Life, self-build and much mud on the Isle of Skye
Day two of the installation draws to a close, and we are gifted a glorious sunset over the polycrub.
It glows like it was made of pink plastic, brushed by the very final rays of the sun sinking over the hillside at the back of the croft.
I know that I am going to love growing in here. I’ve started the planting plans already… of course!
Just glorious.
The day has come. The polycrub is being installed.
With luck, the day dawned clear and dry on the island, with no wind. The joiners arrived first thing and after confirming door and window preferences, immediately set to work.
The ground holes have been drilled, the wooden posts have been concreted in and the plastic pipes have been manoeuvred into place. It looked like the carcass of a whale with the hoops sticking out of the ground like ribs for a while until it was covered with polycarbonate.
The wooden struts that hold the hoops rigid have been installed, and the wooden skirt has been built. The first three sheets of polycarbonate have been laid onto the hoops and secured.
A good days work.
There is still much to be done with the construction of the door and the windows for the gables as well as the rest of the polycarbonate sheeting to be laid. But I can already get a feel for it’s size and robustness.
I’m very excited. Tomatoes, chillies, cucumbers, squashes, strawberries and courgettes here we come!
I’ve always wanted a polycrub. As soon as I set eyes on this windswept, exposed croft I knew that it was our best chance of growing anything.
For those of you unfamiliar with this divine beast, a polycrub is a growing tunnel, like a polytunnel. The difference is that it is made from recycled fish farm piping and rigid polycarbonate sheeting, making it very strong.
It is designed and made on the Shetland Isles, where it was developed to cope with the exceptionally strong winds and stormy growing conditions there. It’s guaranteed for up to 120 mph winds, so it can withstand anything that the Isle of Skye climate can throw at it.
I love that it’s made from sustainable and recycled materials, and that it’s so strong. The first year of growing taught me that our biggest challenge on this exposed site was going to be the wind. We will plant shelter belts to help the raised beds, but this will provide much greater protection for a wide variety of crops.
Excitement has peaked this week with the arrival of the man and digger to level the site, and the delivery of the kit itself. The joiner will be here in two weeks time to construct it. We are installing it between the raised beds and the compost bins in the growing area of the croft.
As I write, a snow storm has just swept across the sound. It may be the last day of March but the challenging conditions continue, and my seedlings need protection. I can’t wait for the polycrub to be up and running.
In a short burst of mild, sunny weather this morning I rammed on my wellies and headed out on to the croft. It’s well overdue time to prepare the raised beds for the seasons growing, and I’ve been waiting for a break in the storms for weeks.
The deer have been terrible this winter. They’ve eaten everything that was left in the beds, which I stupidly didn’t net for protection. Actually, the nets wouldn’t have survived the storms anyway.
Roll on next year when we will have time to deer fence the croft. I think it’s the only way.
These are the remains of a couple of my perennial Taunton Deane kale plants. There’s basically nothing left of them, and I think that the damage is so severe that they won’t re-grow. The deer have even eaten rhubarb, spiky artichoke leaves and garlic, all things that they’re not supposed to like! It’s soul destroying after such a productive year of cropping from them.
However, despite the deer damage there are tentative, wonderful signs of spring.
The mint has started to re-grow.
The berry cuttings are starting to break into bud.
We have the first signs of rhubarb leaves pushing up through the soil like wrinkled red aliens.
I managed to weed a couple of the raised beds and get some red onion sets in before my back started to complain and I decided to beat a tactical retreat. I must remember to take it slowly at the beginning of the season, otherwise I’ll seize up after a whole winter of inactivity. And cake.
Gardening is a marathon, not a sprint. but it felt so good to be out there again.
Rain is lashing down in torrents from a leaden grey sky as I write. There’s ice in it too, and a stiff north westerly wind to drive it home.
The badly fitting, single glazed windows of the caravan don’t seem to provide much protection against this weather as I peer out into the gloom. I’m well wrapped up with three layers, including thermals, and I’m still chilly.
We’ve had an incredible run of storms so far this year, one right upon the coat tails of the previous one. Storms Corrie, Dudley, Eunice and Franklin have rolled over the island in the last six weeks in rapid succession, bringing 80 mph winds, hail and snow with little respite in between.
We’ve had very disturbed sleep this past month as the worst of the winds seem to come after dark. When they start, the caravan rocks and shudders as if it’s alive, straining against the lorry straps that lash it down like a wounded animal.
The noise of the hailstorms is deafening. It’s impossible to sleep through. It’s as if someone is emptying buckets of marbles into a tin bath on your head. Even burrowing further under the warmth of the duvet doesn’t dull the noise.
I bake. I make bread and cakes to warm and sustain us. I make soups and stews and sweet, eggy puddings and crumbles.
I venture out in the small, quiet pockets of calm between the storms and wonder at the crofts capacity to hold water. Everything is sodden, soaked.
I wear many layers. Recently I’ve taken to wearing my fingerless gloves in the caravan during the day to keep my hands warm. Tea has become an important, warming ritual in the afternoons, hands wrapped around the comforting heat of the mug.
Spring is coming, I tell myself. It’s coming.
The days are definitely lengthening now , perceptibly so. Spring should be on its way, although no one seems to have told the weather gods that. It’s still hail, snow and gales most days.
I did a quick rustle about in the raised beds this week and although I should be clearing and planting soon, it’s still far too cold and wet. The garlic has popped it’s head up a little, but that’s it.
I’ve ordered the polycrub. We did apply for a crofters grant to help with the cost, but we were unsuccessful. They wanted a five year business plan showing anticipated horticultural sales and letters of guarantee from local outlets that they would take our produce.
