‘We bought a dilapidated Highland cabin, and it almost broke us financially’

telegraph.co.uk:

global surge in gas prices isn’t much of a concern on Lynbreck Croft. The 150-acre farm in the foothills of the Cairngorms isn’t even connected to the gas grid and relies solely on a wood-burning stove to heat the small log cabin where Lynn Cassells and Sandra Baer live.Similarly, impending war in Ukraine or Downing Street scandals barely resonate when there is no television to watch the evening news.As for when Covid first struck and the nation was gripped by panic buying, the pair instead took stock of the kitchen garden in which they grow 95 per cent of the fruit and vegetables they eat, the well that provides their water supply, their beehives, and the freezers filled with cuts of meat from their own livestock, and figured they’d get through the pandemic just fine.‘We’ve started to become really good at stepping back and getting on with our lives here,’ explains Lynn, 43.This is the good life; the one we have all dreamt of in the past two years of rolling lockdowns and general dystopia.After falling in love while working at the National Trust, six years ago Lynn and Sandra quit their jobs, left behind family and friends and moved to Lynbreck Croft, a centuries-old smallholding along an ancient drovers’ road about five miles outside the town of Grantown-on-Spey.

Aside from the cabin in which they live, and a perimeter fence, the property was largely abandoned. The original croft house was derelict and the stone-built byre (cowshed) dilapidated with a flapping tin roof.Even so, they knew this was home.

Sandra, 38, recalls, ‘It’s a gut feeling. When you know what you want and you know it feels right.’Today the pair are almost entirely self-sufficient and isolated in a landscape of breathtaking beauty.