The swallows start their chatter perched on the guttering just outside the window at sunrise at 3.30 am. It’s the only time of the day that it feels relatively cool.
As the sun moves up and around the morning sky the heat rises. Most days over the last three weeks it’s been 29°C -30°C here, and it’s been almost a month since the island had rain. This isn’t normal.
We’ve moved to an Extreme Warning state of wildfire hazard, with the heather and bracken in the hills tinder dry. The croft backs onto the hills directly here, and living in a timber-clad house makes us especially nervous and vigilant.
It was only a few weeks ago that we watched a huge wildfire engulf the gorse and heather clad hills above the port of Mallaig on the mainland. We watched in horror as the fire raged for three days above the town, extinguished only after being battled by several fire crews.
There seems to be no respite from this strange heat. We’re promised rain this weekend and next week, but whether it will come isn’t certain.
The plants out in the croft beds are all struggling in the heat. We are watering them most nights to save them, and need to mulch to keep in what moisture we do have, but they’re bolting and going to seed already, as plants do when heat stressed.
We had a friend over for supper a few nights ago who lives in Ord, a tiny township of about thirty people on the western side of the Sleat peninsula. They’re not connected to mains water due to their remote location, getting their supply from a bore hole in the village. It’s almost run completely dry and they’re days away from having no drinking water.
We were astonished to hear this. I’ve never heard of such a thing on the island, one of the wettest places on the planet.
We must get our rainwater collection system on the shed up and running this year. We always planned this. The guttering is in place – we just need to divert the down pipes into big water butts.
We’re also looking into external window shutters for the huge windows on the south facing side of the house to cut down the solar gain and keep us cooler. European houses have external shutters as standard, but few homes in Britain do.
We need to continue to adapt and become more self sufficient. I fear that things will continue to be challenging with climate change.
Ravencroft Skye 
We had rain last night – only about 1/4 inch but soooo welcome. And more in the forecast for next week. Like you we had had none since mid May. I had run out of collected rainwater at house level but on the veg patch there had been enough until this morning. The butts became too low for me to be able to dip the can before I had finished. The possibility of wildfires must be really scarey.
I do not use downpipes from the gutters to my tanks. They needed so many joints to move from the edge of the building to the hole in the tank that I switched to chains. I will write a post about it so you can see. It works well.
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Thank you. I used to have chains directing rainwater on my French house strangely enough. It does work well
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I’m glad to hear you have a collection system in progress. That will make quite a difference. Pretty scary when the fires come so close!
As hard as it is in the moment, these cycles are an important part of our world’s self regulation. Fire is nature’s “reset” button. It clears away collected debris, and the ash acts as a fertilizer, as well as changing the acidity levels of the soil. The new growth will benefit. In our area, farmers do controlled burns in the spring to simulate this, as well as to protect their farms. Our first spring out here, we had a number of wildfires around us and we were prepared to evacuate. A couple of homes on neighboring farms were lost, but the wildfires were stopped when they reached farms that had done controlled burns, just a week or two earlier.
Here in Canada, we have vast boreal forests. The Plains Indians used to maintain the prairies for the buffalo herds they relied on, and keep the forests from expanding, by setting the prairie on fire every 5 years or so. Ironically, fire suppression, coupled with not allowing responsible logging, has turned our forests into tinder boxes, choked with debris. Natural forest fires would clear out swaths of land that would later provide lush meadows for grazing wildlife and encourage fresh, healthy new forest growth. Our sustainable resource departments are finally learning that sometimes the best thing to do when there’s a fire is just let it burn, unless it threatens populated areas. In our province right now, there are a number of fires that are listed as being “monitored”.
We humans tend to forget just how little effect we have on the world. When nature does its thing, we need to learn to work with it, because we sure as heck can’t control it.
In our case, I really want to borrow some grazing animals, because we can’t do a controlled burn due to outbuildings, which leaves our home surrounded by a band of land that becomes a serious fire hazard, later in the season.
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We are on the opposite end of the spectrum this year – chilly and rainy when we are normally hot (some years with some rain, others very dry). We have had a lot of flooding around us and we have daily needed to maintain ditches to try to keep some of our outbuildings from flooding. My garden is super happy! Though the heat-loving plants seem a bit stunted in their foliage growth, but are putting on flowers nonetheless.
Due to the constant rain, farmers have been unable to cut their hay and get it baled up, so many farms and horse boarding facilities have run out of feed for their livestock and are having to go long distances and pay high prices to get what they need while we wait for a 5-day window of dry for putting up hay.
We are grateful to have pasture and have put all of our hoofstock out on it because we ran out of hay over a month ago. They would normally be out by now, we put them out a little earlier than normal and also put more out than we normally do. Thankfully, the rain has made the pasture (which is dryland pasture) very happy and abundant.
Like you, trying to find ways to be more self-sufficient and to handle the swings in the weather better.
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We have had forest fires in our area in a previous drought and it is scary. My cousin in California had to be evacuated but hosed his yard and fence before leaving and his house was luckily untouched. I am longing for rain, too. It is hard work hosing the garden (we don’t have a water ban yet).
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Wow!
I am shocked to read that and slightly panicked to see this week when we go back up if the lovely plants in our garden have made it, left unattended now, with no one to water them!)
I have never known it to be dry and never had to worry about watering the garden, that’s for sure!
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We had a good rain shower yesterday and last night, and heavy rain predicted for today, so it should be fine. Plants recover well after a good drink so with any luck you’ll come back to lush profusion, my lovely 🥰
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