Survival on the Margins

The basic cropping and stocking of touns does not tell us all we need to know about how Hebridean communities faired. We need to take account of their marginality. This chapter considers the different ways in which this marginality can be understood. The increasing prevalence of smallholdings was compounded by the low average yield of basic grains. These yields were the result of thin sowing, comparatively low levels of manuring and the increasingly poor land over which arable was extended. Adding to the problem of low yields was the frequency of poor or failed harvests caused by adverse phases of climate or extreme climate events, especially during the years of the Little Ice Age (c.1300-1850). As well as impacting on farm output directly, these extreme climate events will be shown to have affected farm output indirectly through environmental damage, with coastal areas of arable being eroded by storm damage and cultivated areas of the machair being extensively covered with sand drift. The strategies adopted for survival included the use of the cas-chrom or spade because it gave higher yields than the plough, the use of higher inputs of labour in preparing the ground and the regular use of famine foods like edible 'weeds' and shell-food. Perhaps the most striking response though was through the willingness to open up frontiers of arable cropping across a range of marginal ecologies: or those of steep ground, high exposed ground, waterlogged ground, areas of thin soils, stoney soils and tidal inlets. With its high energy yields and ability to grow on wetter, more acid soils, the adoption of the potato played a vital role in the later but significant phases of this expansion over marginal ground. However, the view offered is that like all specialised cropping regimes, its adoption always had the risk that its failure through a disease outbreak r failed harvest would bring famine. The discussion is rounded off with a review of how the largescale expansion of arable out over marginal ground meant that farming, and the increasing numbers of people that it supported, had a significant environmental impact.