FARM LIKE A HERO EXPERIENCE: Lynn & Sandra from Lynbreck Croft, SCOTLAND

Okay. Welcome to a new episode of Farm Like a Hero, folks. I'm Richard Perkins. Today I'm here with Lyn and Sandra from Lynn Breck Croft in the Cairngorms national park in the Highlands of Scotland. Started in 2016, this 60 hectare croft has layers, beef, pork, honey and tours and courses a business model developed from the girl's shared interest and background in conservation. Having won several awards for their business model, I'm excited to hear more about the place. So, Lyn and Sandra, thanks so much. Much for taking time out of your schedule to join us today.

Very happy to be here.

Yeah, thanks, Richard, for inviting us to be a part of this.

Yeah, you're welcome. I'm curious, can you tell us a bit about. You have a shared background and interest in conservation? Like, how did you folks meet and share a bit about your journey into farming?

Well, it's a bit of a. I guess it's a bit of a funny one, really. So we were. Well, I was working down just outside London working for the National Trust as a ranger. And we had a new recruit start who happened to be Sandra. And really, within a few weeks, I guess, of getting to know each other, we realized that we had this sort of shared vision, this kind of draw to, you know, being close, living closer to the land, living in harmony with nature, you know, that sort of thing. And so we spent about two years down there, just under two years working for the National Trust down there. And then we just had a moment whereby we thought, you know, what? Now's the time. And so we both handed in our notice and our jobs and headed north to Scotland. And what that gave us was a base. So, yeah, on reflection, it was quite a wild decision to make, but it was one that was kind of very much driven with a vision. And so we spent a few years in the south of Scotland working. And that gave us an opportunity to look in Scotland for any pockets of land. And, yeah, we just chipped away and chipped away. Found Limbrech on the open market after nine months of searching. It was too expensive. We couldn't afford it. But, you know, after a lot of kind of work and effort, we made it happen. So that's kind of a sort of a short synopsis into how we ended up being up here.

But you, Sandra, you grew up in Switzerland, is that right?

Yeah, that's right. So my mum's Scottish and my dad's Swiss and I was born and raised in Switzerland. Scotland was always a very special place. We used to come here every year. So it's maybe not a coincidence. Sort of ended up up here with Lyn. Yeah. Very different life over there.

Yeah. And Lynn, you grew up in Northern Ireland?

Yeah, that's right. I grew up about 20 miles south of Belfast in a fairly kind of small town just on the outskirts. Grew up there, you know, went to school and then I left when I went to university over in England. But I have family and most of my family are still all over there.

So why Scotland? How did that fit? The whole picture sounds a bit my fault.

It seemed like the obvious place to be to have space to do something like we wanted to do. And obviously I've just always felt very connected to this country. So I think it was a bit of a no brainer really to come.

Up here, is it, for context, for the European audience and people. Further field. It's a bit cheaper in Scotland than south of England, right, where you were before.

Yeah, it definitely is, yeah.

Yeah. I mean it's a lot, lot cheaper up here. It's a lot more affordable but, you know, expensive. Absolutely. Goodness. Yeah. I mean, it's still expensive in the. In that, you know, whenever you compare it to lots of other places even. But land, land kind of is. But, you know, what you get is, you know, what, you know, 60 hectares in the north of Scotland is very different to, you know, 60 hectares down in the south of England. Or, you know, in other places. It's. It's a much more challenging landscape to live and work in, you know, to produce food, to really make a living from the land. But with those challenges come lots of opportunities as well. And that's what we've really tried to embrace up here.

So geographically is kind of in the middle of Scotland, I guess that's fair to say.

Ish.

Yeah, I suppose it kind of. Probably they'd say we're sort of in the southern part of the northeast is a bit of a daft way of saying it, but definitely the northern half.

It's mountainous, isn't it? It's pretty cold there.

Yeah. So it's, it's a very. It's a very exposed location where we are and it's. It's right opposite the Cairngorm massif. So we get a lot of the weather that comes straight off the plateau as well. But it's a beautiful, stunning part of the country. But you do know about the climate and all the challenges that come with it.

Traditionally grazing land, I guess, Right. For common grazing or.

Yeah, a lot of moorland and very rough grazing up where we are anyway.

Yeah. So what, like just for reference, what's the sort of land price per hectare there?

It really varies. It really varies because the land quality is so variable in this area, I would say. So, you know, we have on the croft, for example, like the vast majority of what we have is what's called, what people would call rough grazing. So it's mostly heather moorland and then we would have a small kind of a few hectares of, you know, in by land of kind of better fields where we've got grass and wildflowers and we can kind of run the cows and the sheep or, sorry, the cows and the hens. So none of it, even our fields are kind of unimproved fields, so they would be fairly sort of low value. And in addition to that, because we are legally croft, which is its own kind of legal entity really, that can also affect prices because the land is protected by its own law, which can have advantages or disadvantages. So it's kind of hard to kind of give you a ballpark figure because there's quite a lot of factors to consider here. But in summary of what we were saying before, it's still not cheap, it's still not cheap for what you're getting.

So I guess it's pretty good at this point to tell everyone what a croft is because I guess some foreign people wouldn't have any idea what that means.

Yeah.

So a croft is a quintessentially Scottish thing or exclusively Scottish thing, and it's crofting. Crofts are designated in counties, so in areas. And most of the crofting areas in Scotland are to the north and to the west. So we're actually kind of on the eastern side of Scotland. So we're kind of on the eastern fringe of what are called the crofton counties. And as I say, a croft designated, it's protected by its own law. And there's two main things that we have to follow being a croft, and one is that you have to live on or within 32 kilometers of your craft. And the other one is that you have to work your craft. Now they've kind of broadened the, I guess the catch all phrase of working. It used to be kind of agriculturally, it's now any kind of real diversification operation whereby you're kind of generating some money or you're basically making a use of the land other than just to sort of sit back and admire its beauty. And it all came out after the Highland Clearances and it was basically a way to protect the land and keep it used by the people.