Lesley

27th Jun 202227th Jun 2022

Slight deviation from plan

Health is one of those things that we take for granted when we’re young. And because in my mind I’m still probably 29, even though I’m approaching 60, I’m always taken by surprise when it lets me down.

I’ve had to have a hysterectomy, and as I lie here recovering from the operation I know that this definitely wasn’t on the build plan.

Recovery from any type of illness in a caravan is going to be a challenge, but recovery from something that means that you can’t lift, stand too long, or strain in any way is a big one. If ever I wish that we had been in the house already, it’s now. But we’re not, and so we will make the best of it.

I’m grateful that the operation went well, with huge thanks to the doctors and nurses at the hospital in Inverness. Thank goodness for the professionalism of the NHS who have treated and cared for me brilliantly. And I’m very grateful for the love and care of my fabulous husband, family and friends, who have surrounded me with love since my discharge.

As I lie here in the glory of a pair of surgical stockings, looking ruefully at the stomach injections we will have to do later today, I reflect that many people have it worse. At least I have pain relief, a comfy bed, enough to eat and a strong and caring partner. I honestly don’t know how people who are alone or in less comfortable surroundings would get through this.

We will be in the house soon. It feels close enough to be a reality now, so close that I can almost touch it. One thing that the last few years have taught me for certain is that I will never take good health for granted again.

There’s nothing more guaranteed to impact life, let alone a build plan.

22nd Jun 202223rd Jun 2022

ASHP and micro-harvests

When it comes to plumbing, electrics and heating in the home it may all be in Mandarin for the level of understanding I have. Husband makes it sound very logical and simple, and clearly finds it amusing that I either panic or glaze over when he tries to explain how electrical things work.

Yesterday we had the plumbers in to install the Air Source Heat Pump system for the house. This is a core element in heating the house as economically as possible, something that is becoming increasingly essential.

We now have a plant room with hot water tank, expansion vessels, underfloor heating pipes and outside, mounted on a concrete slab, the ASHP unit.

To me the assemblage in the plant room looks like something out of a gothic horror novel, all those pipes and valves and control panels. A local friend described it as looking like “a steam train mated with a brass band” which made me laugh out loud.

The electrician needs to come next week to complete the installation before we can crank it up and start testing it.

But it’s progress! Once it’s in and working we can lay the rest of the flooring, which will be another major milestone.

Whilst the install operation was underway I hid in the Polycrub.

There’s always something happening in there at this point in the growing year and the tomatoes and squash are now so large that I can hide amongst them quite effectively.

Every morning when I open up the tunnel to water the plants I pick as I go, a sort of micro-harvest. A few ripe strawberries, a handful of peas, a few bunches of coriander, dill , parsley, some lettuce. It doesn’t seem like much, but soon it will mean that we won’t have to buy those things.

Once the freezer and dehydrator are up and running, we’ll be able to store surpluses. At the moment we share any excess with our friends and neighbours.

It’s like receiving a gift every day.

It’s so satisfying to feel that you’ve grown this yourself, and that it will be on the table by supper time. Small steps towards self sufficiency.

12th Jun 202212th Jun 2022

The Raven Gang

We have a pair of adult ravens living on the croft, Floki and Helga, after whom the house was named.

We hear them mostly in the spring as they call to each other, and occasionally see them wheeling overhead across a windy sky, but they’re generally private birds, watching us curiously from the big Douglas Fir on the western boundary.

They’re no trouble, and fascinating birds to live alongside.

Unlike the Raven juveniles.

Before we moved here I had no idea that young ravens live together in a huge group before they pair off, mate for life and settle down to adult Raven respectability. The juveniles form what can only be described as a gang of teenagers, noisy, boisterous, and badly behaved. It’s often called a Conspiracy of Ravens.

We have a large Conspiracy that lives locally. Recent exploits have been starting at dawn – which is just after 4am in these parts – with loud squabbling, and shrieking so loud that it’s impossible to sleep through.

They’re very smart.

They’ve been working out how to get to the fat balls that are put out in a wire cage contraption for the smaller birds. Clearly it’s a breakfast treat that can’t be resisted, and an hour or so of noisy plundering takes place with a dozen or more of them fighting each other for the spoils.

On blustery days at sea we occasionally get seagulls venturing inland across the croft, and on these days we can hear turf wars sparking off between the ravens and the gulls in a cacophony of noise.

The battlefield is usually the caravan roof, where shrieking, scrabbling and cawing take place until supremacy is established.

And all before 5am..

The joys of living hand in glove with wildlife!

11th Jun 202212th Jun 2022

Greening up

It’s amazing how quickly things grow at this time of the year. In the few weeks since I last posted about plant progress, the croft beds have filled up and are now bursting with foliage from the maturing potatoes, onions, garlic and kale.

