Oh dear, we are starting to get a little bit behind now – too much time spent up to our elbows in lime plaster at the eco village we were at for the last fortnight – that post will follow swiftly on the heels of this one to catch us up!
Anyway…
Q when is an Egg not an Egg?
A when it’s a west coast of Scotland island, entirely owned by its residents, called Eigg!
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| From Island of Eigg |
So, casting our minds back three weeks or so we spent a long weekend wwoofing on a typical Eigg croft, owned and farmed by Neil and Sue.
Eigg is a little island just off the west coast of Scotland, one of the inner Hebrides. It is maybe 4 miles across and we’re not sure how long – we walked from one side to the other in just over an hour. The croft we were working on was made up of land stretching in a strip from the sea, around the house and travelling on up to the dramatic cliffs behind.
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| From Island of Eigg |
Our work mainly involved helping out in the garden – working on the potatoes, the poly tunnel and veg beds.
Here's Rosie getting to grips with a willful rotavator...
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| From Island of Eigg |
In the foreground/right of this photo you can see the peas were climbing up old spring bedsteads - a genius idea!
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| From Island of Eigg |
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| From Island of Eigg |
This croft was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful settings we have been to so far – we were on the west side of the island, looking towards the dramatic profile of Rum and getting fabulous sunsets over it most evenings. We were also blessed with the kind of sunshine that Visit Scotland puts in its adverts, turning the sea aquamarine and the land vivid green.
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| From Island of Eigg |
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| From Island of Eigg |
If you want to go visit then we can totally recommend camping at Neil and Sue’s place – or staying in their lovely little yurt or bothy – they’ve got it all set up for the most stunning camping, cycling, walking base – you can see more here.
We wanted to visit Eigg as it’s a very rare community set up – an island that is owned by everyone who lives on it – it became theirs 14 years ago when all the residents at the time decided to buy it after having suffered at the hands of absent, uninterested or insolvent landlords for too many years. There were about 60 people at the time, and now there are 85 – 90 people living there. Lots of Scotland’s small islands have times when they teeter on the edge of population collapse but Eigg is now thriving and growing.
The most overt community endeavour that the residents of Eigg have initiated is a renewable energy electricity grid, to replace the diesel generators that scattered the island, pre buy-out. The electricity is generated by hydro, photo voltaic and wind turbines and is transmitted round the island. Each household cannot use any more than 5kW at any one time (kettle = 2kW, few lights = 0.5kW, tv = 0.2kW etc so it’s a reasonable amount) and if the supply is running low an email goes round to everyone to try and reduce use. Each household has a monitor in it so they can all keep an eye on usage.
Our caravan was entirely off grid...but reliant on the good old bottles of gas!!
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| From Island of Eigg |
Other aspects of life that arise from it being a conscious community include residents meetings, a couple of work cooperatives to do things like timber and construction, bulk orders on food and annual celebrations of their autonomy. We were actually lucky enough to be there on the weekend of the 14th anniversary party – so lots of people had come on the boat for the celidh on the Saturday night!
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| From Island of Eigg |
From our very brief stay it seems that living as part of the Eigg community isn’t so very different from agricultural life on any other Scottish island, in terms of day to day life. When it’s time to take your animals to market you have to get them on a boat, and if a new bull is needed for breeding he is brought over on a boat too. Each family has their own house, the kids all go to the island school for primary and mainland for secondary, there’s a shop, there’s the boat and there are get togethers and there are times when you just get on with your own thing.
There is the sense that they would survive better than most if oil price rises reduced the frequent arrival of the boat – most people on the island were involved in growing or rearing a proportion of their own food. For us the most significant aspect of community life was the energy set up and the sense of shared responsibility for the future development of island life.
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