From Olympic hopeful to a crofting life
Catriona Thomson talk to Helen O'keefe winner of the Young crofter of the year, about giving up her sporting dreams to move to a croft on the other side of the world in Elphin
Helen O'keefe, has just returned from a mercy dash to the vets, with a difficult lambing, "This morning was a lot more eventful than I prefer them to be, it is only the second time my sheep have needed an emergency trip to the vet.”
Elphin is a crofting township with a population of sixty, a few houses scattered along a lush valley north of Ullapool. The limestone geology means that heather doesn't grow instead it is surrounded by verdant green fields. Ms O'keefe owns three hectares of land, a bungalow and the tearoom which was one of the original croft houses.
Born in Tasmania, she spent a good part of her childhood in Bridgetown, South West Australia. The family lived on a hobby farm, they kept horses, chickens and sheep for wool and her parents grew vegetables. After school she studied mining engineering and finance at Kalgoorlie University before working as a mine consultant. She said, "I really enjoyed it, it plays well to my strengths it is straightforward you have a goal, whereas crofting is not like that there is so much doubt and questioning."
In her twenties she moved to Perth and she decided to take up a sport. Growing up she had watched Olympic equestrian events on TV, but afterwards they'd showed rowing, and somehow she believed she'd be good at it. Despite being only 5ft 2, she was right. Hard work and determination saw her training full time, competing at national level and trying out for the Australian Team. However she developed post viral fatigue, "we didn't know what it was for a long time," she said.
Although having no Scottish heritage, she came on a short holiday to Scotland, which allowed a particular mountain to capture her heart and led to her moving here permanently. She said, "We were on our way to Durness and I was stunned by this one particular hill, Quinag. I really needed to go up there one day." That hill stayed in her memory when she went back to Australia. She attempted to row competitively again, but the fatigue came back So that ended her high level sporting career and she faced rebuilding her life doing something else.
She said, "it was devastating. You run your whole life around this thing and your body lets you down, suddenly you can't do it." Learning to live with tiredness has been hard, "mostly it is fine, but it slows me down a bit," she said. "I've got better at identifying when it is going to start and I stop and rest."
She decided to come back to Scotland initially for six weeks, and walk up that hill as a reward for getting through her awful last rowing season, but she said, "when I went home back to Australia, it didn't feel like home anymore."
She had stayed in touch with some people in Durness, so decided to permanently move to Scotland. She met her partner, Brendan, who was heavily involved in the Assynt foundation and met him at the tenth anniversary walk up Suilven.
She said, "my colleague, rightly assumed that I would be up for a bit of hiking and a good night out." Brendan worked in Elphin and whilst visiting she found out the Tearoom was for sale. "I just had this
crazy idea that I could run the cafe and actually grow stuff on the croft and sell it through the Tearoom."
Ms O'keefe explains, "some people wanted the cafe, others just the croft but nobody really wanted them both, but I did."
The only snag was she couldn't afford it on her own, so she pitched the idea to her mother in Australia. Fair play, her mum was up for the challenge.
The sale was stressful, as they needed a fluctuating exchange rate to work in their favour, but six months later the deal was signed.
Although her mum had bred sheep in Australia, the weather here made it harder, and they had to learn how to deal with snow. Her croft comes with common grazing rights, so the sheep graze on over a thousand hectares of hill ground for most of the year. She said, "They are rounded up in November for tupping, in April for lambing, for shearing in July as well as at various other times."
She said, "I have got one hundred hardy Shetland sheep, mine are mostly bucket trained so they will come running for food which makes things a lot easier." Her flock are dual purpose used for meat and wool, "they are a bit smaller so easier for me to handle.
"They have got the best wool of all the native British breeds, their meat is slow maturing and they are easy to lamb apart from the one this morning," she said.
She has plans to breed for further wool improvements, as well as raising rare Scots Grey hens for their eggs and meat. A successful grant application has meant her polytunnel should arrive by July, and she plans to grow more vegetables all year round.
Elphin is right on the NC500, Ms O'keefe explains that is good for the cafe and for selling croft produce but said, "lockdown has been lovely because the kids have been riding their bikes along the road and there will be no way that will be happening anymore."
The Tearoom opens April until the end of October, she said, "we try to keep going a little bit in the winter for the locals," and she tells me they sell the best scones in the north west.
She is proud of her vegetable plot, growing; tatties, kale, broad beans, carrots, salad leaves. She said, "I grew some amazing fennel my first year so I'd like to grow more, but we have a really short growing season. I have planted a small orchard with various soft fruit and a lot of native trees in the fields for food, biodiversity and as sheep shelter.
"I grow anything I can. I've got some oats and barley this year to do some trial plots."
Last year she cut her own hay and would like to do that again. She said, "we are quite lucky, a lot of the crofting townships are losing people or have lots of holiday homes but most of our houses have full time residents."
And it is a cosmopolitan place, with French, Dutch, German, Scottish and English from all avenues of life. She explains, "everyone was really helpful when I first moved and really helped out when I got my livestock"
Covid stopped village events but she tells us, "there is usually a Burns supper every year, Christmas party and curry nights and of course the Elphin chicken day."
Ms O'keefe is a force of nature and along with a neighbour Tessa Dorrian has created 'The Green Bowl.' which is a community online food hub, where producers from around Elphin can sell their food, "I had this idea we could really showcase what a crofting community can produce.
"I got into crofting to produce quality food, I had my mutton and hogget and my neighbour has pork and beef to sell. This was what crofting was always about, I was thinking we could have a small farm shop in the tearoom, and people could make a bit of extra money. However the tearoom shut, due to Covid so we needed another outlet for our produce so that forced us to launch the food network page online.”
She said, "we invited everyone that grew in the village to join. However it is a work in progress. There are other local producers that we want to include and one neighbour has plans to get a butchery unit set up, so in the future we would like to make our own sausages and bacon and burgers." Each producer has an online presence within The Green Bowl shop, it opens 3 days a week and customers order, pay online and it is packaged and then Helen's mum delivers locally to customers door every Thursday.are you glad you came all the way around the world? "Absolutely. Even when things are going really wrong or I'm having trouble with the sheep I just can't imagine being anywhere else," she said. Ms O'keefe won Young crofter of the year for Scotland this year, she said, "It is a pretty big thing, and I am proud to have won, particularly since I haven't been here that long." She adds, "I want to try and raise the profile of crofting. The community side really does matter to me, it is such a key part of what crofting is."