The red veined sorrel planted last year was the only thing that the deer didn’t eat over winter, and in the last four weeks it’s shot up and is throwing out flower stems. We’ll keep the seed and cut it right back soon.

The polycrub plants are growing even faster. The tomatoes have flowers on them and the squashes, courgettes, beans and sweetcorn have all grown hugely.

We’re already cropping strawberries from the three tubs of strawberry plants that we have. It’s just a small bowl each day, but they’re sweet and delicious.

We have plans next year to increase strawberry production and as the plants are already sending out runners we should be able to propagate many more plants before next spring. We’ll install a couple of runs of drain piping to hold them above the raised beds.

The days are long now. Sunrise is at about 4.30 am and sunset around 10.30pm, with the plants responding to the long days with rapid growth. The ravens set up a cacophony of noise at dawn to herald the start of day (thanks lads) and one of us potters over to open the polycrub some hours later once coffee has kicked in.

Soon we will start harvesting. We’re already cropping seed-grown parsley, coriander, basil and dill, as well as lettuce, but the potatoes and garlic won’t be long now. Then courgettes, spring onions, peas and beans. I’m already sowing purple sprouting broccoli, kale and pak choi to succession plant in the spaces that they will leave, and tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and corn won’t be far behind.

The polycrub is my happy place. It’s warm and sheltered and smells faintly of greenage and soil and the spiciness of growing leaves.

I’m loving it.

3rd Jun 20223rd Jun 2022

Summer days and endless light

Sometimes the Scottish Highlands simply take your breath away.

After months of cold and rain, all of a sudden summer is here. Warm days, blue skies and intense sunsets. Memories of cold, wet winter days dissolve in the brilliant light.

We are only three weeks away from the midsummer solstice, and the light is incredible. It doesn’t really get dark at all. Sunset is around 10.30pm but the skies retain a half light until the dawn breaks again at about 4.30am with the return of pink skies.

The sunsets have been spectacular over the last few nights.

Sun dipping behind the back of the croft

These dry days also mean that daily life is easier. Drying clothes on racks in the house is difficult at the moment as there is plaster and building dust everywhere. The caravan often resembles a Chinese laundry.

But we’ve been able to line dry our clothes again now that the air temperatures are sitting at a very nice 18-22C. There’s something nostalgic for me about pegging out washing, and the scent of clean, wind-dried clothes is one that takes me right back to my childhood, and is a smell that I love.

We sat over lunch today out on the croft, listening to the birds squabbling in the hedgerows and watching the swallows swoop over the roof of the house, and laughed with the pleasure of it all.

View over Knoydart from the front of the house

We feel very lucky to be here.

27th May 20221st Jun 2022

Tiling

We decided to tile the entrance hall, boot room, utility room and bathrooms. All of these are wet areas and need a practical, hard wearing floor surface.

I initially favoured stone or slate as a floor material here, but after I discovered that regular sealing and maintenance would be required decided to take another route. Life is too short to be resealing floors regularly.

We’ve chosen porcelain stone-effect tiles. They’re non-slip, easy maintenance, strong and hard wearing. I’m promised that an occasional mop down is all that’s needed.

Not too dark as the bathrooms and entrance hall are north facing, and not too light so that I’m constantly washing the mud off them.

The only challenge was that we’d need to find a tiler to lay them. Husband didn’t feel that he could do a good job with grouting, although he’d be fine laying the tiles. On this island it would seem that finding a tiler is a practical impossibility, so we were pleased when an alternative solution presented itself to us. Thank you Universe 🙏

Luckily one of the plasterers we had working with us had a nephew in Glasgow who was a tiler and who was interested in coming up to do the work and bagging a few Munro’s in his spare time. (For you non mountaineers, this means climb a few challenging mountains whilst up here).

The other walls in the bathroom will be half clad in wood. It’s a softer finish than tiles and will provide a strong colour and texture contrast. We’re still finalising the finish – either a simple Osmo oil stain, or more radically a charred Shou Sugi Ban finish. Watch this space!

20th May 202221st May 2022

Painting underway

We’ve spent the last few days (and will no doubt spend the next few months!) painting the walls in the house.

They’re all white, which we decided to live with for a year in order to assess the light and decide which colours would work best for us.

After first living with silver walls with the foil, then terracotta walls with the plaster (which I personally loved, although it’s not designed to be left unpainted), white seems remarkably bright. We’ve both got snow blindness after painting it for two days.

The first coat, a mist coat, has just gone on in this picture. You can see that it’s a bit streaky and blotchy where the raw plaster has sucked up the thinned paint. It’s much better now that the second coat has gone on.

