Country Life Trending: June 5, 2021 The Cuillin mountain range with croft farm, sheep and Loch Harport near Coillure on Isle of Skye. Credit: Tim Graham/Getty Images Remote working has a whole other meaning for those passionate individuals still farming crofts in the Highlands. Joe Gibbs takes a look and discovers crofting to be alive and well — though still as tough a life as it ever was. The tiny west Highland township of Elphin, north of Ullapool, stands out from the moorland landscape as a patchwork of bright green. Its rare fertility derives from a seam of limestone beneath the soil. Rank heath surrounds it as far as the eye can see and beyond that lie slabs of Lewisian gneiss, the oldest rocks in Europe, three billion years old. Home to about 60 souls, many of them crofting families, Elphin straddles the A835, until recently a road unremarkable for much other than the lonely beauty of the hills either side and the fish lorries from Lochinver that thunder southwards late at night.