Snow has been falling over the last two days, and we’ve been treated to some astonishing skies and sunrises.
The sun is coming up around 8.40 am at this time of the year. The last few mornings have been very pink.
The reflection on the snowy croft has turned everything this incredible rosy hue. These images aren’t altered at all. Like raspberry sugar. It’s beautiful.
As we ate breakfast the pink glow faded and the steely grey of a snow-heavy sky took over. It’s been snowing gently but steadily ever since. Every now and then we’d get the clouds clearing and bright bursts of blue sky emerging.
It was a day of working indoors and baking bread. Husband built shelves into the laundry cupboard so that we could begin the long process of unpacking towels and bedding, washing and drying them, and at last putting them away.
Linen cupboard
I used the day to start the two day process of making rye bread, as I had rye flour that needed using up. Rye bread is a slow proofing bread, dense and dark. It hardly rises at all. It’s not for everyone, but we like it’s taste and texture.
Just out of the oven
I just love snowy days, and the process of wintering. Slow days with no pressure. Big fires. Candles. Cups of tea. Books. Planning for our growing this year. Losing hours watching the snow and the long vistas across the water to Knoydart.
I remember writing about my desire for a pantry three years ago when we were designing the house. Ive always yearned for somewhere dedicated to store food.
When we identified a small area in the house plans that had no natural light and could be used as a pantry, I was there. Who needs another metre or so on their bathroom? This was far more important!
It’s always seemed sensible to me, and even more so since living through a highland winter or two, to have longer term stocks of dried or canned supplies in case of emergency or not being able to get to the shops because of the weather.
Besides, buying in bulk is nearly always more cost effective than in small quantities.
I’ve always been this way. Squirrelling away lentils, flour and dried beans in any spare corner of the kitchen that I could find. Any shelves in proximity to the kitchen not taken up by books have been filled with jars, cans and packets.
This desire has been heightened even further since growing our own vegetables on the croft. It’s true that there’s nothing as satisfying as eating your own organic produce. For the last two years I’ve held back the quantities that we’ve grown because we’ve had no way of storing any surplus.
I’ve been interested to learn about methods of food preservation and follow a number of self sufficiency bloggers in envy as they fill row after row of shelves in their cellars with their own canned produce.
Today was the day. I felt like cutting a red ribbon to launch her! The shelves went in and with lights and power the room is fully functional at last. The pantry is operational!
No small room with bare shelves has ever created so much excitement in a house as this one. I can’t wait to start organising and filling it.
It’s traditional on these cold, wet days of January to put your feet up with a cup of tea and a seed catalogue and plan your growing for the year.
As the wind howls around the house and the rain lashes the windows, at least the weather has obscured the view. That view is responsible for me getting nothing done for vast tracts of time over the past week. I’ve sat here with my garden planner and done very little beyond stare across the Sound of Sleat.
The deer fencing of a half-acre patch at the top of the croft is now happily complete. We are the proud owners of a large, agricultural metal gate and an enclosure surrounded by two metre high fencing.
It’s far from pretty but it should mean that the deer will stay away from our croft beds. I have been warned that red deer can clear even a 2m fence, but let’s see how we get along.
I stopped tending the outdoor beds completely last year, despondent that the deer had eaten everything down to the ground. I didn’t plant any winter crops or do anything with them. There really seemed little point.
But this year will be different.
We have plans to flatten out the ground here and add more raised beds for vegetable production. I’d like to put in water butts for rainwater collection and build some proper paths between the beds to make it easier to move about. We will need to move tonnes of soil and compost to refill the existing beds and build more, along with tonnes of gravel and woodchip for the paths. It’s a quagmire here when it rains.
All of this will need to be done in addition to setting up the polycrub growing space. It’s going to be a huge amount of work, but I can’t wait to get started again as soon as the weather eases up.
