Asking a Shetlander about a kishie is akin to asking someone about a record player. Yes, they are familiar with them. Every old house has one, but it’s probably stashed away in an attic somewhere. Indeed, when asked, Barbara doesn’t hesitate to rummage through her attic. Before I can change from my street shoes into the wellies she’s provided for a mucky hike to dig peat, she returns with two beautiful baskets.

The smaller is a büddie which she made herself from docken grown in her yard. It’s late in the season, but a few steps away she finds a bit of docken and picks it, and then shows how it is bent into a useful shape for a container.

The kishie was given to her as a curio, and it is in very good condition.  She doesn’t use it the way Shetlanders did in the past, as a tool for carrying fish or peat. Almost no one does.

She does, though, dig her own peat. October isn’t the right season for digging, because the peat bricks won’t have the summer to dry, but she offers to show how it’s done. After a quarter mile hike uphill with one stop to catch some breath, we arrive at the spot she’s been working on the past few years.

 “I don’t tell anyone I’m going to dig peat because they always offer to help, and I don’t want help,” she says.

First she uses a shovel to remove about six inches of topsoil, which she tosses down to ground that has already been harvested of peat. She places these pieces on previously exposed bedrock, so the peat can begin to rejuvenate. Then she gets behind the spot she’s working on with a tusker, a wooden handled tool with a blade to cut peat on two sides. She pushes downward and then flips a piece of peat up to the level she’s standing on. The motion comes with years practice. She’ll make a pile of the bricks and then turn the pile inside out in a few months. The peat will shrink dramatically as it dries.

 Although kishies were once used to gather dried peat, Barbara uses her four wheel ATV. The peat closet next to her garage is full, and she won’t have to dig next year unless she just wants to stay ahead.

 She burns peat in her stove all day, every day, year round. The stove probably dates to the 1950s, and when asked what purpose two pipes running into the back of it serve, she says that the stove also supplies her hot water. She used to have an electric water heater, but it was too much trouble to maintain.

 Her büddie and kishie, once the preferred method of transporting peat will be kept around. That four wheeler might give out some day.

When the new road was being paved downhill from Barbara Fraser’s croft south of Lerwick, the lifelong Shetlander knew not to let natural resources go to waste. As large machinery came through, tearing up bedrock for the new, smooth surface, she went down with a cart and carried the newly unearthed stones up her narrow driveway. In a matter of years she turned the pile of stones into a rock wall surrounding her kailyard.

The walls are spectacular. One doesn’t get the impression that Barbara is particularly proud of the walls, however, despite their being quite an achievement. Shetlanders are practical folk. Nothing is done for fancy, except perhaps for exquisite lace and colorful Fair Isle, but Barbara isn’t a knitter. The walls are there to keep her sheep away from the kale.

If the walls are spectacular, the kale is even more so. During a mid-October visit, after a summer that never really got warm enough for a garden, the kale plants in Barbara’s yard are huge, and they’re the talk of the island.

She is mostly modest about her achievement, but offers a Shetland cookbook with a picture of her behind a wheelbarrow of prize-winning kale overflowing the width of the cart. The competition was supposed to be for overall crop production, but her kale was so impressive it took the prize.

Her secret is seaweed. When the wind and tides are right she drives her four wheel utility vehicle to the beach and gathers as much as she can carry. It can’t be as hard to move as the stone was, although perhaps it’s more slippery to handle. She starts thousands of young kale one year in small patches, sells some of these in the spring, and puts the plants out earlier than most.

Ultimately, she’ll mix the kale with potatoes that she also grows and feed the concoction to her sheep. She doesn’t bother with sheep dogs. They’re too hard to train, certainly harder than cooking her kale and training the sheep to come to her for a bite to eat.

She will gather seeds from the best plants and hang bags of seed above the stove in her sitting room to dry over the winter. Soon she’ll start it all again.