Life as a Female Sheep Farmer on a Remote Scottish Island Is Not So Baaad

This spring, I developed an online addiction. It wasn't porn or gambling, but reading someone's diary, about the harsh realities of farming on a Scottish island: sometimes cute, sometimes gruesome, always interesting. In April, EJ Donaldson, a farmer in the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, set up a Facebook page called "An Orkney Lambing," documenting the season where her sheep give birth to lambs, which she breeds for meat. The page quickly gained nearly 2000 fascinated followers. I'd met EJ a couple of years earlier at a experimental art festival on a tiny Orkney island (Papa Westray), and we got chatting, finding out that we had a lot in common. We were both farmers' daughters from Orkney who'd ended up back home after having some problems with addiction (me: booze, her: drugs) in the city. With punky hair and an interest in strange art, she didn't fit the typical image of a farmer, but, following her activities online, I was struck by her energy and commitment to her job.

Farming competes with tourism as the biggest industry in Orkney (total population: around 20,000), where, despite long winters, sea-salty air, and high winds, the land is fertile and ideal for rearing livestock. Coldomo, where EJ lives with husband Alister and son Rowan, is a commercial, organic stock farm. They have 100 breeding cows, four bulls, 250 breeding sheep, tens tups [rams], and what EJ describes as "a whole menagerie of oddities that are kind of my pets": a goat, pigs, caddy [orphan] lambs, one horse and one miniature Shetland pony, two dogs, four cats, and lots of hens. The weather has been unforgiving in the windswept islands this year, and, over the course of the lambing season, from the first births in April to moving the last sheep onto grass in June, EJ posted her struggles (weak lambs dying in the fields in cold weather) and triumphs (saving ill animals, extremely cute pictures ) and responded knowledgeably and passionately to animal rights activists posting combative comments. Her diary offers a connection back to the agricultural life for people who have moved away and education about where food comes from for anyone who eats.

BROADLY: Was farming always the life that you imagined for yourself?
EJ Donaldson: Not at all. I grew up on a farm on Hoy [a small Orkney island, with a population of approximately 419], but I didn't want to live in Orkney, and I didn't want to marry a farmer. I wanted to be lots of things: I wanted to be an artist, I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be a vet, I wanted to be a dancer. But I would always would end up coming back to farming. I feel very grounded and content if I have animals around. Because I grew up on Hoy, a lot of the time the farm animals were my only company because we were very limited with other children my age. Now, all those other interests have become my hobbies.

How did you return to farming?
I went away and studied at Scottish Agricultural College [in Aberdeen], and then I worked for a while in Aberdeen. I got quite heavily into drugs, and my life kind of imploded, so I ended up back in Orkney to try and get off everything and re-evaluate. I got a job in the Auction Mart as a drover [moving and handling livestock], working with all the men. It was great, good fun but hard work, and that was where I met my now-husband, Alister. He's a typical Orcadian farmer, and pretty quickly I moved in. I was still coming off the drugs, and it was quite amazing for a farmer to listen to all my troubles and take that on. He said he "saw the potential in me." It just kind of worked.

Why did you set up the "An Orkney Lambing" Facebook page?
At the start of lambing, we had quite a traumatic episode with a sheep. She prolapsed [her uterus slipped out of place], and there was nothing we could do for her, so I shot her and cut the lambs out. It's quite common. I was quite proud that I took out three living lambs, and I posted about it on my own Facebook. I got a bit of backlash. [People said] that we should have got a vet, should have done this and that, and it really pissed me off because there was no point. You would have spent a lot of money and would have had to shoot the ewe anyway. So I thought to myself, "I'm going to set up a page to show people the realities." I decided I was going to be honest and not going to pussyfoot around. I think it's important that people understand that farming can be brutal and very hard work and long hours because to a lot of the public, [it seems like] we get an awful lot of money off the government to keep us farming and they maybe think we just lie around twidling our fingers.

Which posts have been particularly popular or controversial?
I had one post just recently about my bull going. He was very much my bull, and I had worked a lot with him because he'd been very wild at the beginning. Sadly he could no longer work, so we had to put him away, which of course means he had to be slaughtered. I put this on the page, and the next morning I got an awful lot of hate mail from vegans, vegetarians, and supposed animal lovers, basically saying, "You can't slaughter him." It was horrible because he was a pet--but he was a two-ton pet that couldn't work.

Can you explain the video you posted of you skinning a dead lamb?
That was a big risk to put that on, and I sped it up so it wasn't so gruesome. I took a ewe in from the field, and one of [her] lambs died, so I decided that I would adopt one of my orphan lambs onto her. The best way to do that is to take the skin off the lamb that died and put it, like a little onesie, onto the orphan lamb. I make little holes for the feet and head. You leave the skin on two or three days, sometimes longer, and it means that the ewe sees that lamb as its own because they get the smell. Sometimes it works, and it did in this case.

How did the lambing go this year?
The lambing went really well, but afterwards it all went tits up because of the weather. We couldn't get the sheep and lambs out to fields because it was so wet. We lamb indoors and keep them indoors for about 24 hours to give them a good bond and get them plenty of colostrum [the nutritious first milk] inside them. Then we put them out--onto lovely, lush grass, supposedly. This year grass hasn't been growing, and the sheep need that green, green grass to get the milk to come. We've had a lot of problems with lack of milk, and with the cold winds they've got mastitis. We don't have the luxury of trees or hedges for shelter in Orkney, and we've had a lot deaths in the fields with lambs not getting enough milk and getting cold. I heard about one farm that lost 70 lambs in one night. The most we lost was 12 in one night, which is still far too many.

The birds have been quite a big issue this year. The crows and the black-backed gulls go to the weak lambs. One crow will try and take the interest of the sheep off the lambs by flapping about, and another crow will go to a weak lamb and either take the tongue or an eye out. By that time there's nothing we can do for that lamb--you have to put it down.

It's very difficult to explain to people that we can't just take them in because when you're dealing with a lot of numbers we don't have the shed space. That's why we lamb at the end of April and May here in Orkney because the weather is meant to be better but it wasn't this year. But the lambs are looking good now--we've finally got them all out.

You describe a lot of setbacks. What's the appeal of farming life for you?
Forgetting the government and the rules and regulations, we are our own bosses. It's not a job--it's a way of life, and we enjoy it. It's very rewarding when you see a field of healthy, happy animals or [when] you get the best prices in the Mart [or market, where the animals are sold].

The farm is a beautiful spot. We are right down on the beach; we don't have any close neighbors. We have our son, Rowan, who's six, and it couldn't be a better way of growing up. He's basically a feral child. He's funny and is confident and comfortable with the animals. He has to get on with it while we work.

Does being a mother help you understand animals?
I thought I was quite competent before I had Rowan, but after it you gain insight. If a cow is kicking because her udder is sore, I'm far more patient. I breastfed, so I totally get when you just want to kick them off. People might think that's a hippy way of looking at it, but they are animals and mothers and so are we.

Why have you decided to continue the Facebook page past lambing season?
I got so many positive comments, so I decided it would be nice to follow it though.

For some people it [the page] has been quite emotional. I think farming is deep-seated. If you've been a part of it at some point in your life it's always there, even if you have moved on. It has been such a hard spring, and there will be a lot of farmers out there really struggling. Farmers are the most likely job to be suicidal or commit suicide. [Another effect of the Facebook page] is that importance of understanding that you're not alone.