October 2024

The two bursts of good weather last month have been accompanied by bursts of activity at Rhemore making hay for the cows. This was particularly hard this year. The good weather fell on periods we both had other commitments . The first burst was so short we had to bring the hay back out again to dry in the second. I am keen on making it a communal activity, but Alasdair is shy of asking too much from our friends and neighbours.

The theory is that cutting our own hay spreads wild flower seeds across the croft, cuts down on carbon, and gives a resilience against possible future shortages. We concluded it would be better to cut and bail it ourselves rather than rely on paying someone with the right equipment who might need the short weather window to do their own. So we have been cutting with a two wheel tractor and scythe cutter then turning and collecting the hay by hand as we don’t have a tractor. On my shifts we had lots of help from our amazing friends and neighbours to turn the hay and bring it in and I have loved those sunny days where different folk come to work on the croft together (and eat, drink and play afterwards). This used to be traditional in small communities and in Ireland this was called ‘Meitheal’. We also bring in volunteers to work  through the summer pulling bracken in the hay field. There is something good that happens when humans get together and do physical work in the sunshine.

But having just finished getting the hay into the barn for the second time, the sheer amount of hours it has taken this year has left me questioning the wisdom of our approach.

Sometimes I fear we have got caught in a romantic fantasy of a pre-industrial agricultural age that we cannot reproduce. Just as I am wary of anthropomorphising animals, there is a danger in idealising a way of life before machines. Our lives now are so different, the economics related to this amount of labour don’t add up and this kind of approach relies on being on the croft 100% of the time when people now want to travel. The physical work is also back breaking. My fear is that out of a desire to go back to a time when we weren’t damaging the land and sea by over-use and were more connected to nature, we have just created stress and isolated ourselves from other local small holders.

This is not the first week I have felt like Helen Mirren’s character in Mosquito Coast, married to a brilliant but stubborn genius.

I have to remind myself that Alasdair’s instincts are generally good, particularly in relation to maximising species and habitats even if he can’t always articulate the rationale. Whenever other ecologists visit, (this week it was seven of his old colleagues from the woodland trust), I get a sense of the science behind what we are doing and confirmation it is working for the land, if not always for us.