Rural Scotland

Today’s post is a bit different as usual. It is not really about my last WWOOFing experience, but about a trip I did last week to Scotland (wonderful country, I loved it). Total agricultural land area in Scotland represents 73% of the total land area. However, the intense climatic conditions and the topography are not favorable to grow crops. Indeed, the majority of the land is used as pasture for livestock. Sheep and beef cattle are the main production. The famous meat breed Angus Aberdeen is from Scotland, producing a very tasty meat (but also very rich). Another famous Scottish breed you may recognize: the Highland cow. This red cow with long hair not goes unnoticed, especially in the Highland region where it is the main breed reared. It is a very rustic breed, which can graze even is very wet lands and resists well to harsh winter.

Above left: Deer are quite common in Scotland. Like sheep and cows, they are ruminants.

Above right: Scottish land is mainly used as pasture for the local cow breed, the Highland, and sheep breed: Blackface. With their important hair coat, these two kind of animals resist well against the harsh Scottish winter.

Below: Amazing landscape in Highland, close to Loch Ossian.

During my trip, I went to the Isle of Mull and I had the chance to visit the last remaining traditional farmhouse cheese from the Hebridean Island: Sgriob-ruadh farm (from the Gaelic, and meaning red furrow). This family farms is in the Island for several generations now, and produces a delicious cheese. The cows, mixed breeds for more rusticity, are fed only with the food from the farm: mainly grass in the summer, and the winter they eat silage, hay, and even whisky grains residues from Tobermory Distillery. After taking a tour of the farm and tasting the cheese, we had a chat with the two young ladies (farmers' daughters) running the farm Café (in the beautiful transformed garden barn). It was a very interesting conversation with these two ladies who are probably my age, explaining us how it does it look like to live in the Island. Even if they loved the place where they live and the farm, they told us the life here can be difficult sometimes, as it is very insular and also because winters are very harsh: daylight only for few hours per day, strong rain and wind. Last year, the weather was so bad the ferry couldn’t cross the sea to bring food supply during one week! Even the cows don’t want to go outside in the winter. Hopefully in the beginning of June the weather was pretty nice and I could enjoy the amazing landscape around the farm!

On the left: the renovated barn in Sgriob-ruad Farm in Tobermory has been transformed into a lovely green Café where you can eat the delicious cheeses produced at the farm.

In the middle : the cheese cellar: after being processed, the cheese sits quietly for at least 15months to mature. This step is very important for the cheese to dry and develop its own flavor. Each truckle of cheese weights around 25kd and has to be turned regularly to ensure a homogenized drying process.

On the right: While we visit the farm, cows graze or have a nap in the fields around the farm. They are milked twice a day, at 4am and 4pm.

For more information about the farm, visit their website. You can also buy cheese online and book accommodation for your future trip in Tobermory. http://www.isleofmullcheese.co.uk/

This trip in Scotland was amazing, I fell in love with this country. I hope I would have more time in the UK to go back there for a longer period and doing WWOOFing…

And don’t forget to answer my survey about WWOOFing here. Two more week to go to complete it https://glos.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/wwoofingknowledge