And later in the year once the build of the terrace is complete and we can get rid of the building debris scattered across the croft at the front of the house, I’ve also got the planting at the front of the house to plan. Heather beds, sea buckthorn, bog myrtle – shrubs that can take the blast of the salt laden winds here – it all needs thought, design, sourcing, purchase and digging in.
Then we have the caravan removal, exterior water and sewerage pipes removal, re-surfacing of the drive, move of the pallet city that’s grown up by the caravan (we’ll keep those) and general re-landscaping of the access to the house. At the moment visitors have to negotiate a maze of pipes, building debris and wooden planks to reach our door!
Then there’s the planning of the orchard to be done so that we can start putting in trees .
It’s going to be another busy year. I’ve exhausted myself just writing it all down!
For now, I plan my seed purchases from the comfort of the sofa and sip my tea.
The winter gales are well underway now here on Skye, howling around the house and singing in the woodburner flue. The good thing is that the house feels solid and warm, despite being perched on the cusp of this very exposed hill overlooking the sea.
A break in the storms
I still haven’t got used to the lack of rocking motion that we used to have in the caravan whenever the wind blew! I’m sure I developed sea legs in the two years that we lived in it.
Woodburner doing its thing
We’ve decided not to unpack any further boxes until we’ve finished the electrics in the house and got some storage built. At the moment we have no lights or live power in about half the house and no bookcases, wardrobes or shelves. Just the essentials. As most of what we will bring in from the boxes will have nowhere to be put away it makes sense to hold off for a while.
Husband is continuing with the fitting of lights and sockets. Once he’s finished that, a good few more weeks work, I’d say, we can start building the shelving for the linen cupboard, server room and pantry. Then we can start unpacking a bit more.
We have just ordered the wood for the bookcases and wardrobes and have a joiner lined up to build them for us in February. That will be a big step forward in making the house a home. At the moment it’s still feeling a bit echoey and empty.
Sunrise this morning
But we’re loving waking up to the most incredible sunrises. The bedroom faces South East and often on even the most grey and dreich of Scottish winter days there’s a brief, glorious burst of early morning sunlight before the clouds swarm across the sky.
Borrowed friends croft dog living it up on the sofa in the sun
The sunlight in the house during the day is fabulous. The low winter sun fills the rooms. Once we have finished I think that this will be a wonderful space to live in. I can already see that we will need to agree on blinds soon..
My job this coming week is to osmo oil the oak interior doors. There are fourteen of them to do, and each door needs two coats, so that will keep me busy for a while. It’s good to be useful beyond feeding us both.
And so we start the new year in 2023 in our new home at last. Waking up to a warm bedroom and a view of the sun rising over the mountains of Knoydart and Loch Nevis has been a joy. Even if it does look a little like the demonic light of Mordor.
Sunrise over Mordor
The low winter light fills the house all day. As the sun sets at around 4pm and dusk gathers, we light the woodburner and coorie-in, as they say in these parts.
Low winter sun
Hogmanay this year was with friends at their cottage a few doors down in the village. We walked gingerly down our icy access track with a lantern in the early evening to their home where they had prepared wine and food, a side of smoked salmon, home baked cheesy puffs (delicious, Beth! Even without the sage) and lots of other wonderful edible things. It was good to chat and connect in their cozy kitchen, and was a fittingly good end to the year with neighbours and friends.
We were reminded with a smile that a house warming gathering was still expected whenever we were ready!
My wee smoking bothy at dusk
We didn’t stay late, and returned up the hill to home, lit the fire and drank red wine with a film until bed time. We watched the fireworks at Mallaig on the mainland from the comfort of the house to welcome in the new year.
New Years Day was quiet and cosy after all our busy arrangements at Christmas. It was just the two of us, a slow cooked shoulder of lamb over boulangere potatoes and a decadent chocolate pudding.
Wishing you all a slightly belated Happy New Year with much good health, happiness and love from our croft at the top of the windy hill on the Isle of Skye.
The Christmas and Boxing Day festivities are over and family and friends have been packed off to their respective homes.
