The fields that feed the 'North'

It takes a few days travelling around the North Highlands to appreciate the fields we pass soon after crossing the Kessock Bridge. There is nothing particularly startling about seeing farmland beside the road, but after miles of mountains, moorland and peat, those substantial cultivated fields begin to look rather different. Around the Black Isle, Dingwall and the Tarbat Peninsula, farming has possibilities that much of the country we explore simply cannot offer. This is the breadbasket of the North, although its importance can be easier to recognise once we have travelled beyond it.

The Black Isle is neither black nor an island, and explanations for its name are considerably more plentiful than agreement about which is right. Its agricultural advantages are easier to explain. Lower ground, useful soils and a position on the drier side of the Highlands give farmers more scope to cultivate crops, while the surrounding mountains take much of the punishment from Atlantic weather. Not every acre is equally obliging, but travel towards Rosemarkie, Cromarty or across the Tarbat Peninsula and the scale of cultivation is apparent. Barley can supply the malting trade, potatoes thrive on suitable ground, and grass and forage crops help support livestock through winter.

That productive cropping belt occupies roughly three or four per cent of the mainland territory covered by our tours. That does not make the rest unfarmable, but it helps explain why this corner has supported so much activity over the centuries. I often remind guests that people settling here needed ground that could feed them. Where farming could support more households, there was also more scope for trades, markets and the institutions serving those people. The churches, settlements and monuments we encounter around these firths belong within that long relationship with the soil, alongside the seaways that connected their inhabitants with a wider world.

Those advantages still have a price, although fertile ground does not remove the costs, weather or uncertainty facing farmers today. Guests often ask what land is worth, and the answer changes considerably between a field capable of growing crops and a hillside suited mainly to rough grazing. In the audio blogcast, we explore the scale of that difference, discover why an acre can be worth several times another, and look at how farmers make choices even when they have some of the North’s more accommodating ground beneath their boots.

To learn more, listen to the blogcast or book one of our North Coast Explorer private tours.