Part One - About Our Croft
Sanna has been a crofting community for centuries, but like many such townships, the economic realities of subsistence living drove many families out of the area and by the 1970’s a sole crofter, Peggy Rose, then in her 80’s, was the only person living here year round. An initiative to regenerate the community was undertaken in the 1990’s with the old boundaries and tenancies being re-cast into five new, larger crofts with the hope of attracting families back into the area. After a few false starts this is proving to have been a great success and all five crofts are now occupied, each being worked by a crofter with a variety of different activities
Our croft is made up of two of these new holdings, crofts 3 and 5, and extends to about 16 acres, mostly of poor, often boggy ground with rough grazing and occasional good pasture. After initial thoughts of drainage, liming, etc were quickly discounted we saw the light and realised that success here means choosing activities to suit the land and not trying to change the land to suit our plans.
For us, this meant that if we were going to keep sheep, they had to be sheep that were light enough not to damage the ground and which could survive the harsh weather on the meagre rations the vegetation here provides. Fortunately, the hardy folk of the Shetland Isles have been perfecting just such a breed from when the Vikings brought them there over a thousand years ago and the little Shetland sheep turned out to be ideal for us in Sanna. Like most native, rare breed sheep these have evolved to cope without lush grazing and do well by eating whatever they can find, from the heather on the hill to the seaweed on the beach.
It's also a breed that allowed us to follow another principle that’s important to us, that the animals should have as good and as stress free a life as possible and that we honour that life by making the most of all that they have to offer. Our main source of income comes from the yarn they produce, which is beautifully soft and produces a range of natural colours, so we only need to lamb around a dozen of our flock each year. But even then we still have to manage the flock size and so we also sell both the meat (as 18-month-old hogget) and the skins, which are treated on the croft then organically tanned for us on Skye.
In the last two years we’ve started to introduce some Gotland stock into our breeding. This is another ancient, hardy breed, this time from Sweden (those Vikings again!). The Gotland wool is exceptionally fine and soft, so we are excited to discover what the yarns and skins will be like. Our most recent addition was of six Herdwick sheep from Treshnish on Mull. Herdwicks are the toughest of all breeds, like the landrover of the sheep world, but their wool is harsh and wiry, so no use for knitting. However, they have the best smiley faces you’ll see on any sheep, so we just had to find space for some in Sanna!
As we work our sheep without the help of dogs, we’ve managed to train them to respond to a bucket and a whistle, which does make for a fun sight when they’re charging over the machair to greet us. It also means they’re used to being handled and are happy to get up close. If you’re ever passing and would like to meet them, or if you’re staying with us and would like to learn a bit more about them and the rest of our crofting life, please do just call in when you’re in Sanna.