Easter Blessings An Island Parish

It's autumn in the Southern Hemisphere

and, on the Falkland Islands,

the winds are easing but the temperatures are dropping.

For over 150 years, life here has revolved around sheep

and the farming calendar, but change is on the horizon.

Oil has been discovered offshore

and, while traditional life goes on, the islanders are bracing themselves

for new challenges and opportunities.

That's the last hymn.

It's the lead-up to Easter and Reverend Richard is preparing

for the most important day in the church's calendar.

It would be the worst sin I could commit

if I didn't put the heating on!

Sunday, at 4:30 in the morning here in Stanley, Falkland Islands,

the heating will come on in the vain hope

that we'll reach 20 degrees ready for the eight o'clock service.

And, over 30 years after the Falklands War,

the islanders have commissioned a new public statue.

Anyway, the big unveiling, anyway.

-Whoa.

-Fantastic.

-Very good.

-Yeah?

It's another chilly Stanley morning.

And, as usual, the bakery is doing a roaring trade.

PHONE RINGS

Heads.

Malcolm Jackson is the head baker at The Bread Shop

and he's assisted by long-term employee Kathy.

-INTERVIEWER:

-It's all go, isn't it?

-This is, like, all the time!

But today is busier than most,

because tomorrow is Good Friday and, as well as his usual pies

and pastries, Malcolm has got 800 hot cross buns to bake.

There we go. Perfection on a tray!

-BREATHLESS:

-I came here 16 years ago.

I came down from Sheffield to help, erm, for about a month.

Then I bought it, I've been here ever since.

It's a decent place to live,

it's a lot more friendly, life's a lot slower.

But you wouldn't think it, looking at this, would you?

-INTERVIEWER:

-How many more to go?

-A lot!

HE LAUGHS

MUSIC: Once In Royal David's City

At 10 o'clock, the Reverend Richard turns up to collect

some buns for the cathedral service tomorrow.

-How are you?

-I'm very well!

-Good.

Nice to see you again. I won't ask what time you were up.

-5 o'clock.

-Oh!

Kathy were in at 11 o'clock last night.

So she's worked through the night.

What time do they start knocking on the door?

About 5 o'clock in the morning?

Two o'clock, some mornings! If there's squid in.

They know the time when the pies...

Cos we make all our own pies and everything,

as you know, they know the time when they're

coming out of the oven and we open the door and the smell rushes over.

That's it, night air, smell the food. They've had a few beers.

While he's here, Richard offers to help out with the finishing touches.

Hold it up just a little bit, so it drizzles in. That's it.

I can smell the spice in the hot cross buns

and I know what they're going to taste like,

cos I've eaten them every Good Friday for the last seven years.

When you get to this one,

just a quick flip round and then go that way.

Oh, you should've... That's all right.

I'll get to eat that one cos it's got a double cross on it.

MALCOLM LAUGHS

That's lovely. When you get to the end, tip it upside down.

-That's it.

-Yes!

Excellent! Right, we're going to put them in the oven now.

-When would you like to start work - Monday morning?

-Yes.

In a small back garden studio in the heart of Stanley,

the Falkland Islands' resident animal artist and taxidermist,

Steve Massam, is putting the finishing touches

to his latest creation.

Because it's in clay, I have to keep it under wraps.

Islanders were asked how best they wanted to commemorate

the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Options ranged from establishing a science scholarship

to building an old people's home.

But in the end, they went for a one-and-a-half life-sized bust.

It's quite something to do this.

She's just so highly thought of, you know.

She put the Falkland Islands on the map and...saved the islands,

really, because I think if Argentina hadn't invaded,

Britain wasn't really interested in what was happening down here

and we'd have probably been taken over by South America anyway.

She made such a huge difference here, you can understand

why people hold her in such high esteem here.

