Softer Crofter : Raising Highland Cows and Finding Home in the Hebrides

A heart-warming memoir of leaving the city behind to build a new life among the wild beauty of the Hebrides. When Fiona is given an old family ledger, she has no idea it will redirect the course of her life.

<p>Fiona was a Glasgow girl through and through, but when she was gifted an old leather-bound family ledger, she discovered a Highland family history that would change her life.<br><br> The ledger records the story of the family's 19th-century Highland cattle fold. Little did Fiona know that she would soon be moving with her husband and two beloved dogs to a remote Argyllshire croft where she would start her own herd (or fold, as it is known for Highland cows). On a wave-washed island, in the shadow of the Highland Clearances, Fiona moved in with 48 magnificent cows who would become her family.<br><br>This book is an ode to farming and the softer life that can be lived in the Hebrides. It depicts the life-affirming joy of bathing every morning in the icy Atlantic before taking the cows for a paddle. It tells calamitous tales of amorous bulls, escaping heifers, upturned quad bikes, falling off piers and accidentally injecting herself with cow meds. It tells the stories of births - so many beautiful births - followed by the drama of catching each slippery calf, holding it and tagging it, all under the baffled shaggy-fringed gaze of its 500-kilo, massively-horned mum.<br><br><b><i>The Softer Crofter</i> is a heart-warming celebration of second chances, stubborn cows and the quiet magic of finding home in the most unexpected of places.</b></p>