Category: autumn

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Brambling

Ripe brambles (blackberries) always herald the start of autumn for me.

These days brambles can be bought year round from supermarkets – grown abroad in warmer climates, with big, blowsy berries. I think the small local ones taste better, collected a bowlful at a time from wild hedgerows.

Wind-salted and intense.

Our brambles ripen a fair time later than those further south. I’ve been waiting for them to ripen properly for weeks now, and spurred on by a kind donation of some locally grown cooking apples, Bramleys and Keswick Codlin, (thank you Wildlife Croft Skye) it was time to get picking.

Our access track down from the croft is incredibly steep. Every week husband bravely drags the big wheelie bin down the track to the collection point in the lane, and back up again afterwards. Just thinking about it makes my head spin a bit. But today I joined him after breakfast, walking with him down the track with the bin to forage for brambles.

They’re just starting to ripen. The next few weeks will be when the bulk of the harvest is at its best, but we managed to gather a respectable bowlful for a few apple and bramble pies.

Under construction

It was very quiet as we were picking. Just the sound of the rooks cawing overhead and the soft gurgle of the stream rushing through the culvert by our feet. The water was hidden by a tangle of brambles, yarrow, thistles and rowan.

I’m going to head down to the lane and the bramble patches every few days now to make the most of the free bounty whilst it lasts. Any excess can be popped into the freezer for later use.

There’s nothing like a crisp, sweet apple pie studded with little purple bramble taste explosions on the cold, dark days of winter.

Apple and bramble pie
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Grey, but beautiful

We’ve been struggling with very wet days for the last month. The croft is saturated and the burn is constantly in full spate.

It’s also bizarrely mild for this time of the year. Two years ago when we moved in around now there was snow on the hills and it was about 8°C colder. This week the day temperature has been hovering around 16°C , like a Highland summer, and my plants are all very confused.

Everything still growing

I still pop into the polycrub a few days each week to weed, water and harvest what’s ready even though this is supposed to be the down season.

This week I transplanted thirty tatsoi seedlings (Asian winter greens) into larger pots and although I’m horribly late with them it will be an interesting experiment to see if they still grow. The pak choi has done well and it’ll be good to try fresh new green things over winter.

Tatsoi seedlings everywhere

Even when it’s grey, it’s still beautiful. This is a snap I took of the cloud inversions sweeping across the Knoydart mountains this morning from the croft. I don’t think I’ll ever get blasé about this view.

The deer are here in such numbers now that it’s almost impossible to grow anything unprotected in our outdoor croft raised beds. We’ve been left with no choice but to fence off an area if we want to get any harvests next year. A job for next spring, I think.

The posts and wire have arrived already. When it’s built, the fence will be eight feet tall, which is far from great to look at, but is sadly necessary.

I can’t wait to curl up by the Woodburner in the house this winter and plan out the protected growing area. The orchard will have several varieties of heritage apple, pears, damsons and maybe we’ll try cherries too.

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Burnished with righteousness

There’s been a distinct drop in temperature over the last few days. Enough for a sharp intake of breath whilst slipping legs between bedsheets at night. I think we may have to put the electric blanket back on. That alone saved us last winter, I’m sure of it.

Autumn blackberries

The hedgerows are full of blackberries which we must find time to get out and plunder. Autumn isn’t worth having without homemade apple and blackberry pies.

Perched atop our windy hill croft

The shed is now built and it’s so startlingly big that I did warn husband that if we weren’t in the house soon we’d be moving the bed into it. It’s better insulated than the caravan and you could seriously house entire families in there.

One of the bays inside

I know better than to get used to its exquisite emptiness, though. It’ll be full of boxes and building material in no time, and glimpses of the floor will soon become a rarity.

The house build continues after a few weeks hiatus with husbands back problems. We will clear the building materials out over the next week and hopefully continue the electrics, kitchens and bathrooms.

Stuff everywhere

We’ve been testing Osmo oil wood treatments on slips of spare wood for the cladding in the bathrooms. The second coat is drying at the moment then we’ll head in and compare. Everything looks so different in situ. The light makes a huge difference.

Osmo oil

We also made a second visit to Skye Sawmills yesterday to try and source oak planks for our sills.

The challenge is those enormous windows in the living area, which will need 4m long pieces, something that it’s proving almost impossible to find. If possible I didn’t want joins.

Brendan didn’t have oak that long, however he did have something interesting – old church pew planks from a dismantled church in Broadford. They’re at least 150 years old, burnished to a patina with the feverish righteousness of all those worshippers bottoms.

I love the idea of reusing old wood from a local church, and having a bit of history in our sparingly new home, so if the price is right we’d love to take them.

The holiest sills on the island!

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Autumn comes with a worktop

We awoke to a bright but cold morning on the island. There was a heavy dew on the grass, a sea haar clinging to the Sound, and a definite touch of autumn in the air.

