I rarely talk about our own lives here on the Isle of Lewis, but I was prompted to write this as we reorganise ourselves for the coming year.
We moved here in 2005, intending to provide as much of our own food as possible. We travelled the length of Britain with our tools and seeds, plants and a dozen hens. Within a few weeks, we had a half-dozen sheep and, soon after, our first two goats.
We dug and fenced a garden, built a poly-tunnel and a greenhouse, and started a bed & breakfast to help support it all.
Looking back over the years since our arrival, it’s interesting to see all the things we’ve tried to do. We have kept cattle on two separate occasions, even having a milking cow for a short while, but in the end, they were too large for us to handle on our 5 acres (2 hectares). Sheep were never my idea of ideal livestock, and I never got good at shearing their wool off. We enjoyed producing our own meat and selling surpluses but finally stopped keeping them a few years back.
Apart from hens, which have always been profitable, our biggest success over the years has been our goats. We have kept milking nannies almost the entire time we have been here, even moving into professional cheese-making for four years. Though the goats’ cheese was very popular, we could never make enough profit to justify the work involved.
The past year, with the emergence of the COVID-19 virus, brought the most significant changes. With no income from the B&B for over 18 months, we decided to sell our last goats. They had become expensive pets, and we no longer had the income to feed them. They all found new homes on the island, and we were delighted that the two females had kids this spring. We continue to produce and sell eggs from our hens and ducks, and our garden and protected planting are providing more of our food each year. We grow brassicas and root veg, peas, beans and potatoes, salads, onions and tomatoes. Our fruit garden gives us strawberries, gooseberries, red and blackcurrants, apples, and even grapes. Every meal we make contains some of our own produce. Sometimes it’s only the garlic or the onions; sometimes, it’s everything on the plate.
We started a tiny woodland some years back, rabbit fencing an area, then planting fast-growing willows around it as a windbreak. It has mature trees including Whitebeam, Ash, Hawthorn, Alder, Bird-cherry, Elder, Holly and Hazel. I built a garden bench a few weeks ago, and now we can sit in our little forest and listen to the birds singing.
As we grow older, we try to work smarter, not harder. We still produce duck and chicken meat, eggs, vegetables, salads and fruit. Some things turned out to be worth doing, some didn’t, but we seem to produce and enjoy our own food as we had first planned all those years ago.
D J Eastwood.
While you’re here, there’s a new promotion just started for June. Free Fantasy Books runs for the entire month, and there are 50 free titles to choose from.
The Fantasy and Science Fiction Giveaway I told you about last time is still running until the 15th of June. Over 80 titles to browse. Why not take a look?
The Apprentice Tattoo 