We are in the “time between times” as the Celts might have described it. That liminal period between Christmas and New Year where a post-festivities slump slinks in and it’s time for relaxation before it all kicks off again for Hogmanay and New Year. The quality street are down to the last few in the tub that no one likes.
Cranberries
I love Christmas, but it’s exhausting. So much cooking, washing up, trying to keep animals from killing each other, trying to keep relatives from killing each other.. it’s stressful. And a day in the kitchen feels like a gym workout with kettlebells.
So these few days are precious. Husband and I have relaxed, eaten what we like, and in the spirit of using up what we didn’t use for Christmas, eaten lots of leftover beef, turkey, cheese and vegetables.
I made three litres of the most delicious turkey stock with the carcass yesterday, and froze most of it. The rest was turned into a turkey and vegetable soup-stew with orzo, and as there were a handful of fresh cranberries left, in they went too.
Leftover vegetables
This is the time for eating up leftovers, using what you have so that there’s no wastage, and revelling in the new taste combinations that you may discover when you combine unlikely things.
Turkey, vegetable and cranberry soup-stew
We’ve overdosed on fresh cranberries this year. I was so excited to be able to buy them that I bought three boxes of them, and we’re just finishing them off now.
They’ve gone into cocktails, sausage and cranberry rolls, fresh cranberry sauce, venison and cranberry cottage pie (which has become a bit of a tradition for our Christmas Eve meal since we moved up to Scotland) and lots of other things. That unexpected little sour hit with the richness of a meal is delicious.
Sausage rolls with cranberries
I’m tempted to squirrel away a few cranberries in the freezer for use in the new year, as it seems to be impossible to buy fresh here except for a week before Christmas.
I’ve even wondered if it’s possible to grow them here. It should be…
It’s Boxing Day evening and I am curled up on a sofa in front of the fire, happily cosy. Outside it’s dark and the snow is falling softly.
We are in the house, family has arrived for Christmas, and our home is full. Dogs, cats, stepsons, girlfriends – it’s a happy sort of chaos.
We hosted a Christmas Eve supper with good friends a few days ago and then a Christmas dinner yesterday. Today we’ve had other local friends around for a Boxing Day dinner.
We are both exhausted, to be honest. I’m looking forward to slowing right down now that our entertaining is over. Much as it’s lovely to be with friends at Christmas, we’re both worn out and need to recharge.
Sitting looking out at the ever changing view listening to the crackling of the Woodburner is an excellent way to do that in my book. Even with the most basic of furniture and no boxes as yet unpacked.
Knoydart with building debris
Wishing you all peace and contentment over this festive break.
After two years of hopping into the 40cm wide plastic shower enclosure in the caravan, a little like an upright bakelite coffin with a temperamental hot water supply, you have no idea how fabulous the first shower in our house bathroom was.
Even the process of getting out of the shower with room to towel off properly, in temperatures that were warm rather than sub glacial felt so good!
We’ve still got lots to do to finish the bathroom, but that will come in time.
Then there’s the kitchen. We have a fast and responsive induction hob, two great ovens, and a sink, tap and dishwasher that are a pleasure to use. It’s all about as far from the caravan kitchen experience as it’s possible to get.
You only really get a feel for a kitchen once it’s built and you start using it fully. The flow is important. As is the efficiency and ease of use of the appliances. For all your design, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and I’m so relieved to say that it’s a pleasure to use.
It will never be this empty or tidy again, so even though it’s not finished, I’ll show you it now.
And although we’ve been busy moving things over from the caravan and finding boxes of our things, I did open something that I love.
It’s my smoking bothy. A talented Scottish ceramicist called Louise Balmire at Wild Clay makes these, and they’re things of beauty. She sent me one last week and I’ve been dying to put it out. The incense cones go into a compartment under the chimney, making it smoke. There’s a little LED tea light in the compartment behind the window to make it look like a light is on. I know that it’s a small thing, but it makes me so happy to watch it!