This isn’t the way that we’ve planned to do things. We will sell produce at the croft gate if we have any surplus, but we are mainly growing for ourselves and our neighbours, not as a fully commercial enterprise. As such we don’t qualify. We’re disappointed, of course, but we’ve bitten the bullet and gone ahead with buying the polycrub anyway.
It’s six metres by four of rigid polycarbonate sheeting, fish-farm tube loveliness. After the last few months of storms I’m doubly convinced that this is the only thing that would survive the winds on this exposed hillside.
It will revolutionise what we can grow, though. Tomatoes, chillies, squash, cherries, basil… lots of tender plants that wouldn’t thrive in our cold, windswept raised beds. We hope to have it installed in April, just in time to move crops in there for the summer.
Very exciting!
Now to clear out the caravan spare room out from a whole year of being a junk room, and set it back up to start seedling production again. It will be good to see the blue grow lights illuminating the hillside once more.. 😊
Sometimes, when you’ve lived through two successive storms and the wind is getting up for a third wave, there is a need for Emergency Cake.
Today was such a day. As the wind roared around the walls of the caravan and the rain lashed at the windows, I looked outside and declared the weather so foul that it qualified as an Emergency Cake Day.
The key was not to go out to get any ingredients. Far too horrid out there. I would have been swept into a ditch in an instant. Not a good way to go.
So it was rather lucky that I just happened to have a jar of cherry jam and a small punnet of fresh cherries in the fridge, and some cream. I have no idea how that happened. The Seventies were calling me.
As regular readers will know, the oven in the caravan is tiny. One cake in my one square baking tin fills the whole cooking space. It’s a testament to how badly I wanted this that I was prepared to prepare and bake the cake twice (in the same tin) and sandwich them together stickily and unctuously with jam, kirsch, fresh cherries and cream.
And so, dear reader, two hours later both layers were baked. The filling was spread onto the base layer. The top layer was manoeuvred into place. There was much chocolate grating to hide the fissures.
No fancy piping gear here, I’m afraid. This is the Seventies at its most fabulously rustic in cake form.
Any locals fancying a slice had better battle their way to the top of our rain-lashed hill before it all disappears. A pot of tea and an inelegant, squidgy slice of lusciousness awaits.
Watching a film recently, cosied up in the caravan on a cold winters evening, I couldn’t help but notice that there were over 15 minutes of film credits at the end of the footage.
It got me thinking how complex things have become in life (as well as how every single person involved in the film in any capacity now gets a mention).
It also made me smile when I thought of what the credits reel would look like if our house build and croft regeneration were a film. I’m saving up most of the honourable mentions for my long suffering husband, but there is one outlier that I think also deserves a shout-out.
Tunnocks wafer biscuits.
There is a caramel wafer biscuit made in Glasgow, Scotland, a part of daily life here and every bit as Scottish as porridge, haggis and single malt. It’s just called Tunnocks locally.
Tunnocks is an institution. I always have a packet of them in to fuel the day with a strong cup of tea.
The plasterers shun the dark chocolate variety as too sophisticated for their tastes, and go for the milk chocolate ones with their tea and two sugars every time.
Husband likes the dark chocolate ones best.
I think he’d smile at being thought dangerously sophisticated…😊😘.
They may not be big enough to crawl through, but what the MVHR ducts lack in girth they make up for in number…
It looks a bit like spaghetti-geddon at the moment, with the ducts going everywhere. These loose ends will be fed into a manifold over the appliance wall in the kitchen, hence the waving around in mid air look. Husband has assured me he has it all under control and I have, to be fair, seen much labelling and even checklist tables.
You can see from this photo how useful the posi joists are in accommodating pipes, ducts and wiring. The gaps between the steel sections are big enough to be woven between.
The plasterboards are also going up. It’s strange how much they change the dimensions you perceive in each room.
All in all, it’s feeling like a good start to the year. The rain and sleet showers come and go but watching them from the big windows at the front of the house whilst work continues within is always inspiring.
The winter solstice is nearly upon us. Somehow, this far north, in the long stretch of dark days, this date takes on a special significance.
From the 21st December onwards the days slowly start to get longer. There’s no appreciable difference in the amount of daylight in January, I always think – but by February it’s definitely slightly lighter. It’s good to feel that psychologically at least we’ve turned the corner and that spring is on its way. Much as I love winter.
Skye is definitely a winter island with its snowy peaks and wild winter weather. The year here has taught us to invest well in thermals, warm throws and plenty of blankets! I’ve recently found Vinted, a vintage second hand site that has proved fabulous for spare fleeces and wraps at very little cost. I seem to be building a wee nest of wool in the caravan on these cold days. 😊
I’m watching the clouds scud across the sky in the aftermath of extreme winds last night. It reached around 80mph around midnight, and we got very little sleep in the caravan whilst we were buffeted around like a small boat on an angry sea. Luckily the straps all held and apart from being slightly tired and grumpy we have escaped unscathed.
Breakfast this morning was a bleary-eyed affair with a second mug of hot coffee needed before being alert enough to get moving. We will need a quick spot check for damage.
I have a few more presents to wrap, the Christmas chocolate orangettes to make (the test batch were all distributed, eaten and declared good enough for gifts) and then we are about all set for the festive week. The preliminary air tightness test on the house is happening on Wednesday this week, so another milestone is imminent, and we will be very interested to see how it scores. Husband will then crack on with the wiring.
Stay warm and safe, everyone. Don’t stress in the run up to a Christmas. It will all get done, and if it doesn’t, poo, who cares.
Ravencroft Skye 