Sea Haar, or ‘sea fret’ as it is also known in the North East of Britain, is used to describe a cold fog that accumulates at sea rather than on land.
Over the last week we’ve had some spectacular examples over the Sound, with layers of cloud, or fog, lying low over the water like a blanket of snow.
It’s usually burned off with the rising air temperatures by about lunchtime, but it has created some amazing looking scenes that we’ve watched from the house.
Every month brings different weather conditions and changing vistas. Every day this view looks different.
It’s all growing well in our raised bed experiment. Except the leeks, which are spindly little pencils so far.
I will be patient.
I’m mainly delighted and surprised by the profusion. It seems to have come all of a sudden. We’re cropping lettuces, potatoes, kale, sorrel, purple sprouting brocolli, chives, parsley, dill, mint, and rocket.
The beets, shallots and onions look nearly ready. The garlic is coming along, and the mammoth red cabbage leaves are starting to turn in. The parsnips are growing, as are the carrots.
It’s the rain, long hours of daylight and mild temperatures. Suddenly everything is leaping up as if wanting to make up for the slow, cold start of our late spring.
First crop of potatoesKale, beetroots, red-veined sorrel, onionsPeasParsnipsEndive and carrotsUncle Bert’s kalePurple sprouting broccoli
One of the main challenges of a highland summer are the midges.
We’re luckier than most being at the top of a windy hill. Midges can’t fly in winds of more than 6mph, apparently, so we pray daily for a good, brisk wind.
Many has been the warm, sunny evening when we would have brought out the firepit and barbecued long into the night if it weren’t for the midges. Once they start flying there’s no escape and no respite. The worst of it is that we want to sleep with the caravan windows thrown open on these warm summer nights, but we can’t without swarms of the little horrors coming in to plague us.
We smother ourselves in Smidge and don our midge net hats to try and avoid the worst of them. I’m counting the months until temperatures dip enough to kill them off. By September, I’m hoping.
The other downside of the croft in the summer with the proximity of neighbouring livestock is horseflies. The locals call these Clegs. I’ve been bitten several times by these horrible things whilst working on the croft, and unlike midge bites, they’re huge and need disinfecting. They land like ninjas, incredibly softly, so that you don’t notice them until they’ve started scissoring away a circle of skin from you.
Giant Dark Horsefly
Husband took a picture of this one on the caravan window a few days ago. It was a good inch and a half long, the same size as a hornet. It was probably a Giant Dark Horsefly, and although I don’t think anything this large has landed on me, I shudder to think of this airbus of the fly world anywhere so near to hand..
The days are long and filled with light. It’s also been a week of warm, hazy weather so we’ve been making the most of it with friends whilst it’s here. We’re never more than a few days away from rain here on the island!
A fellow Instagrammer bought a cottage here on the North of the island for renovation at about the same time that we purchased the croft, and he and his family drove down to meet us yesterday to take a look at the house build and what we were doing with the land.
The car scrambled up the drive to the top of the hill, its doors opened, and out burst five gorgeous kids, the parents and two dogs. It was a complete explosion of sound and energy as we rounded up enough tumblers for drinks, answered questions, watered the dogs and showed them around.
For two people normally unused to groups of people and the sound and motion that accompany them, especially after a quiet and pretty isolated last six months, it was quite exhausting, albeit in the nicest of ways! I am in awe of parents who can cope with such levels of energy. We have become unused to people…
We sat in what was left of the sun with a vegan BBQ (simple chickpea patties, vegan sausages, garlic fried potatoes and grilled red peppers) and watched the clouds gather over the mountains of Knoydart.
Sweetness was added with a vegan strawberry trifle made in the biggest salad bowl I could find. Minty, their daughter, made delicious chocolate cupcakes.
A lovely day. The rain did start towards the end of the afternoon and we had to decamp to the house, but it didn’t ruin anything.
As we waved them off we reflected that since living here we’ve spent time with more people in the last six months, despite all Covid restrictions, than we did in the previous five years in London. For two massive intraverts, that’s astonishing. It’s been a summer of people.
Jonathan is a brilliant photographer and he took these iconic pictures whilst here. You can find more of his images on Instagram @skye.cottage.
One of the things that having no kitchen tools here in the caravan has meant is that we don’t “process” any foods. This simply means that nothing we eat is smooth. Everything is chunky.
For example, when I make a vegetable soup, which I often used to blend to a silky puree with a stick blender or food processor, I now leave it au naturel. I’ve got quite attached to real chunks of vegetables in my soup rather than a blended uniformity.
Hummus
The same is true for hummus. I often make this by hand because it’s cheaper and I think much more delicious than shop bought. I can control exactly what goes into it. I add tahini, lemon zest, garlic, fresh parsley and good olive oil.
However, I’ve been used to zapping it up in the food processor to the usual smooth slurry we’re all used to seeing in the deli counter tubs.
Now I’m having to hand-crush chickpeas with a fork, an undertaking not for the faint hearted or weak of thumb. It creates a rustic, very chunky hummus, which was a bit of a shock to the system to start with, but which I actually now prefer.
So, once we are in the house, with a real kitchen with appliances once again, I shall remember these learnings.
We will keep to our chunky living. Life isn’t all smooth. We may as well enjoy it whilst we still have our own teeth 😊.
Another significant milestone. Our first salad from the croft!
For you rampant food producers out there with your polytunnels, greenhouses and fertile growing beds this is going to seem a bit of a damp squib, but we’ve just cropped our first bowl of salad from the croft and I’m doing my happy dance!
