Patrick Laurie is a hill farmer and writer from Galloway. He is the best-selling author of the Wainwright Prize-nominated Native, and his ‘Bog and Myrtle Peat’ blog attracts around 30, 000 visitors a year. He is currently a mentor on the Pen and Plough creative writing programme for land workers. This interview with Dr Pippa Marland took place by email in April 2021.
Native recounts your return to Galloway to farm cattle after being involved in a number of other lines of work. Can you explain a bit about what made you decide to do this?
It was really important for me to make a life in Galloway, but it’s not easy finding work here. I trained as a gamekeeper when I left school, and that gave me a real taste for practical, hands-on conservation. Looking around me, it became clear that many of the most worrying declines in wildlife are closely linked to agricultural change, so it made sense to get stuck into an industry where I could really make the biggest difference. Despite strong family connections to agriculture, I began as a relative novice almost eight years ago and I’ve been on a very steep learning curve since then.