Category: heather

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Coos on the Croft

It was always going to happen, I guess.

The stock fences surrounding the croft are ancient and rickety at best. They’re on the list for replacement, but we haven’t got around to them yet.

I was making the bed one morning this week in the caravan when I looked up and saw one of Angus’s cows looking back at me from a few metres away. Chewing away contentedly. From by the vegetable beds. On the croft. Not on the hill where they should have been.

It suddenly computed.

The cows were on the croft. They’d gotten in somehow. There were several highland cows and their calves contentedly munching away on the long grass around the caravan.

Images from Hectorshighlandcoos

I struggled on with my wellies and ran outside. They were grazing happily, obviously enjoying the lush pasture of the long grass after the rather more thin pickings of the common grazings on the hill, where the grass is well cropped by sheep and interspersed with clumps of heather.

Husband was working on the house but came quickly, equally surprised. Luckily he spotted Angus and his son on the hillside, and between them they managed to herd the cows towards the gate at the top of the croft and eventually back onto the common grazings.

Highland cows are lovely, shaggy, gentle beasts, despite the horns. Bizarrely, they didn’t touch the vegetables at all, happy with eating the grass.

If we had better fences I’d be happy to have them on the croft occasionally to crop the grass down, but at the moment they’d likely escape onto the road and cause chaos. Angus’s cows are experienced escape artists and well known for bringing the local traffic to a standstill.

First job this week – find some help to repair the fence…

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Bumblebee food

We ordered heather plants a few weeks ago from a specialist heather nursery here in Scotland.

The idea is to plant them on the exposed soil banks on the sides of the access track on the croft to try and reduce the amount of soil erosion. We’d noticed that the winter rain had taken its toll before anything had a chance to establish, and needed to get something in as soon as possible.

Heather is a native plant here, hardy and resilient, and it’s roots help bind the soil well and minimise runoff.

As an extra benefit, the heather selection that we have covers a flowering period for all seasons, so there will always be some in flower at any given point. Great for nectar feeders.

The plants arrived via post in three large boxes, extremely well packed and with the plants still fresh and damp. Each small pot had been hand-wrapped in damp newspaper, separated by cardboard and paper padding.

I unpacked them and let them have some fresh air and a good, long drink after their travels.

Almost as soon as I’d done so, a few honeybees arrived, rapidly followed by about four white-tailed bumble bees. They all fed hungrily on the early flowering varieties in bloom. These were the first bees that I’d seen on the croft this spring with the really cold weather.

We won’t stop at heather, of course. We have plans for red clover, camomile, sedum, borage, hardy geraniums and others, but it felt good to provide an early meal for the bees.