ON THE FARM WITH ADAM
Saving the North Ronaldsay sheep to rejuvenate this Orkney island.
The Cotswolds will always be home for me, but there’s a wild, untamed shoreline in a lonely corner of the UK that will have a special place in my heart forever.
North Ronaldsay isn’t a tourist hotspot, there’s no commuter traffic and it’s not even the sort of place you pass through en route to somewhere else. Hardly surprising when you realise Orkney’s most far-flung island is further north than the southern tip of Norway and closer to Oslo than London.
There’s an old saying: “You don’t go to North Ronaldsay, you get there.” It’s a beautiful, lowlying place with a huge expanse of sky, and because the island is only three miles long and two miles wide, you’re never far from the wind and waves. The foreshore has an almost magical attraction – there are sandy bays and long stretches of white beach but also rugged, rocky coastline. It’s an environment that attracts a vast number of migratory birds as well as seals, orcas and even the occasional walrus.
AN ADAPTABLE BREED
But it was a different kind of creature that first drew me to the island as a small boy, and has seen me return in the decades since: the native breed of seaweed-eating sheep. In a BBC programme recorded on the island in the early 2000s, local naturalist Martin Gray described the North Ronaldsay breed perfectly: “They’re not very pretty, they’re a funny shape, short tail, short legs and they don’t flock – it’s every sheep for themselves.”
The dietary habits of this slender, primitive breed are an evolutionary wonder and a unique trait that never fails to fascinate. The story goes back almost 200 years when the then laird, John Traill, wanted to graze beef cattle and bigger, more profitable breeds of sheep on the fertile grass inland. So he banished the North Ronaldsay sheep to the shoreline and ordered the construction of a six-foot-high drystone wall, or sheep dyke, around the island to keep them out. The breed’s survival instinct is strong and, with nothing else to eat, their digestive system developed to exist on seaweed.
Whenever I hear about these remarkable animals, I’m reminded of the great adventure I shared with my dad, Joe Henson, when I was just eight. As a rare-breeds conservationist, he knew the North Ronaldsay sheep could be wiped out forever if the island was struck by a natural disaster or an animal disease outbreak. So we went on a mercy mission to move 125 sheep to a new home on an uninhabited island called Linga Holm and we brought another 125 sheep back to start new flocks in England and the Channel Isles.
North Ronaldsay needs more people for the place to thrive and survive. Over the decades, the population has dwindled and homes have fallen into disrepair. So, two years ago, a plan was launched to reverse the decline, attract more families and create a robust local economy. And the sheep are central to the scheme.
Within months, the first-ever sheep dyke warden and seaweed shepherdess was appointed to help preserve the wall, protect the rare breed sheep and promote both. The long-term vision is to grow demand for North Ronaldsay fleece so that the existing wool mill can provide more jobs and, in turn, bring a new generation of workers to the island.
I sincerely hope it succeeds. If the islanders are half as determined as the sheep, they will have no trouble at all.