Day in the Life in the Orkneys

 

We visited the seventh-generation farm of Robby and Eileen. Our guide was Margaret who has lived most of her life on Sandy Island which has a population of 500. She had to attend boarding school for high school, returning home for weekends. She quickly learned to manage her money and wash clothes. She learned to drive at 12 and was teaching others at 14. Covid has had a lot of folks return to the island. There is almost no crime and now it is easier to work remotely.

Straw and String Basket

Orkney is known for its straw chairs, made from oat straw dried in large piles. With few trees, anything of wood is made from driftwood. We were shown numerous items that are handcrafted from string and straw.

Robby explain farming in Orkney

We toured the farm with about 100 sheep and 60 cows. The Texel sheep lamb in March are sheered the next Spring and sold for lamb chops in October at about 18 months.

The beef cows only graze outside between May and October. We visited their barns with slots in the floor for collecting the manure, the sludge is used to fertilize the fields.

Texel Sheep and Windmills

The farm has a 5 kwh windmill which cost 30k pounds to install, but they sold enough electricity from it to pay it off in 5 years besides providing the farm’s electricity. We could see larger windmills on the horizon which cost 850K to install, but pay back at 1K per day. The cost of electricity has risen sharply on the islands in the past few years. Just like us, there seems to be a lot of politicking about the fixed versus variable costs of electricity.

We walked to the bird blind above the farm, hoping to see Hen Harriet’s who eat the Orkney voles, no such luck.

There was quite a discussion of whether Scotland should secede from Great Britain. In Orkney they are worried about what will happen without the EU farm subsidies which may disappear in 2024. I heard a lot of distrust with politicians whether from Windsor (Great Britain) or Edinburgh (Scotland), no one considers the needs of the outlying Islands. The North Sea oil jobs are declining, but jobs for wind power are increasing with a future possible in tidal power. Since Covid more software development companies are coming to the island. With the low crime rates and country living, people are moving here from urban Scotland.