle of nowhere, read this book first.
Our Wild Farming Life is published by Chelsea Green at £18.99. To order your copy call 0844 871 1514 or visit the Telegraph Bookshop. Jamie Blackett’s Land of Milk and Honey: Digressions of a Rural Dissident (Quiller, £20) is out in June
