Jane Cooper tells of an isolated community that comes together around heritage sheep.
In August 2021 the mutton produced by the Boreray sheep that are at the heart of the Orkney Boreray Community became a Slow Food International Presidium product – one of only five in the whole of the UK.
This was a major international recognition of a small group of people working together with a common ethos, a passion for a unique subset of the UK’s rarest breed of sheep, and a desire to work together through trust and fairness for everyone rather than regulation.
The story began in 2013 in Orkney with just a handful of sheep, myself as a fledgling farmer and my husband. By 2017 when the UK’s Rare Breed Survival Trust came and inspected the sheep, their decades of breeding records, and placed them on a Supplementary Register in the Boreray Flock Book, the flock had increased to four breeding rams and 24 breeding females. Discovering that all that existed of known provenance of this unique group of sheep known as the Lost Flock were on this one farm, I made the critical decision to create more flocks of these sheep in different parts of Orkney rather than increase the size of our farm and flock. A few weeks after the RBST inspection a second flock was started with a farming friend in the isle of Shapinsay in Orkney.
There then followed some very challenging years as a few months after that, in January 2018, Orkney lost its only abattoir so we lost the ability to have our adult sheep slaughtered to produce premium mutton. The next three years were full of campaigning to get a new small abattoir for Orkney and, as the numbers of sheep increased with none being slaughtered, learning how to farm even more effectively with nature and for the highest welfare of the sheep.
Agroecology, as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, comprises 10 elements that go far beyond ‘just’ nature-friendly farming to include human and social values such as dignity, equity, inclusion and justice. I fully embraced this, aided by covid causing in-person meetings in the UK of agroecological and regenerative farmers that were difficult to attend from a Scottish island, to go online. I could now engage with other like-minded farmers throughout the UK and beyond.
Contacts made during this time brought us the option to work with a butcher and farmer in mainland Scotland, who shared so much of my ethos, and to use a small abattoir a ferry ride and 110 miles away in the Highlands of Scotland. This was only feasible for welfare reasons if we transported the sheep ourselves, but we made it work despite the high cost of the journey by embracing the sustainability of using as much of the sheep carcass as possible. I tracked down a small company in Wales that was producing tanned skins using sustainable bark tanning. A craftsman in Orkney who was used to working with antlers was keen to buy our sheep horns and craft wonderful products from them. Finding a hand-weaver in Orkney expanded the range of goods we could produce from the sheep’s wool. We’ve just started producing bark-tanned leather.
With production of fine mutton resumed I could now look for more farmers in Orkney who shared our common values. Farmers for the next three flocks that started in 2021 were found by word of mouth. After initial contact, we would meet at my farm to look at the sheep and talk together about what this Orkney Boreray Community was and to decide if we were a good ‘fit’. We decided early on to work on a model of trust rather than a formal co-operative. This is working well so far but we may decide as a group in future to adopt a more regulated format if that would better meet future needs. One example would be if we decided to establish our own sheep-only micro abattoir to be operated on a not-for-profit basis, and a formal co-operative structure would be needed to apply for grants.
Now in 2024, we have eight flocks with a ninth to start in a few weeks. The flocks are on five of Orkney’s islands. One flock is part of my own flock and the sheep are owned by a passionate sheep-lover and wool worker who lives in the centre of Orkney’s largest town and doesn’t have access to any land. She comes out to help with our joint flocks as much as her ‘day’ job allows.
We have a website that contains links to all the people working with the Orkney Boreray sheep and their products, www.orkneyboreray.com. We have a close relationship with our original butcher and have now partnered with a second butcher in England. Pricing is done using the desire for a fair, sustainable and dignified livelihood for both parties. The main communication between the farmers is through a private group on a social media platform. Getting busy people together in person from five different islands can be challenging, especially when for half of the year ferry delays and cancellations due to weather are frequent.
We share our knowledge and expertise, something that is very much appreciated by those new to farming. New entrants are attracted to us partly because of the support of the community, as well as our ethos and focus on high welfare for the sheep and nature-friendly farming. One of our strengths is our diversity of members and people sharing their skills. I was very relieved to be able to pass on adding information to our website to someone who didn’t find it at all stressful to do ‘software stuff’! The publication of the book, The Lost Flock, which tells the story of our sheep and Community has raised awareness of us within Orkney and beyond.
Our present size of community works well and we’re not actively seeking to bring on any more farmers. If the group were to expand much more there would be a need to look at a more formal structure I think, rather than being able to rely just on trust and fairness. My goal for the future, as the oldest member, is to make myself redundant to the needs of the community. That would be true sustainability for the long-term future of the Orkney Boreray community and our special little sheep.