In my profession as a taxidermist, I have worked in the past

on some very large specimens, such as giraffes

and lions and stuff, and there's a great deal of sculpting

that goes into taxidermy,

but everyone knows what someone's supposed to look like.

Whereas animals, you know, one giraffe tends to look

very much like another giraffe, as it were.

Well, there are just so many different angles.

I quite like the eyes on that one, and the hairstyle,

which is what I quite like.

This is her again in '83, she's down here,

and this is what I've really gone for,

with the clothing, with the jacket that she was wearing

and the lapel brooch of the Union Jack.

-LAUGHING:

-I've never had to do clothes before!

Doing natural history, you know,

it's either fur or feathers.

It's trying to get the right style.

So it's a bit different from working on an emperor penguin to,

yeah, a bust of Margaret Thatcher, you know.

Who knows what I'm going to be doing next. You never know.

When it's finished, the bust will be cast in bronze

and placed on the foreshore, next to the 1982 war memorial.

But first, it needs to be approved by the members

of the Legislative Assembly,

who are coming in to see it in a couple of days' time.

It'll be quite a big occasion on Monday cos, up till now,

it's only sort of been friends who've seen it.

My first commission, first bust, first human figure,

and I've got to get it right!

HE LAUGHS

There are two main islands in the Falklands.

The East, where Stanley is,

and the West, which is roughly the same size

but has a population of only 200 people,

spread out over a vast empty landscape.

Port Howard is a typical farming settlement on West Falkland...

Bye!

..and it's home to Critta Lee, Becky Edwards and their family.

Yeah, I will have another cup of tea, actually, thank you.

Critta owns and farms the largest sheep farm on the island

and Becky is the only doctor on West Falkland,

so the kitchen often doubles as a surgery.

OK, ready? Sharp scratch.

Dirt tracks now link the main settlements,

but when Critta and Becky were young, there were no roads at all.

When I remember...

As a child, when you remember this bouncing for hours

to get from Fox Bay to Port Howard, it would be

an entire day trip in the back of a Rover,

whereas now you can do it in an hour and a half, can't you?

The phones... It was the early '90s for the telephone,

-because I...

-I thought it was '89.

Well, maybe in Stanley, but I know, cos I'd started work.

We only ever had the generator switched on for a couple

of hours in the morning and a couple of hours, well,

four or five hours in the evening.

And so you'd have to make sure you got all your hovering,

washing and everything done then.

But now, with wind power and inverters

and things to store the power, you can have 24-hour electricity.

So we can listen to the radio, watch television all day.

Autumn is the time for farmers to take things a bit easier.

The hard work of lambing and shearing is over

and they can afford to relax a bit.

Right, we're off.

Every year, there's a sheepdog trial on West Falkland

and Critta's taking two of his dogs -

seven-year-old Duke and two-year-old Bitzer -

up onto the hill to put them through their paces.

Your turn in a minute, pal.

HE BLOWS WHISTLE

Duke!

Our farm, it's about 220,000 acres.

It's about the size of the West Midlands, is our best guess.

Come here, Duke. Here.

We run a fairly basic system

where we put our sheep on the high land for the summer

and try and spell all the lower lands,

and when we bring them down off the mountain,

we'll just spread them out amongst the lower land.

The trick of it is to try and make sure you've got

enough grass to see them through the winter,

because obviously the difference with the Falklands is,

being a long way from anywhere, you can't buy in feed

if you've run out of grass.

CRITTA BLOWS WHISTLE

Duke came second at the dog trials last year

and Critta's hoping that he'll do as well, if not better, this time.

But Duke's two-year-old son Bitzer isn't quite so reliable.

Have you seen him, have you, Bitzer? What've you got there?

With him, the younger dog, he's actually quite bad at

picking up the sheep. I don't know whether he's got bad eyesight

or whether he's just not all there.

So we need to practise that a little bit with him.

SHEEP BLEAT

That'll do. Bitzer! Bitzer!

-HE BLOWS WHISTLE

-Bitzer!

