Visitors to Coll sometimes imagine that most of the island is a wilderness, still in a state of nature. On closer inspection, however, they may notice that much of the land, which now only supports a few sheep, is covered with parallel lines. In fact what they are observing is the remains of lazybeds, the mounds and furrows of an earlier agricultural system that once enabled Coll to support over a thousand people.

James Macdonald, in a General View of the Agriculture of the Hebrides (Edin; 1811) writes that, "In peat mosses or bogs, and on the first turning up of deep waste lands, the Hebridean practice of forming narrow ridges with a ditch on every side and at each end of the field is very judicious..." He goes on to describe how first... "The workman makes a straight furrow... He continues it for a hundred yards or perhaps the length of the proposed field. At the distance of from four to six feet from this furrow he draws another in a parallel direction. His ditch is commonly two feet broad and from one to two feet deep, according to the nature of the soil. Parallel to the former furrows, he draws a second and a third etc., leaving the two-feet ditch as before. The whole field is thus ridged into very narrow rectangular parallelograms of perhaps some hundred yards in length and from four to six feet in breadth, intersected by narrow deep ditches or from two to three feet in breadth, twelve to twenty-six inches in depth. These ditches are excellent drains; and the soil which they contained, being added to the ridges and intimately mixed with the manure as well as completely puverised by being exposed dry to the air, and being broken by the caschrom and the common spade, yields a capital mould for potatoes!"

The best time to observe the remains of lazybeds on Coll is on a clear day in winter, when there is little vegetation and the sun is low in the sky. However, the full impact of just how much land in Coll was cultivated in this manner is only fully brought home when one flies over the island. Every inch of ground which could possibly have been cultivated, and some that looks quite impossible to use, is seen to be covered with them. And it is clear just how much labour must have been involved in winning enough for the people to eat from the thin soil of the island.

The use of poor land to feed people is not unique to the Hebrides. In other parts of the world different people have adopted different methods to grow their crops. This is why the centre piece of the 'Project Trust's Selection Course is the candidate's day on our croft at Dunanachadh. Each group of volunteers has to construct a lazybed and while the candidate learns how much effort is required to do so, the selection staff discover who is capable of hard work in unfamiliar surroundings. Once he is overseas, the volunteer is unlikely to be working as a subsistance farmer, but his day at the Dun should give him some understanding and sympathy for people in developing countries whose lot it is to toil on the land every day of the week.

Lazy bed construction ceased on Coll when most of the population was cleared in the mid-nineteenth century; it was no longer necessary to use every inch of the island. However, the land still bears the imprint of generations of Collachs who toiled to keep their fields in good heart. The ridges that stand out green amongst the heather, and the inspiration they have given to a new generation of young people are their memorial.