Biography

After a career teaching Relgious Studies in both mainstream and special schools, Barbara Usher finds inspiration putting animal theology into practice on her 4 acre animal sanctuary.

Her poetry has been published in Borderlands: an Anthology, in Liennekjournal, Dreich, Last Leaves and in Amethyst Review.. Her work appears on the Resilience soundscape for Live Borders, with background accompaniment of her pigs, and she has contributed to a local project with Historic Environment Scotland.

Barbara’s Story

We moved to a bungalow with 4.1 acres of land in the Scottish Borders September 2017, got the land in a reasonable state, had it fabulously fenced into three fields of about one acre and a third each.

In February 2018 we welcomed our first residents to Noah’s Arcs, eight ex-battery hens from A Wing and a Prayer. In April our pigs Timothy and Barnabas, courtesy of the RSPCA. 

In May our first retired Shetland ewes with lambs at foot arrived: Morwenna with her twins Cuthbert and Boisil, Hilda with Aebbe. In June Brigid and Ethelburga came kicking and screaming, obviously fearing the worst having been loaded into a cart and taken away from their home – until they saw the others – then ran off into the field with their ewe lambs Ita and Amma. 

In February 2023 Noah’s Arcs moved to Fife, where the sheep live on just under 4 acres of land, and hens have an orchard home.