Right, we'll just let them run on up the hill a bit.

Come here, Bitzer! Come here, come here. Bitzer!

HE BLOWS WHISTLE REPEATEDLY

This is exactly what we don't want to happen

in the middle of the dog trials.

Come here, Bitzer! Bitzer, come here!

It's not ideal, you could say.

This is not the sort of pre-run that we were hoping for.

Come here, Bitzer, come on, come on. Let's try that again.

I guess you do take it semi-seriously,

like, you know, I'm always disappointed

if they don't do well and always chuffed if they do do well.

I mean, it's not a sort of super-serious thing but, you know,

you're there to have a go sort of thing, yeah.

HE BLOWS WHISTLE

A common sight in back gardens all over the Falkland Islands

is a few chickens scratching away, providing eggs for their owners.

But when the light fades at this time of year,

so does the hens' ability to lay,

and with no large-scale producer on the islands, the shops have to

fall back on expensive imported eggs from Chile and Ecuador...

..but not for much longer.

Alan Steen has spotted a gap in the market and is launching himself

as the island's new commercial chicken farmer.

Probably isn't the most healthy way to have them, but...

HE CHUCKLES

I seem to have always had an interest in looking after chickens

and producing eggs and the like.

I kept probably about 30-odd chickens and some ducks

when I was probably about ten or 11 and they were eaten during the war.

The Argentine conscripts and that had, erm, consumed them.

The discovery of oil in the waters surrounding the islands

has been a definite factor in Alan setting up his business.

Pass the knife and fork, please.

I mean, without a doubt, it's going to increase the population

on the Falklands, so there's going to be more mouths to feed.

I think I probably would've done it even if the oil

hadn't been there, but it's an added incentive

to sort of pick up the gauntlet.

This is the time to do it, if it's going to be done at all.

Alan's centre of operations is a few miles outside Stanley.

He's taken over two barns, where the chickens will roam free

and the light can be controlled to encourage them to lay all year round.

None of the equipment he needs is available on the islands,

so everything, from the chicken feed to the nesting boxes,

has had to be shipped in from the UK.

The only negative thing about getting these

was that they didn't come with instructions.

It's took me a little while to figure out

how to put it all together!

My chickens are developing in their eggs as we speak

at the hatchery in the UK...

..and they'll be born on the 21st.

And they'll arrive here on the air-bridge on the 22nd.

It's basically a 36-hour window of opportunity

to bring the chicks down from the UK.

Anything past that 36-hour period, it's going to be...

It's going to be extremely unlikely that they'll actually make it,

so it's going to be a bit of a nightmare, really.

Looking ahead at the weather forecast,

it's not too rosy for Thursday either.

Alan's praying for his chicks' safe arrival,

but it's completely out of his hands.

All he can do is watch the weather forecast and wait.

In taxidermist-turned-sculptor Steve's studio,

it's the day of reckoning.

The members of the Legislative Assembly,

who commissioned him to make the bust of Margaret Thatcher,

are coming to view his work, which has been months in the making.

Yeah, big day, yeah.

But, you know, I know most of the councillors to speak to

when I see them down the road,

so it's not like in the UK where you don't know them at all.

Yeah, they're very approachable.

I can't say that I...

everybody who sees it will like it,

you can't please everybody.

I'm not expecting to, you know. So...we shall wait and see.

In the Falkland Islands, there are eight MLAs -

five representing Stanley and three for "The Camp",

which is everywhere outside of the capital.

All but one of them have turned up today

to get a first glimpse of the islands' newest piece of public art.

I think we can all just about squeeze in.

-HE LAUGHS

-Yeah.

Bit undignified really, she's covered in a bin bag.

So anyway, the big unveiling, anyway.

So...

-That's...

-Whoa.

-Fantastic.

-Very good.

-Yeah?

I'm impressed you managed to do the string of pearls,

is that carved, or...?