Cold, sunny and clear

The butter was cold and hard in its dish in the caravan kitchen.

We clutched our mugs of hot coffee at breakfast for comfort and put the fire on to take the chill off the air. The season is on the turn as we move into September, and I feel a new sense of urgency to be in the house.

Breakfast coffee and all-bran (and yes it’s nearly time for porridge)

The installers arrived this morning to fit the Dekton worktops in the kitchen. They bumped up the track in a rusty old van which looked as if it was struggling to make it, and were unloaded into the house and working away within minutes.

I have worktops! Worktops that won’t melt if I put a hot pan down on them by mistake! I’m stupidly excited by the prospect of that. This pattern of Dekton is called Fossil, and I spent a good ten minute looking for ammonites bedded into the material, but without success. And I still love it.

PS. that long mark that looks like a crack is meant to be there – all part of it looking like fissured stone, apparently..

Now that the worktops are in, we can go ahead and fit the drawers and doors into the kitchen carcasses.

Then start to build the appliance wall. The hob, sink, dishwasher and freezer are here already in boxes waiting to be fitted, and the rest will be on order shortly.

It’s a constant juggle for space. The light at the end of the tunnel is that the barn is going up next week and for the first time since the build began we will have storage space.

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Summer harvests and winter preparation

We’ve not had much in the way of a summer yet despite us being at the end of July, but the croft and the polycrub continue to feed us.

We dug out the rest of the onions yesterday. These are a variety called Keravel Pink, and they’ve produced what I think is quite a respectable harvest.

I chose these as they were the closest I could find to the Roscoff onions that I used to love when I lived in France. They’re an onion with a slightly blush colour, and sweet, firm flesh. They’re now hung up to dry, ready for use.

Husband also dug the rest of the potatoes as we were starting to detect slug – and believe it or not, deer damage. We’ve had a few meals already from them. It’s a smaller crop than last year, probably caused by the cold, wet weather and they could have done with a bit longer in the ground, but they’re a reasonable size. To be honest, we like ‘em small and sweet.

I planted Edzell Blue and Casablanca varieties from Scottish seed potatoes and Red Rooster from a bag of sprouted supermarket potatoes. The supermarket ones outperformed the specialist ones by a reasonable margin for a second year!

The first of the carrots are ready now, and I’m going to sow more. They’re sweet and very flavoursome.

The sweetcorn experiment is progressing! We have flowers and silks on a few of the plants, so I’ve been hand pollinating with the hope that we manage to get a few cobs at least.

All in all, not bad for a low-effort croft nurtured using organic principles and no-dig beds, in this weather and whilst not at my best due to illness. No pesticides, no inorganic fertilisers, no chemicals. I love that we can pick produce straight from the plant. The soil is fertile and giving, and we will continue to develop the beds next year with windbreaks and deer protection.

It seems strange but I can already detect the first wisps of autumn drifting in from the edges. The leaves on the ancient horse chestnut at the end of the lane are starting to turn russet. The seed heads on the long croft grasses are ripe and heavy. The season feels about to turn.

Time to start sowing the winter crops.

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Autumn gales

Winds on the island can be severe. We arrived here a year ago in the teeth of Storm Aiden, and almost a year later to the day here we are again with the autumn gales upon us.

This is not a photo of a stormy shoreline

We are a bit more seasoned this time around. I know now that the house is unlikely to blow down, and that the caravan is equally unlikely to sail down the hillside, tethered as it is to four large tonne bags of hardcore.

Hardcore bag tethered to caravan

However, knowledge doesn’t make it any less dramatic. Yesterday evening as we went to bed the noise of the rain and the hail on the metal roof of the caravan was deafening. Once the hail flurry had passed the sound of the wind whistling through the lorry strap tethers took over. The caravan also rocked vigorously as the wind fought to lift it, only to be slapped back down with the counterweight of the hardcore bags.

One on each corner …

All in all, a bit difficult to sleep. It was like being in a washing machine at times. It’s testament to our familiarity with it now that we somehow managed to drift off and got a reasonably good nights sleep.

Winter is almost upon us. Get the hot chocolate in and dig out those big jumpers!

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Soup weather

It all started with a big paper bag of chestnut mushrooms. Perfectly in season, brown, earthy and fresh. Smelling of autumn. That, and a glance out of the caravan window at the rain convinced me that it was definitely soup weather.

Sautéed mushrooms

Much as I like a bowl of Heinz mushroom soup as a quick, comforting lunch, a homemade soup is really in another league and is well worthwhile the small effort that it takes.

Mushrooms, chopped sweet chestnuts, garlic, fresh parsley and tarragon are the mainstays of this soup. A slosh of cream or creme fraiche finishes it. It’s warming and delicious, and cooks up in less than thirty minutes.

Mushroom & sweet chestnut soup

As winter approaches I make soup much more often. There’s usually a pot of soup simmering on the stove most days in this weather. Soups are so versatile, and can be made cheaply from the simplest of ingredients.