Salad leaves
It’s a mix of endive, red lettuce, red veined sorrel, Uncle Bert’s kale, mint and beetroot leaves. All grown organically outdoors from seed here on the croft.
Other things are growing too in these long, light filled days of summer. I can see a few purple heads of sprouting broccoli emerging, and the potatoes will be ready in the next few weeks.
Parsley grown from seed
The leeks have been a big fail – they’re still tiny and very slow growing. Kales, cabbage, garlic, beetroot, potatoes, herbs, and salad leaves have all grown well. The carrots and parsnips are small yet but time will tell. The globe artichokes are tiny plants, a few leaves apiece, but they seem to be surviving. I’m hoping that they’ll muscle-up and come into their own next year. The berry bushes are establishing. The borage and comfrey are flowering.
Wonderful comfrey
I’m just relieved that it hasn’t all been some monstrous failure. We’ve had one meal from the croft at least!
The key learning so far is exposure. We knew it, but just didn’t have the time to do it. We need to get windbreaks up and hedging in this autumn before the main growing season next year.
Small milestones on our journey. Forgive a woman’s unseemly crowing.
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere we are approaching the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year.
Beautiful pink evening light on the Sound, photo by Tricia Petri-Clark
On this day at this latitude we have daylight for eighteen hours, and it never really gets dark.
The significance of the Summer Solstice is two-fold: it’s the lightest time of the year but at the same time it’s also the moment at which the year turns to ever shortening days. A bit bitter-sweet, I’d say. Just as we’re celebrating the light we’re also recognising that it’s on its way out.
I’m holding on to these long, light filled days, though. I wake with the dawn at 4.30 am. There seems little point forcing it, so I relax and watch the often rosy dawn diffuse across the sky from the comfort of our bed. I don’t want to wake my husband who is asleep next to me, so I don’t leap out and do something productive. I just relax, read a book, the news, or blogs until it’s time to get up. It still feels like a guilty pleasure not struggling into the shower and work clothes, to be honest. The day stretches ahead of me like a purring cat.
I love this time of year. This is a first for us up on the island in June. Everything is green, lush and growing. The skylark and cuckoo calls fill the cool morning air and I’m reminded that even though the house is far from finished that we are very lucky to be here, just breathing all this in.
It’s been nearly a year since we saw family, with the stepsons being based in Manchester for university and work.
At last one of them has been able to make it up here to the island and we’re enjoying sharing this amazing place with them.
I’d forgotten the effect that Skye can have on someone when they visit for the first time.
It’s been over twenty years since I first came here, and although the grandeur and beauty of the landscape doesn’t diminish, its impact becomes less over the years as its mountains and seas become more familiar. You forget that first, overwhelming intake of breath when the magnitude of this landscape hits you for the first time.
Rainshowers
Much as we do our best to convey the magnificence of place through our posted images, nothing can match the sense of being here physically, the wind in your hair, the rain on your face and the spirit of the island embracing you with its rawness. And there’s been nothing BUT rain over these past few days, sadly.
Amazing skies
It’s been remarkable to watch this sun-loving city dweller suddenly “get” what has made us want to build our lives here in this remote place. I know they both think we’ve gone a bit mad, but as we’ve travelled around over the last few days the sheer draw-dropping beauty of the island (albeit glimpsed through gaps in the rain) has definitely started to take hold.
What a glorious day. The croft is bursting with weeds (aka wildflowers) and we love it. We have buttercups growing in thick profusion next to the vegetable area, and it’s just so beautiful.
I couldn’t help have a bit of an ironic chuckle to myself today too. About two years ago we sowed pignut and bluebell seeds in the little copse on the western boundary before we moved onto the croft.
Now that we live here, we can see that we have a profusion of both popping up all over the croft. There was no need to sow them – they’re growing everywhere here naturally. The impatience and innocence of townies. All we had to do was wait and watch…
Pignuts!Hawthorn tree in full bloom
This is a beautiful time of the year here on the croft. Everything is in bloom, and the insects (sadly including the midges) are everywhere. It’s a price we’re prepared to pay. Anyway, we’ve got hats and nets…
We wake up each morning to the cuckoo, the skylarks and the swallows wheeling overhead.
I’d got so used to hardly ever seeing insects in the city that it’s been a bit of a shock to find ourselves cohabiting with so many at such close quarters. Weevils, oil beetles, lacewings, strange, alien looking creatures that we don’t know are friend or foe, but which have at least as much right to be here as us.
Google lens and plant apps are being used daily. This is richly diverse meadow and moorland, and we’re loving learning about it.
Oil beetle
The house build continues apace, with plasters and plumbers being lined up to help over the coming months, but it’s very hard not to get seduced into just being on the croft.
The weather here on the island has been very hot over the past week. The caravan has suddenly transformed from fridge to oven..
The temperature gauge inside recorded 26 degrees centigrade yesterday, and that’s uncomfortably warm for us. Especially when opening windows to try and catch a breeze results in swarms of midges coming in off the croft…reminder to self, we must get some midge netting fitted to the windows.
The seedlings however are loving it. Uncle Bert’s Kale is growing madly, the potato plants are all greening up nicely and I have my first bean on my borlotti bean plant!
It was too hot to cook indoors yesterday and we were too tired to summon up a BBQ, so we headed down to Camuscross early to try and get a table for a cold drink and some supper. It’s so good to be able to do that again now that lockdown has eased.
There are worse places to be on a hot June evening… This time last year we were in London… I know where I’d rather be.
Ravencroft Skye 