Yeah, just rolled out, individually rolled out.

There was lots of... I've buried them now.

There was lots of attempts in here of other ones, I either made them

too big or too small.

Really, it was a matter of texture on her face.

-Because she's quite a handsome woman...

-The character.

Yeah, and it wasn't until I put the skin texture on

that she sort of came alive really.

-You've fallen in love with her?

-LAUGHING:

-Yeah!

Almost, yeah, because I've heard it said that she was

quite an attractive woman, you know.

No, I should also point out that she will be...

I've planned her to be slightly higher than this,

so she'll be slightly higher up

so people will be looking from sort of this sort of height.

Not out of reach, because bronzes really do appreciate being touched.

And they improve with people's touch.

CHATTER AND STEVE LAUGHS

Very impressive. Having not done something like this before,

he's done a fantastic job,

and I think everybody was pleased that we could get somebody

within the islands who was capable of doing such a thing,

which is just fantastic.

It was a wise choice to let him have a go at it

and it's really worked out.

Yeah, thankfully they liked her.

Calls for a bit of celebration I think, later.

All under wraps again.

Over on West Falkland, it's the day of the sheepdog trial.

The contestants and their owners have come from all over

the islands to Shallow Bay Farm, which is hosting this year's event.

For Critta Lee and his mates,

it's a good chance to catch up after a long, hard summer.

He's got them!

CHEERING

-Cannot believe his luck.

-We're going to hear about that.

Oh, aren't we just going to hear this?

Come on, West Falkland! Woop-woop!

THEY LAUGH

I come from a farm over on the east side,

I don't see Critta for several months at a time, it's good to

catch up for a yarn, and this time of year, nobody's that busy now.

You know, the abattoir work is pretty much finished,

all the shearing's done, so people

have got no excuse, they can attend.

Come on, then, Bitzer.

Critta has two dogs competing today.

See them?

The first to go is young Bitzer, who had a few slip ups in training.

That way.

They've just come in front of the pens.

Left hand down, Crits!

Most people here, like farmer Knacker Goodwin, have an opinion

on how the dogs are performing,

but in the end, it's the judges who decide.

They're looking for speed and precision,

and it always helps if the sheep end up in the pen.

The judging is done out of points of ten.

We won't be popular.

-I doubt if anyone will be asking us for dances tonight, will they?

-No!

In the end, Bitzer puts in a pretty good performance.

HE SHOUTS ENCOURAGEMENT

It's not about winning, it's about competing

and showing people what you got.

You know, everybody would love to have dogs of the calibre of

One Man and His Dog, but it's not what we're about.

I mean, we don't have fancy green fields or anything,

we ranch farm down here.

There's nothing better than riding over a hill

and putting your dog around 3,000 or 4,000 sheep

and just bringing them all together and driving them on, several hours.

That is the island life in a nutshell.

For those that still live in Camp, you know, we're proud stockmen.

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

Critta's main hope in the competition is his older dog, Duke,

who was last year's runner-up.

And he puts in a cracking performance.

Now we're up against it!

Not everyone is having such a good day of it.

-Get on the jog, get on the jog.

-Go on, Pecker.

Paul Peck is the farmer at Shallow Bay, and the event's host.

They're his sheep, but they're not behaving like it.

Oh, we're getting desperate now! Getting desperate!

ALL: Ohh!

Don't worry, Paul, I don't think the judges saw it!

Finally, it's time for the judges to have their say.

Right, are we ready?

Host of the day goes to Paul Peck and Ken.

CHEERING

And he's still sulking!

And first place, 16 points,

was Critta and Duke.

CHEERING

Thank you very much!

Will you give me two tens for that one, please?

Smile!

Like I say, we don't take it that seriously, but...

ALL: Wahey!

..it's good. I'm chuffed as punch.

Yeah.

It's a decidedly chilly Stanley morning.

