Category: croft

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The final few yards

It’s less than a week now until we move, and we’re starting to flag a bit.

Every room is full of boxes, either full or waiting to be filled, lining the rooms like some cardboard termite mound whilst we squeeze through tunnels between them.

It’s tiring. Both the constant decision making process – to store, to the caravan, to the charity box, to trash – and the packing and manhandling of the boxes to safe stacks around the house.

There is nothing that brings home the stark reality of having too much stuff like the process of having to pack it away.

To be fair, the bulk of it is books. I honestly don’t know how many boxes of books we have. It must be in the hundreds.

Husband and I both share an abiding love of books, but combining our collections when we married three years ago has resulted in a veritable tsunami of books. Working in the book industry for major publishers over the last thirteen years has only fed the beast. It’s overwhelming. We’ve never had them all unpacked…

When we get to the island we’re going to have to do further weeding out and disposal. There simply won’t be enough wallspace to build enough book shelves to take them all, I’m sure of it.

However, we’re now on the final stretch. The last few yards.

The day of the move is almost upon us, She says with a big, tired smile.

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Apple and blackberry handpies

Before I put away all the baking stuff I had to make something sweet and seasonal to give us a bit of a lift through all this packing.

Apple and blackberry hand pies. They’re never going to win any beauty contests, but they tasted delicious.

Shortcrust pastry was enriched with egg, sugar and ground almonds to make it crumbly and crispy on the outside, almost like a biscuit. These were filled with lightly poached Coxes Orange Pippin apples and big, juicy blackberries.

We ate these over the last few days whenever we needed a lift. It helped.

Food can be medicine for the spirit, you know.

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If it was’nae fer yer wellies..

… Where would ye be?

(in the immortal words of The Big Yin, Billy Connolly).

I’ve just stocked up with a new pair of wellies. Wellies are the things that everyone on the island wears just about constantly, so a spare pair isn’t a bad idea.

As I have wide calves (read fat legs) I find that normal wellies are too tight for comfort, or that I simply can’t get them on at all.

I can’t tell you the money that I’ve wasted in the past in the interests of keeping my feet dry only to find that the boots only come so far up my legs before turning into rubber tourniquets. I quite like my blood supply, thank you.

I’ve found a company that sells wide leg wellies with little adjusting buckles so that you can fiddle until you’re comfy.

They arrived this morning, well packaged and in a funky drawstring mud bag for transportation. I’m impressed!

Thank you Jileon.com. You’ve made this fat-legged crofters wifie very happy today 😀👍.

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Upcycling

Whilst sorting through the cupboards to pack we came across some Turkish kilim fabric covers that I had bought some time ago for very little money and had stashed away with the linens.

After I’d bought them, I’d discovered that they were all odd sizes, each one cut from an upcycled piece of old kilim. Because I had no cushion pads to fit them I’d clearly put them away to sort another day. But looking at them again today I thought they’d do very well for the static.

A number of them showed signs of mending, and all of them were old, vegetable dyed weavings. I’m very drawn to textiles, and especially to those with some age and history to them.

I didn’t want to buy more cushion pads. So I repurposed an old, single duvet that we were about to ditch and made three cushion pads from it to fit the covers.

I love their slightly faded, soft colours, imperfect patterns and visible mendings. You can feel the hands of the past on them and I can’t help wondering about their journey and who has repaired them in previous generations. It feels good to give both them and the old quilt a second life.

The rest of the linen cupboard has also been sorted and the old sheets and pillowcases that are way past their best will be used as decorating sheets or cut up as cleaning cloths and dusters this weekend, ready to be pressed into service in cleaning and painting the static in a few weeks time.

When did we give up repairing linens and buying new whenever we felt like it?

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Ancient Drovers Track

This is the ancient Drovers track that runs up the side of our croft, providing access to the common grazings on the hill behind us for the people of the village and their sheep.

It’s a path not much used these days except for occasional walkers, but once upon a time it was clearly well used judging by the width of it.

I love how the heather embankments enclose and protect it, creating a sunken lane in the landscape. The colours of purple, gold, russet and green in the low autumn sunlight are beautiful.

There is one lone tree (I will need to check what this is) bravely growing through the hedging, and standing proud despite the predominant winds with no company for shelter.

My eyes are usually drawn the other way, to the South, to our view of the Sound and the mountains beyond, but there is an equal if more understated beauty in the hills to the north of us.

Autumn in Skye is a truly stunning season.

Two weeks to go and the anticipation is almost painful.

All photos by kind permission of the wonderful Sara Louise Taylor @sara_louise_taylor on Instagram.

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Work boots and packing boxes

We ran out of bread yesterday afternoon, so husband offered to pop into the local Tescos to pick some up.

The last thing I was expecting was for him to come back with a bargain pair of steel-toe capped work boots for me.

He returned and presented me with them with a flourish worthy of a man clutching a large bunch of red roses. Who says romance is dead!

I guess this means that I am going to have to pull my weight on the build, then… 🤔

I secretly love them. I may never take them off.

These have been added to the rapidly growing pile of knee pads, work trousers and power tools that are filling every free space in the house at the moment. This is the reality of a household getting ready to move in just a few weeks time.

Bertie, our ancient but lovely spaniel, has been reduced to sleeping in odd corners wedged between the boxes wherever he can.

I can see that he is perplexed by the erosion of his space, with boxes forming cardboard labyrinths around the house.

Poor dog. At his age he deserves peace and quiet, and a degree of constancy, and all we give him is change..

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Planning for the internals

Now that the exterior of the house is mainly complete, the builders will be finishing on site and handing over to us to make a start on the interior.

