BOOK
THE LOST FLOCK
BY JANE COOPER, CHELSEA GREEN, £20 (HB)
Many threatened breeds would not be here were it not for the sheer grit and foresight of individuals who made it their life’s work to rescue them. This is such a tale. It was a love of knitting and beautiful wool, not farming, that first drew Jane Cooper to Boreray sheep. But one thing led to another, until she and her husband upped sticks, swapping urban Newcastle for an Orkney croft with sea views to die for.
The Boreray is our rarest sheep – a horned, short-tailed, primitive little breed with an undercoat as fine as cashmere. Little changed from animals brought to the British Isles 6,000 years ago, it sheds its own fleece in summer, needing no shearing, and is incredibly tough.
For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, some Boreray sheep lived wild on the island of the same name, part ofisolated from the handful of Borerays surviving elsewhere. Intrigued by the mystery, Cooper turned detective to track down the descendants of this ‘lost flock’ and assemble a new breeding group on her croft.
