Carrbridge in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
From the late 17th to the late 18th centuries, and periodically
on the poorest soils even till 1826, there was often great hunger in the
farmlands of Strathspey and Badenoch. Famine killed off half
the people in some parishes. 
In 1740 and in later years, frosts badly affected the cereal crops and by 1743 every ninth person in the parish of Crathie and Braemar was destitute. With the people scratching near subsistence level, bad weather or poor harvests spelled famine, though this gradually became rarer than in earlier centuries.
In Strathspey, the parish in 1782 and 1783 was truly distressing. Had it not been for Government bounty and Sir James Grant's large supply from distant countries, the poorer class of people would have perished.