We had originally planned for the builders to do everything, but cost estimates quickly became prohibitive once they’d been discussed and confirmed. The build costs rose over 30% above the architects calculation estimates, leaving us with no alternative but to complete the house ourselves. We’d allocated some contingency, but the magnitude of this was beyond what we could absorb.

We are moving up and into the static in a few weeks time so that we can work full time on the build. As two IT people rather than builders, this is going to be a challenge!

The first week will be busy connecting water and power to the caravan and hooking up the gas bottles for heat and cooking so that we’ve got the basics in place. We also need to build steps for easier access, replace some of the flooring, fit a new boiler and give it a quick lick of paint. This will be our home for the forseeable few months and we need it to be warm, dry and comfortable. Only then can we make a start on the house itself.

Then we start with the foil membrane on the inside of the walls for heat retention and moisture control. There is already protective waterproof membrane on the outer walls underneath the cladding, but to ensure that the house is as sealed as possible we need to wrap the inside of the walls too before plasterboarding.

After that, the underfloor heating, screed and MVHR ducting. There’s something that gives me infantile pleasure as part of the generation that grew up with Alien to have ducting in the house… 🙂.

It’s certainly going to be different to our current lives, and I’m just so damned grateful that husband is a practical man who doesn’t seem daunted by what seems to me to be a whole mountain of challenges…

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Autumn cladding progress


Pictures taken on a blustery, rainy autumn day last week on the island. The first frosts were a few nights ago, so autumn is definitely well underway.

The larch cladding is nearly complete now. There seem to be a few bits left around the rear dormer bathroom window that have yet to be finished, but the scaffolding is down and we’re hoping that these remaining areas won’t take long.


We’re also still waiting for the water to be connected.

What’s needed before we can get approval to connect is a small value, simple return valve, but it seems that obtaining one and getting a plumber to fit it is holding everything up. It’s frustrating at this stage with just weeks to go until we will be living on site. We can’t live for long without piped water to the caravan, and with no date in hand for this to be done it’s a worry on a very long list of things to think about. It will happen.


I can’t wait for the larch to weather. It looks strangely stark in the landscape at the moment in its raw colour, and I much prefer the muted grey tones of weathered wood.

We have neighbours in a nearby  village on the island who have also just built a larch clad home and who are a few months ahead of us in terms of build progress. Theirs is silvering already, so I’m hoping ours will soften too very soon.



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Everything oatmeal

Many years ago, after my first trip to the now famous Three Chimneys Restaurant on Skye, which was run in those days by Shirley Spear, I bought the cookbook of the same name.

It was a beautiful thing. Full of generous recipes from the restaurant and home, scattered with anecdotes of local life on the island. It’s now sadly out of print, although I still have a treasured copy in my boxes ready to be resurrected once I have my cookbook shelves up and running in the new house.

Many of the recipes have become firm favourites when I can get the ingredients, such as Bracadale crab tart and Shirley’s legendary marmalade sponge pudding.

The one that is the simplest of them all, and in many ways the most satisfying, is Skirlie.

There are many derivations of Skirlie in Scotland as it’s an old, traditional food. Shirleys version is simply oatmeal fried with finely chopped onions, butter, seasoning and parsley or chopped chives. In this version it’s shaped into balls and roasted around a chicken like stuffing to add a savoury, crunchy, filling addition to your roast meat.

The first time I ate it I loved it. It was a revelation in its simplicity and its nutty, savoury taste.

I’ve also discovered an interesting blog site called Cailleachs Herbarium which gives the recipe for a fermented oatmeal called Sowans.

This is another ancient recipe, I suspect not produced or eaten very much these days.

With today’s interest in probiotic foods I’m surprised that this homegrown, traditional Scottish version hasn’t become more known. Sowans is similar in its use of live cultures to the yoghurt probiotic drinks that we buy that cost a small fortune.

Maybe with the popularity of oat milk and the known health benefits of probiotic, fermented foods this will come back into fashion?

With husband a lover of ayran, I’m definitely going to give this a try.

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Static Adventures

We had a busy three days on the island checking the progress on site, talking to the builders, getting the static caravan in place and meeting a few neighbours in a socially distanced manner. It was good.

We came home tired but happy.

The caravan arrived on Tuesday. Watching from the top of the croft I could see that the lorry transporting it had got part the way up the steep access road, but was losing traction on the hardcore surface of the track. It tried a few times, but rolled back in each instance. My heart sank for a few moments thinking that all our plans would come to nothing.

Luckily for us there was still a digger on the croft, and one of our enterprising builders used a tow rope to connect it to the front of the lorry and reversing, dragged it up the hill over the steep part of the track. Relief was not the word!

With help from a kind neighbour Donnie and his tractor, the static was manoevered into place behind the house, where we hoped it would benefit from some shelter from the prevailing South Westerlies.

It’s really exposed to the elements at the top of the croft there. There was a stiff 40km per hour breeze blowing on the day that we moved it, so we could guess what it would feel like in the more typical winter gales of 70-90km per hour….

Four one tonne bags of hardcore are being delivered to site today and friends have kindly arranged to strap the caravan down to them with lorry straps to anchor it until we get to site again at the end of October.

It needs proper stabilising on a base, some steps, a lick of paint, some small internal repairs and a good airing, but those things will have to wait until we’re there permanently now. Soon.

The builders have done a good job, and we were really pleased with the quality of the work. The cladding looks great and should be finished in the next week. The roof slating completed yesterday.

A few more weeks and the external elements of the build will be complete ready to hand over to us for the rest.