Amongst our personal favourites are mushroom and chestnut, fresh chicken, winter vegetable, butternut and sweet potato, leek and potato, Cullen skink and lentil soups. Not having a blender here in the caravan, all of our soups are left “au-naturel” and somehow feel all the more of a meal for that.

Served up with warm cheese scones, or good crusty sourdough bread, soups are definitely the food of autumn.

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Wintering

I’m sitting in the caravan on the croft sipping a cup of tea and watching the rain pelt the windows. The sea and the mountains have all disappeared and we are completely enveloped in dense, grey cloud.

Tea tea tea

We’ve had three weeks of very heavy rain and high winds to welcome the change of season and remind us that winter is but a blink away.

I honestly don’t mind the rain, and after surviving one highland winter in the high winds I’m much less nervous about the gales. I’ve learned to trust the bags of hardcore and lorry strapping that are holding the caravan down. We may rock a bit in the weather but we haven’t taken off yet..perhaps I shouldn’t speak too soon 😊.

As winter approaches though, the croft is saturated. I dashed out yesterday between rain flurries in my wellies to look at the raised beds, aware that I desperately need to weed and get the autumn garlic into the soil soon.

Rain rain rain

But it will all have to wait a little longer. It’s like a quagmire out there. There’s no fighting this weather; we just have to sit it out and grab the moments of respite when we can to start preparing for winter. At least husband can work in the relative shelter of the house on the plumbing, and is warm and dry as he solders pipes.

The composting situation is well sorted though. We visited a neighbouring croft yesterday after a social media appeal to reduce her horse dung mountain. We filled eight big feed bags with well rotted horse poo and trailered them back to shovel into our compost bins. Amazing stuff.

More trips are likely to be needed – we’ve hardly dented the dung mountain at all.. we’re so lucky to have this source of organic manure nearby. It will do wonders for our soil.

As soon as the rain slackens we’ll dress the beds and mulch the soil ready for overwintering. I’m probably going to put the environmesh back on too so that the kale, beets, parsnips, onions and garlic that will remain in the beds over winter can enjoy a bit of protection from the wind. It makes a big difference to the battering that they take.

The stags have been roaring on the hillsides for a few nights now. They do that in October as they compete for dominance and gather their hinds for the winter. It’s quite an uncanny, primal noise, and they’re clearly pretty close by. Next year, deer fencing is a must, before the trees go in.

For now, I’m embracing autumn and the imminence of winter. Tea, books by the fire, clear starry skies and warming drams of homemade atholl brose in the evenings to keep the weather at bay. Yep , the oats and whisky for our first bottle of the season are steeping as we speak…

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Storms and silence

It’s been a while since my last blog post.

The weeks have rustled into full blown autumn here on the island. The hedgerows are full of berries, the heather is fading, and as I often do at the turn of the season, I’m filled with silence and a degree of sadness.

I don’t know why I feel often feel low as autumn approaches. I’m really not mourning summer, but maybe the combination of house build delays, the prospect of another winter in the caravan -which we hadn’t expected- and being a menopausal woman have all conspired to bring my mood down more than normal at this change of the season.

The storms have started, with two weeks of solid rain and wind lashing the croft. I’ve not wanted to leave the caravan. I’ve cooked, baked, read books and cleaned, but apart from that I’ve really not had the energy to do much and haven’t wanted to see people.

I’m looking forward to the screed arriving at some point over the next few weeks for the floor now that we have completed the underfloor heating pipe installation, connection and testing. We are getting there, just very slowly. Our hopes to be in the house by the end of the year are no longer viable and it’s now looking more like summer next year before it will be ready for us to move in. We will survive.

Rainbow over the sound

As with all things, there is often a silver lining. Storms here mean rainbows. Several each day. Small bursts of colour in the washed windows in the grey to remind us that nature and the seasons are full of wonder and magic.

I will try and get out more. Walking is said to be better than Prozac, best friend in France tells me. She has also recommended taking vitamin D and Magnesium.

And there are always pies, which magically lift a mood. Bake more of them.

Pear tart with frangipan

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Storm Aiden

We woke to 60 mph South Westerly winds whipping up the waves and crashing them onto the rocks at Ardvasar Bay. The forecast was grim. Storm Aiden was in control and would fury unabated for the next two days.

We had originally planned to level and stabalise the static as our first job, necessary before we could connect up the electricity, water and gas bottles. But there was no way that we could safely work under or around the caravan in this wind.

We’d purchased railway sleepers to create a stable platform for the static, and they needed to be cut to size, a job that we managed to do inside the shell of the house so that we could avoid the driving rain and wind.

For now, we need to wait for the weather to abate. And make sure that we’ve always got a Plan B and C in our back pockets so that everything doesn’t stop when we get a storm.

Just heard that England is going back into full lockdown from Thursday. Even though we’re not set up properly yet, I’m glad that we’re here rather than London for this one…