| Living in an area where most of my neighbours are crofters I have become more conscious of crofting and the hard, exhausting and often-dangerous work involved. Unless you have ever witnessed a crofter take on a stubborn sheep you cannot relate to how difficult it can be.
Most people think of a croft in the romantic terms of living in a quaint cottage in a physically beautiful landscape. Crofting is a way of life that does combines working a small landholding in a remote but often disadvantaged community. The crofters near my lighthouse do often have to rely on each other at times to survive. In 1986 the 100th anniversary of crofting in Scotland there were still over 12,000 working crofts. The first crofting act was passed in 1886 to give security of tenure to crofters. After the clearances the small farmer needed protection from further forced removal from their land. A croft is an agricultural unit (average size 5 hectares) situated in Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, Ross-shire, Inverness-shire and Argyll. A crofter is normally the tenant of a croft and pays rent to a landlord. The rent is only for the bare land of the croft as the house and buildings are provided by the crofter themselves. Beginning in 1976 it has been legally possible for a crofter to acquire title to his croft thus becoming an owner-occupier. He must live on the croft otherwise he will have to take a tenant. |
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It is difficult to define a typical croft since they vary so much from area to area. Where ever the land is all crofters face the same battle. Wet and windy weather are common in spring when the new lambs are being born. The winters tend to confine the crofter to being inside for days at a time because of gales and the harshness of storms. Recently no one knows what summers will bring. A crofter cannot earn a living from his croft. Most of them are working a combination of part time jobs or one full time job.
|  Sheep off to Market Notice the lighthouse in the top left hand corner Click to Enlarge |
| As I watched my neighbours work their land and sheep I became curious about what they were getting for all this hard work. When it came time to sell the sheep this year I go nosey and started asking about prices. The following is an example of one neighbour's efforts. The following are based on 55 sheep from the croft being sent from Shetland to the mainland to be sold. The shipment had 42 lambs and 13 ewes. The prices received for the lambs varied from £24.50 to £18.50 each. The sheep averaged £6.00 each. So the total amount for sheep/lambs sold was £945.00. But that was not what the crofter got in his check. His check was only for £499.23. So where did the rest of it go? The list is long but it includes insurance, commission, freight, loading, VAT, etc. The freight itself from Shetland to Aberdeen was £265.00. The total expenses were £445.77. For this shipment of lambs and sheep the crofter got £9.00 on an average each. That is nothing when you spread it across the year but it is also not the whole story. There are other expenses involved. Silage must be harvested and since one crofter cannot afford the equipment it usually costs £12 -£14 a bale. All sheep and lambs have to be given different types of medication to keep them healthy which can be quite expensive. There are some activities that are very difficult to put a price on since it involves mostly the crofter's efforts. The crofter's time is worth a lot since they also work another job or two. Some of the time consuming activities are the lambs have to be castrated and the sheep moved from pasture to pasture. The paperwork necessary to comply with all the governmental regulations is gigantic. Some crofters do the forms themselves but most are hiring someone to do the report, which is another cost. Whether they do it themselves or hire it done the crofter has to get the numbers for the reports. But - you may say they earn some income off of the sheep besides selling them. They do get a subsidy from the government for their sheep of £24. (Which by the way is projected to reduced or discontinued all together.) They also might be able to get 85 pence for a kilo of wool. Recently the prices have been so low for wool that some crofters have been throwing it away. If you look at these very rough numbers a crofter in Shetland could be making less than £5.00 a lamb sold and maybe £20.00 on sheep, based on subsidy. Saying a croft sold 55 lambs they would get £275.00. If they had 55 sheep they would get £1100 in subsidy. An annual income of £1375.00 is not much and well below the poverty level. It helps a little to think that most crofters are employed somewhere else until you look at those statistics. A recent report states:
1. At least 350,000 people in rural Scotland are living in poverty. My neighbours are good hard working people who are struggling to live in a beautiful place. After taking time to briefly study the story of what is involved in living on a croft in Shetland I respect them even more. My wish is I could close this little piece with an answer to how to make it easier for them but I can't. The only thing I can do is request the readers not falsely glamorize the crofter's life but respect them for their commitment and efforts. Reflective,
Sharma You can contact me by email at sharma@eshanesslighthouse.co.uk You can find more articles in the archive under Lighthouse House Letters. Book Signing If you order my new book, The Last Lighthouse, about how we purchased our lighthouse from this web site before April 6, 2001 you can be included in a drawing to win a weekend stay at Eshaness Lighthouse. My other books can be found at Moonbeam Cow, a book for children,, and Scotland - The Complete Guide and Road Atlas, a beautiful book for which I did the text. |
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