Having paid due attention to the Black Isle Brewery, about which I wrote the other week, I continued my easy progress around the area. This is rolling, verdant country, with thick hedges, fields of wheat and barley, long rows of potatoes and frothy woods. The farms are small, the cattle fat and glossy, the sheep chunky and woolly. No one seems to know why the Black Isle is called the Black Isle. Some say it has a dark past steeped in witchcraft, others that it is so named because the soil is black, which it isn't - it's fine and reddish, like that of the Eden valley in Cumberland, and just as fertile.
I tumbled into Black Isle Berries, aka Ryefield Farm, the empire of Torquil Fraser, a tall man whose diffident manner disguises his passion for fruit. On 60 or so acres, he grows not only berries - raspberries, for which Scotland rightly claims pre-eminence, strawberries of extraordinary sweetness, blueberries, gooseberries and uncountable currants, all pick-your-own - but also apples, cherries and plums. And vegetables, Fraser assured me, when the summer veg finally get started - then the shop would be crowded with tomatoes, courgettes, artichokes, beetroot, cucumbers, lettuce and herbs. It isn't easy, said Fraser, running a small fruit farm in this day and age. He's always experimenting, too, trying out different varieties, using insect predators to wipe out insect problems, and now producing his own apple juice. "I have to do it," he said. "This is an unsubsidised little place, so we always have to offer a bit more."
At Eilean Dubh in Fortrose, I lunched on a salad incorporating very fresh, fat, local scallops and excellent black pudding, followed by a hunger-stomping clapshot - a thick stew of swede and potatoes beefed up, in this case, with decent chunks of, er, beef. It was filling and wholesome, and I almost had to have a lie-down afterwards, but no, it was on, on, on to Easter Balmungie Farm, which peers out over the Moray Firth. My attention had been drawn to it by a note on the admirable Highlands & Islands Local Food Networks website, saying it was a haven for the irresistibly named and rare Scots Dumpy hen.
It turned out that the farm wasn't just a haven for the Scots Dumpy hen, but also for the almost equally rare Shetland cattle, the slightly less rare Shetland sheep and the unrare Tamworth pig, all of them the charges of Anne and John Chance. The Scots Dumpy hen, which looks like a tug, had traditionally been the Scottish farmyard hen, Anne told me. "It's such a shame that these old breeds are disappearing," she said. "Modern farming seems to be losing out on quality and character by its insistence on productivity and size" - as has happened with so many animals that once characterised the different regions of these islands.
I don't know what it is about Scotland, but it seems to bring out a selfless dedication in some people. Bob and Helen Bull migrated all the way from Plymouth to set up the Glachbeg Croft Education Centre to teach children and adults with emotional difficulties and disabilities through looking after five cattle, 15 sheep, numberless guinea pigs and free-ranging chickens on their 14 acres, as well as cooking the fruit and vegetable from their fecund patch. Sadly, I haven't enough space here to more than touch on all the various activities the Bulls carry on, but you can buy their surplus eggs from the croft gate and get on the distribution list for the meat when they send an animal for slaughter. "We're driven by a passion for what we do," Bob said.
And although they might not put it in quite such blunt terms, that would serve as a motto for all the producers I met on the Black Isle.
Where to get it
Black Isle Berries Ryefield Farm, Tore, Muir of Ord, Ross-shire, 01463 811276, blackisleberries.co.uk
Eilean Dubh 18 High Street, Fortrose, Ross-shire, 01381 620690
Easter Balmungie Farm Eathie Road, Fortrose, Ross & Cromarty, 01381 621006
Glachbeg Croft Education Centre Allanglach Wood, North Kessock, Inverness, 01463 811923, glachbeg.org.uk