Fight!

Grazings

Do we have rights to the common grazings? Yes and no. The Crofters Commission assure us that by their records we do - but the Clerk of one of the grazings insists that we don't for reasons that really are too complicated to explain. But it's a pain in the proverbial.

Grant schemes.

Do we have rights to get support from any of the many government and eu funding schemes designed to support marginal farmers? Wellllllll, yes. And no. And the no relates to goats. Goats, who are supremely adapted to marginal land are exempt from support from Less Favoured Areas Support Scheme - in fact the only thing eligible for support under LFASS are (oooh now can you guess?) sheep and cattle - and only if they're raised for meat. So on the one hand Govt is promoting rural diversification and local food strategies and on the other supporting farmers who diversify - as long as it is into sheep and cattle - or out of agriculture into tourism...Pah! Anyway Jussi is drafting letters to MPs MEPs MSPs and any and every other kind of pee she can think of.

Jobs.

The great problem with applying for jobs is that you get offers of job interviews in the middle of applying for other, quite different jobs. So your head ends up being split between thinking about how absolutely perfect you are for two opposing sets of tasks. Too much for my liddle ol brain I can tell ya!