‘I FEEL a little guilty,” says Don Dennis, who runs the Wee Island Dairy with his wife Emma on the island of Gigha. “Nicola Sturgeon said that if life feels normal right now you are probably doing something wrong.”
But for Dennis, normal at Tarbert Farm involves long hours on his own making ice cream from the whole milk produced by his farmer wife, and that hasn’t changed. Perhaps the issue is that he’s already well used to self-isolation, he argues.
Life on the island is different now, of course. “Like everywhere across Scotland we are socially distancing, the local shop only admits two people at a time and you have to use the hand sanitizer outside it before you go in,” he says.
“The mood, probably as it is across much of Scotland, is a mixture of anxiety and resignation. We are getting on with it.”
He and his family are also getting on with making sure that their milk is still in plentiful supply from their 60 cows.
About three years ago they made a decision to stop supplying milk to the supermarkets and multinationals and instead supply smaller and independent shops with whole milk, pasteurised the old-fashioned way by heating it to 63 degrees for half and hour.
“It gives it this amazing taste that lots of our customers say is like milk tasted in their childhood,” he says.
It’s an approach that’s come into its own in the midst of this pandemic with many smaller community and village shops struggling to get their usual supplies due to the demands put on the supermarkets, which means they are upping their orders.
Village shops around the Western Isles of Scotland including Mull, Islay, Jura, South Uist, Barra, as well as smaller shops in Glasgow and Edinburgh, are all now stocking it.
More recently it’s been the only milk available on the shelves of the community-owned Lido shop at Innellan, on the Cowal peninsula, which has seen deliveries from many suppliers much reduced.
“I hear it was the same situation at the shop in Carradale [on the east side of Kintyre],” says Dennis.
‘SUPPLIERS are doing their best but these are exceptional circumstances so we’re glad we’re able to help. We’re also offering cheese to some shops as part of their order and of course our ice cream and dessert sauces help lighten the mood for people.”
With deliveries now going as far as Stornaway – along with many of the other Hebridean islands – transport routes have also been a challenge. “But the first and last ferries are still running so we can still get those,” Dennis adds.
“We’ve got a lorry load of glass bottles coming from France, plenty of bottle tops and labels and of course our cows. We’re pleased to be able to keep communities supplied with our milk.”
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