Family is arriving soon, complete with dogs and cats. Chaos will absolutely reign this Christmas. I won’t know where anything is, and we’ll probably test the as yet untested limits of our heating and hot water systems.
But we are in, and it feels like home already. And to welcome loved ones to the space that we’ve worked so hard to build for the last two years feels wonderful.
I don’t even have a tree up yet, let alone electricity to some of the rooms, but it is so good to be here.
I wish you and your loved ones a happy, warm and peaceful festive season. With love from the tired but happy crofters on a windy hill on the Isle of Skye.
The snow has been falling steadily, and with it the temperature outside.
We took the decision to move into the bedroom in the house rather than suffer more sub zero mornings in the caravan. The trouble with starting the morning cold is that you never seem to fully warm up as the day progresses.
So, last night we made up the bed in the house and had our first night in residence. Many of the rooms are still a building site, but we have a working toilet, kitchen and heating system. It was enough. Fizz was of course opened amongst the woodworking tools in celebration.
Covered in snow
We awoke this morning to find the fakro roof windows covered in snow. As the sun broke through the clouds this melted and slowly slid off to show our first morning view from our bedroom.
Gradually melting as dawn breaks
It’s continued snowing as the day has progressed, and I captured a few shots of the caravan slowly being buried in the white from one of the house windows. I confess to being glad to be out of there in this weather.
When I popped out this morning to pick up plates and a few more supplies from the caravan it already felt cold and empty.
Croft with caravan
Skirting boards and sills are still going in and we are trying our best to get enough of the basics sorted for the clan and their animal assemblage to descend next week for Christmas!
I have no idea how we’ll manage that, but to be honest it will just be fabulous to have them all gathered under one roof again after many years of not being able to be together.
Snow has fallen and is lying – not quite deep and crisp and even as in the old Christmas carol – but in an icy, slippery layer rendering even the shortest distance a treacherous undertaking.
At this time of the year the caravan is very cold. We awoke to find that the internal temperature which was sitting at 3.3°C had fallen as low as 2.9°C during the night. As we hugged our mugs of hot coffee over breakfast we both agreed that as soon as the basics of a bathroom were in that we’d retreat to the warmth of the house.
Husband plumbed the toilet into one of the bathrooms today and tomorrow he will install the washbasin. I’m already planning making up a bed in there for tomorrow night, our first night in the house!
I also decided to test the induction hob and the ovens today, thinking that we’re so close to Christmas now that I didn’t want my first use of them to be Christmas dinner for the family.
Ovens especially have a character all of their own, and it takes a while to get used to them. We could have bought an Esmeralda and be blissfully unaware that she only works on a Tuesday with a full moon. We had to find out.
We did a lot of research before we bought the ovens. Capacity, performance, energy efficiency and a pyrolytic cleaning function were prime factors that I was looking for, along with simple functions. I’ve tried too many ovens that required a computer science degree to operate them, with features that I would be paying for that I’d simply never use.
Despite a lifetime in technology I’m rather a Luddite when it comes to kitchen appliances (sorry Guido!). I prefer that they’re not Wi-Fi enabled, not multi-function and not all touch sensitive. My fingers don’t operate very well with touch controls, especially as they’re usually covered in cake batter, so although I do have them on my induction hob, the ovens by choice have manual controls.
These Bosch ovens are simple, solid and robust. A test roast in them today showed them to heat quickly, cook evenly and operate easily. I cooked a small piece of pork and a tray of roast potatoes, and was very pleased with the results. The fact that the residual heat would be reprocessed by the MVHR system was another bonus which I felt good about.
Husband had to ferry the cooking on a tray rather precariously across the frozen yard to the caravan to be eaten, as we have neither table nor chairs set up in the house yet. But as we ate dinner on our little lap tables we couldn’t help grinning triumphantly at each other. Our first meal from the house.
Ravencroft Skye 