For a slightly dark, north-facing entrance hall, with this picture taken on a grey and rainy day, the white really reflects what daylight there is and makes the most of it.

Interestingly, having brilliant white on the walls just reinforces that I love colour! I just need to get it right!

It’s increasingly starting to feel like a proper house now!

12th May 202212th May 2022

Repurposing, recycling

I’ve started the polycrub off with growing in canvas containers. We won’t have time to build and fill beds in there until next spring, and there isn’t much depth of soil beneath it before you hit the impenetrable seam of shale and lewissian gneiss.

I figured it was the best way of getting productive and a harvest this year.

Canvas grow bags and a repurposed compost bag!

They’re not expensive, a few pounds each, but when you’re using as many as I am it soon mounts up. So I put out a call via a couple of local friends for any unwanted large containers.

Friends at the newly established Coffee Bothy in Broadford offered up a dozen or more catering mayo tubs. A perfect size for herbs and smaller plants!

A couple of kind local crofters kept back their sheep lick tubs for me. They hold about 30 litres of soil or compost each so are deep enough for beans, potatoes or cucumbers to grow in.

We drilled drainage holes in them and I have been busy planting them up for the last few days. If it holds soil, it gets filled with seedlings! It’s best not to stand too still around here 😊.

This is such a busy season for planting. I feel that I’m running slightly late with things this year but it’s been so cold that the seedlings that I started early have been very slow to grow.

It’s always a balance here between waiting for the temperature to get warm enough but not leaving it so late that there isn’t enough season left for plants to mature.

7th May 20227th May 2022

Grown with care

Duncraig Nursery is one of those wonderful, remote places that are quite magical when you find them.

Nestled in a hidden wooded glen near Plockton, surrounded by an old walled garden from the nearby castle, it’s location is beautiful.

From the moment you arrive, car tyres crunching on the stone chipped path, to the initial conversation with the owners who radiate deep plant love and knowledge, you realise that this is a special place.

I went with a friend on an exploratory visit, and we both squeaked with delight as we found more and more of the plants that we were looking for. All good strong varieties, tried and tested to survive in the highlands of Scotland.

All in tip top health, all vibrant and well tended. It was a completely different experience to the rather sad, city garden centre that I’d visited last week in Inverness where the plants were stressed, in need of water and limply unhappy.

I went looking for cucumber seedlings as mine had not germinated for some reason. They were the only big failures in my seed sowing this year. I was worried that sowing again so late in the growing season, already short here this far north in the highlands, would mean that we wouldn’t get a crop at all.

I found cucumber seedlings. I found strawberry plants full in flower, chilli peppers, sweet red peppers, lettuces and glorious red kale. The soft fruit selection, shrubs, fruit trees and herbs were fabulous. I could have bought the entire place up if I had enough growing room!

We will be back. The danger is now to our bank balance for subsequent visits! Saying that, I’d rather spend my money supporting a local garden business where the owners have a real love for their enterprise than a faceless chain where profit is the main concern.

I’ve roped in husband to help and have now potted up my purchases. We ran out of canvas bags and sheep lick tubs, so are now using empty folded over compost bags as temporary plant containers . Waste not, want not, as my mum used to say.

3rd May 20224th May 2022

Woodburner in the house!

I’ve always had a woodburner in my previous homes. I’m drawn to flames and the smell of woodsmoke. Some would say I’m just a socially well adjusted pyromaniac… maybe not even that well adjusted.

There’s nothing more relaxing on a cold winters day than curling up on a comfy sofa with the woodburner softly glowing and crackling away in a corner.

A SIP house with as much extra insulation as ours and underfloor heating to boot isn’t really in need of an additional heat source.

However, electrical outages and power cuts are common here in the islands during the colder months. Suppliers can take days, and sometimes weeks, to restore power to these remote areas.

The logical part of me reasoned that a secondary power source not dependant on the grid would be sensible for such times, providing warmth and the ability to heat basic food on the top, or potatoes in the body of the stove.

The wildly romantic and emotional side of me admitted that this wasn’t the main reason to have one at all.

The woodburner arrived with the installers yesterday afternoon. It’s an Opus 5kW stove, DEFRA approved and Eco design ready, meaning it matches the European regulations being brought in to clamp down on emissions of wood burning stoves that’ll come in later this year.

A day of hard work by Mathew and Kev and she sits resplendent in her corner ready for action. We need to repair the plasterboard on the ceiling where the flue has been cut through, but it’s nearly there.. We have a wee chimney too, firmly braced and tied into the roof against the prevailing winds. We will have fires this winter.

We’re receiving threats of visits with marshmallows on sticks…😊

One more step towards this house becoming a home! 😊

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