Michael, myself and our three children came to farm Lonban on the Isle of Coll six years ago.

Previously we farmed 100 acres of Grade 2 land in Herefordshire where the main enterprise was growing organic vegetables. This was predominantly my occupation as Michael was involved in other business. We also kept some Manx sheep which came with us to Coll and are still here. I thought I had come into a great fortune having over 1000 acres on Coll but it soon became apparent that possibly my previous 100 acres had been more productive than all that we have here.

We took over the sheep and cattle that had belonged to the previous owners of Lonban with great optimism that everything would go well, but after a short time our ignorance and arrogance became abundantly clear. Neither Michael or myself had any education or experience to qualify us in caring for livestock and it was nowhere near the simple or unskilled task that we had imagined, especially considering the absence of a vet on the island.

The stock stopped thriving and started to die. We had to quickly find advice and help to put things in order on the barren land we had acquired and taking into account the harsh climate.

This has proved to be a challenging and fascinating endeavour. I have learnt how important it is to breed hardy stock that will survive in local conditions. How sheep must have the correct fleece, build and constitution to survive, be a good mother and produce a good lamb for sale as well as being able to thrive on the poor grazing.

In Herefordshire, the sheep farmer's problem was always to put enough stock into a field to prevent them from getting overfat. Here it is the opposite situation where if you overstock there isn't sufficient grazing for survival.

For cattle the additional difficulty is to cut enough forage to feed them throughout the winter. This has been made more difficult since the purchase by the RSPB of Breachacha Farm. Their main objective is to protect the comcrake, which has led to their making management agreements with farmers not to cut grass for forage before August 16th, thus allowing the corncrake to complete its breeding cycle in the hay/silage fields.

Unfortunately by August 17th, the grass is past its best for silage and also there is no possibility of taking two cuts of grass during the year. Of course, the RSPB compensates the farmer but this still does not help to feed the cow through the winter. The cost of importing feeding from the mainland is becoming ever dearer with escalating freight charges. Ferry charges also account for a large chunk out of the farm's profits when sending stock to mainland markets for sale.

In Herefordshire, where land is very fertile, and almost every square inch is utilised for agricultural production, it comes as a relief to know that sometimes wildlife and their habitats receive protection, as economic factors weigh heavily against them.

Although I know the corncrake is one of the rarest birds in Great Britain and in desperate need of protection, I also know that farming on Coll is endangered. If the existing system of livestock subsidies were to be removed, and prices for lambs and calves remained as they are now, I do not think that a single farm on Coll or on any other Scottish island would survive financially. As the corncrake depends on farmed land for survival, that would also be them out of business.

I listen with great interest to the older generation of farmers on Coll who can remember pre war and early postwar days when most of the farms had dairy cattle and produced the Coll cheese. It seems in those days the land was far more intensively worked and fertility was much higher. Farms produced crops of turnips, oats, potatoes and rye. Traditional methods of spreading manure from inwintered cows, seaweed and sand made this possible, as did a larger available workforce. Heather moors were routinely burnt and managed both for livestock grazing and grouse.

It is sad to see evidence of this superior fertility in the man made lazybeds and drains, stone dykes and field boundaries falling into dereliction. There is not the manpower or the profit to maintain them.

It is doubly sad to know that intensive farming methods and cost cutting on supposedly more fortunate mainland farms have led to problems such as BSE which has never occurred on Coll, but which we pay the cost of with every other farmer in the land in reduced prices for our calves. This is as a result of an understandable drop in demand for beef and the export ban.

I still retain an ambition to grow vegetable crops here as I did in Herefordshire and when I have mustered the finances together to do so, I will, for I think that living and farming here, in days of ever increasing urban sprawl, traffic, roads and crime, is a rare privilege, despite the awful weather, and to make the poor soils of Coll more productive would be a very satisfying achievement.