The forecast snow has arrived

and there's a lot of frost around as Alan heads to the airport

to greet his 1,200 day-old chicks that are due in today from the UK.

Yeah, it was a bit of a restless night,

it must've been, what, 11 o'clock last night?

It really started snowing quite heavy and I was a bit concerned

that the plane wasn't actually going to make it.

Still a bit of snow on the ground, but the wind's died down and,

as far as I'm aware, the plane's on schedule.

On average, only three flights arrive into the Falkland Islands

every week - one from Chile and two from the UK.

Operated by the RAF, the British flights take 18 hours,

including a stop-off in Ascension Island.

Alan has to wait till all the passengers have disembarked

before he's allowed onto the runway and up into the plane's hold

to help unload his precious consignment.

They're surprisingly chirpy.

HE LAUGHS

That'll do, just drop them down there.

Try not to put them on the rollers,

cos the last thing you want is the rollers taking the chicks off.

-How many should there be here?

-1,200.

-They were only born yesterday.

-Yeah.

LOUD CHIRPING

They're noisy!

There are 15 boxes, each containing 80 chicks.

They're packed in quite tightly to keep each other warm,

as they would be in the nest straight after hatching.

Hello!

CHIRPING CONTINUES

Aww, you had a long flight?

Let's be having you.

Back at the barns,

Alan is anxious to get the chicks settled in to their new home.

Hello, chickens!

The infrared brooders will keep them warm for the next few weeks,

until they're old enough to have the full run of the barn.

The new arrivals' first visitor is vet Zoe Fowler,

from the Stanley practice,

who's come here to check on their welfare after the long flight.

Sounds like chickens, Al, sounds like chickens.

-They all look pretty bright.

-They do, don't they?

You can see they've already found their drinkers

and things like that, so already they're getting a drink,

and this guy here's found the snacks,

so that's a really good sign. Open the...sponge up.

Zoe's first job is to do a salmonella test.

These chickies have come from

a Defra salmonella-free certified flock,

but for Alan and for the Falklands, we just need to double-check.

We're very lucky in that we don't have a lot bad.

So we do have some animal disease obviously, but very little,

and so we want to make sure it stays that way.

Bit of a relief, really, that we've actually got

to this stage, finally, after so long in the planning.

Chirp, chirp, chirp! Hello!

I think we've got off to a good start, anyway.

Back in Stanley and at Christchurch Cathedral,

the congregation is gathering.

Happy Easter.

ORGAN PLAYS

This is Easter Day,

this is the heart of the Christian annual celebration.

It's going to be a happy day, the church looks nice and bright

and well-decorated, so, looking forward to it.

This is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Halleluiah, Christ is risen.

-ALL:

-# Glory to Jesus... #

Today is particularly special for Richard,

because it'll be his last Easter Sunday service in the Cathedral.

In August, he's retiring and he and his wife Jen will be

returning to start a new life back in the UK.

Well, I'm in my last few months here now in the Falkland Islands,

I've been here almost seven years

and I don't think I've ever found a place so demanding,

yet a place that's got right into my soul, really.

We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.

We're in the season of autumn now and things are getting colder.

But just occasionally, you get days that take your breath away,

when the sky is piercingly blue and the harbour is still,

and maybe there's a seal out there or a couple of oystercatchers.

I think I'll miss it enormously.

-Happy Easter, John. Happy Easter to you, Anne-Marie.

-Happy Easter.

I'm delighted, I have a sense of God's blessing on us today,

on Easter Day, it's wonderful, very pleased.

Next time, the islanders get spruced up for the May Ball

and vote for the May Queen and her Prince Charming.

Guy with the cowboy hat behind me, he's still wearing the tie

that I lent him two years ago when he came without one!

And Padre Ian, the new RAF chaplain, goes down well at school assembly.

-One, two, three.

-CHILDREN:

-Wake up, grandpa!

"Goodness me!" Yes, OK, grandpa.

I thought it was epic.