Survival in the Outer Hebrides
Traditionally, each village had grazing areas, or summer shielings. This meant that arable land close to home could be used for crops during the summer while the women and children would take the livestock to the shielings for grazing and the production of milk, butter, cream, etc. which would be brought home on a regular basis until winter when it was time to bring the livestock home. The villages were self-supporting with small black cattle and a few sheep and fishing throughout the year. Crofts were generally too small to maintain a family by agriculture alone, so tenants would take on other work, such as weaving and fishing. Exactly the same situation exists today, some 200 years later. Maintaining the crofting lifestyle is still something islanders, and some 'foreigners', like to do, but they all have other jobs or pension/investment incomes for additional financial support.
Donald MacDonald notes that the people, conservative by nature, clung to the old methods of husbandry which remained unchanged for centuries. What was good enough for their fathers was good enough for them. This meant that seed selection was rarely practised, and often the poorest seed was kept for sowing and therefore yields never improved. Low yields were also the consequence of the lack of the best farming equipment. The simple lack of availability of wood and metal meant that only rudimentary implements were available. So working the land was highly labour intensive and when young men were conscripted for wars in the 17th and 18th centuries, families further lost their ability to provide for themselves. And, of course, the lack of secure tenure prior to 1885 meant there was little incentive to improve the land of which they were only in temporary possession.
As mentioned elsewhere, a report of 1841 noted that people's idea of comfort was to possess a house, with plenty of peat, some grain, one to five cows, and a few sheep.
Today you can see sheep everywhere but the cows keep themselves further away from the roads. Indeed we discovered that sheep took no notice of cars and would stand in the road starring at the car until someone got out to shoo them away.
When black-faced rams were introduced into the countryside in the 1900's, the smaller indigenous breed were taken to extinction. Today the longer-legged sheep fare better in the boggy landscape and you can see a variety of different shapes and sizes. Also on the hillsides you can spot the sheep fanks (pens) where a flock will be gathered for shearing, dipping or marking.
The cattle on the other hand faced the problems of size. The indigenous cattle, like the sheep, were smaller than their mainland relatives. But the attempt to produce a larger, more productive, breed of cow was a failure as they were often too heavy for the boggy moors.
Indigenous horses also suffered the same fate as the introduction of larger sturdier stallions ultimately led to the breeding out of the smaller island ponies (similar in form to Shetland ponies). Today you can still find wild white ponies on Eriskay which are now considered a critically rare and endangered breed. These are the last remaining relatives of the original native ponies of the Western Isles of Scotland. The continued presence of these ponies on Eriskay is purely due to the remoteness of this island and the difficulty of bringing in new breeding stock.
People relied on crops of barley, corn and oats although the introduction of the potato in 1753 meant it soon overtook oatmeal in popularity!
Today the potato still grows well in areas with sufficient soil and locals are using plastic polycrubs to grow more sensitive fruits and vegetables. Here you can see my sister pointing to the polytcrub erected by the West Harris Trust and in which she grew tomatoes and cucumbers for the first time this year. You will also see larger polycrubs beside remote cafes such as the Temple Cafe in Northton.
The islanders have always found ways of making the most out of little. So to improve the use of the rare arable land, they built what are known as lazy beds. These are strips of raised land coming down the hillsides and were designed to allow the rain water to drain more quickly and be channeled into the trenches either side of the raised area where the crops were planted. I failed to get a good photo of lazy beds, but look hard at the valley in the back right of the photo below and you might be able to make out the stripes. The very green area in the front right of the photo is in fact part of the Harris golf course which most have one of the must stunning views of any golf course in the world.
Of course fishing could be done locally in the inshore lochs and off-shore sheltered seas, but the islanders themselves never thought to scale this up to make money. Agriculture, farming and fishing were all to provide for the immediate needs of the family, nothing more was needed. A special treat were the gannets or guges salted in barrels for winter use. The men of Ness on Lewis would travel the dangerous seas to the island of Sulisgeir where they could simply pick the birds up from the rocks and take them home. So unafraid of humans were these birds that they did not try to fly away! When other islanders started hunting guges, a hunting ban was put in place in order to maintain viable stock levels. This is one of the few examples of animal husbandry in the islands.
You either love or hate the peaty flavour of whisky, and one look into a river shows you that peat and water are closely intermixed. At one time it was legal to distil whisky for one's own use and its sale helped to pay the rent. This practice even continued after it became illegal for how else would the tacksman get the rent due from his tenants?
The lack of timber and the vast tracts of peat bog meant that peat was the favoured source of heat for the family. Each village had its own peat cutting location where peat was cut into bricks and piled up to dry in the wind. The photos below show peat cutting in South Uist and Harris. Below those photos is a peat store in the Skye Museum of Island Life showing the neat way of stacking the peat. Apparently the way they are stacked was specific to an area and to a family.
There were few opportunities to earn money until the end of the 18th century and men only started wearing boots in 1830 to labour on the roads. There were a few successes when outsiders came in and tried to change the life style of the islanders, but mostly there were unforeseen disasters which further garnered the distrust of outsiders/foreigners/upstarts!
So do you fancy getting away from it all and moving to the Hebrides? Remember then that survival in the Outer Hebrides requires a mindset not normally associated with city folk where shops are open all hours and all days. I know we have shorter opening hours on Sundays for supermarkets, but that's nothing like a Hebridean Sunday. So I think it must be community spirit which allows people to thrive in this environment even though you can hide away from the world, as your nearest neighbours may be some distance away, and who would want to walk out in this inhospitable climate just for a cup of tea? So always take care to note when the local cooperative trust shop is expecting its next delivery of fresh food, and get there early! And fill those spare shelves at home with nonperishable foods. An emergency generator is also recommended, for life in the Outer Hebrides has an unpredictable side to it. But most of all, relish the days when the weather is fine, the sun is shining, and the wind has gone to sleep, however briefly. And look out for those rare opportunities to gather together to remind each other of your existence. The Outer Hebrides can put a spell of its own on people. So, if you visit, will you have the power to resist?
