Life, self-build and much mud on the Isle of Skye
The snow may have stopped falling for now but it’s still cold and very icy out there.
The barrel containing my berry cuttings has frozen with a thick disc of ice.
The steep access track and drive have become an icy slope, and the pools of water on the gravel are solid ice.
I’m not going out until the sun has melted everything a little, but will sit here by the fire and try and stay warm here in the caravan.
I think it’s safe to say that we’re now properly into winter..
I may be getting ahead of myself a bit here, as we don’t have any vegetable beds dug yet, but I couldn’t resist buying a few seeds to start things off next spring.
I had to do it. I was starting to get worried about reports that the pandemic was causing seed companies to run out, and that there wouldn’t be any left if I ordered too late. So over a cup of tea and a few rainy afternoons I pulled together a seed order, and they arrived last week.
It’s such a lovely feeling when the post arrives and you open the parcel. The fat little paper seed packets fall out, sparklingly full of promise!
Many of these things need a few years to establish before they can be cropped, so it made sense to start next year even if we are busy with the house build.
I just need to find a few days in the Spring to get my husband to help build windbreaks, plant protective hedging, make a couple of raised beds and get the soil prepared. I’ve worked out the most sheltered spot for the raised beds and a planting plan.
Most of these seeds aren’t sown directly into the soil until April/May or even later, so there is time.
I’m also looking at cold frames for a bit of protection for some of the young plants, although wherever possible I will plant into the beds directly. I don’t have a greenhouse or polytunnel yet and there will be no room in the caravan for lots of trays of seedlings.
I’m going to try to grow beetroot, onions, carrots, kale, salad leaves, cabbage, potatoes, rainbow chard, and winter squash (I know this one might be a challenge, but it’s worth a try). I also want to have a berry bed, and grow rhubarb, so am looking for varieties and crowns that will work well in our extreme climate.
I’m going to start with just a few berry bushes and vegetables and increase the variety next year once the house is finished and we can start to spend more time on the croft itself. It’s going to be a busy year of experimentation, working out what grows well here.
Once we start growing things I think the process of rooting ourselves to this land will finally have begun properly.
Our first island Christmas.
Last night we attended an outdoor meal with friends around a fire, with local musicians and Gaelic singers. They sang traditional carols but also songs that we didn’t know, hauntingly beautiful in the open air and the darkness of the night.
It was a cold night but we honestly didn’t feel it. Such a lovely introduction to Christmas here.
We returned home smelling of woodsmoke and with heads full of new melodies and happy memories.
This morning, Christmas Day, and it was a day alone for us. The wind howled around the caravan and we sat in front of the fire with big socks on and shared a zoom call with the boys in Manchester.
We ate venison and drank red wine and enjoyed the feeling of peacefulness and nothing that we absolutely had to do.
It’s been a very unusal and quiet Christmas, but a good one for all that. It’s made us remember what’s important and has made us look forward to next year’s celebration with family (and a proper kitchen!) all the more.
Merry Christmas to you all. From the fireside of the caravan on the windswept hillside of the croft I’m sending you all good wishes for health and happiness, wherever you are.
With the house build we’ve had little time for the croft tree plans or vegetable bed preparation beyond the most basic of plans for zoning and starting to think about grant applications for the trees and deer fencing.
Having said all of that, whilst our days are taken up with working in the house I’ve started on the croft in the smallest of ways. It just felt necessary to do something.
We’re planning for a berry bed, and also edible hedges.
To this end I’ve just received the first dozen or so cuttings of japanese red gooseberry, jostaberry and green currants, and have stuck them in a barrel of soil positioned next to the caravan to root up ready to be planted out into beds late next year.
If the deer don’t eat them (and you’d think that the thorns on the gooseberries would be enough of a deterrent, or am I deluding myself?) this should give them a bit of an early start.
These will be followed with raspberry, honeyberry, cloudberry, black currants, blueberry and strawberries early next year. And maybe the start of herb pots in the spring for the herb beds. Once we have some windbreaks in place.
We have also picked up some willow whips from a neighbours’ prunings, and as an experiment we’re going to plant them in the exposed boggy bottom of the croft over the next few days.
We’re treating these as sacrificial trees, as a test. We’ve had conflicting local reports about the need for and the effectiveness of deer fencing. It will be interesting to see whether these young trees get decimated and whether we have to wait for a further year to fully deer fence the croft before we can attempt sensibly to plant any young trees further at all.
A slow and spiky start. But it’s a start.
It’s that time of year again. I’ve made homemade Atholl Brose.
A wee glass of this in the evening to warm us up is a necessity, I think.
Whisky, honey, oats and cream. Lasts for a week in the fridge – if you can make it last that long 😊.
Recipe here for anyone that fancies giving it a go. Note I only use a half bottle of whisky, just a blended one too, and it’s delicious.
https://foodanddrink.scotsman.com/drink/how-to-make-your-very-own-atholl-brose/
When it rains here, it really rains.
The croft feels like a giant sponge, the grass squelchy underfoot as it tries its best to absorb the huge quantity of water being thrown at it from the sky.
Yes, that’s horizontal rain.
When it’s like this, no waterproofs that I’ve ever come across will keep you dry for long. It’s best to retreat indoors for a cup of tea and wait it out.
We have pools of rainwater everywhere. The burn, which normally trickles gently through the hills at the back of the croft, has become a foaming torrent of water tumbling its way to the sea.
This is an older video from September, with the burn in medium flow. Now it’s about twice as full, I just haven’t been brave enough to make my way down there for a more recent picture.
Wish I could send you some, Green Goddess 🌿.
The sun sets early on the croft at this time of the year. 1545 yesterday, to be precise. We’re approaching the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.
Almost as if to make up for the long hours of darkness that are about to come, nature puts on a dazzling show of light before it dies.
The skies become suffused with a golden light and all the colours of the hedgerow glow with an incredible intensity.
That’s every evening, even on days without a remarkable sunset.
Facing SSE, we get more sunrises than sunsets on this part of the island. The sun dips behind the mountains behind us and we often just see the residual rosy glow in the sky, whereas those on the west coast enjoy its full splendour.
Still, it’s beautiful. A camera never seems to do it justice.
We love good bread. We eat a lot of it, especially seeded, malted grain bread.
So it was with great excitement that whilst shopping in our local Co Op on the island I spotted that they’d just put out a selection of speciality breads.
I read the ingredients. Irres Cran, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds. What the heck was irres cran?
Intrigued, but assuming that it was some sort of ancient Scottish grain, like Emmer wheat, I popped it in the trolley and brought it home.
I tried googling irres cran but nothing came up. There was nothing left but to try it.
It was cranberry bread.. 😂.
The bread range is called Irresistible and they’d clearly abbreviated the label to fit all the ingredients on.
Irresistible Cranberry. Irres Cran.
Priceless.
This is a very short post to mark the momentous occasion, after two weeks of caravan life, of the connection of hot water.
Going for a weekly hot shower in Kyle was fine, but a 25 mile round trip meant it wasn’t really feasible much more frequently than that.
And with the wind and rain whipping around us daily, we get muddier and dirtier than I thought possible.
Husband connected up the pipes and installed a new boiler over the last few days, and after a break in the weather this morning completed the last bits of the connection.
We now have a working toilet, a shower and a hot water tap in the kitchen. Doing my happy dance.
Isn’t it amazing how we take things like this for granted.
I’m sitting in the static watching the rain and wind bluster across the Sound.
It’s a wild one out there today and I’m happy to be wrapped up indoors and sheltered. Husband is busy installing the boiler (how excited am I for hot water one day soon that I don’t have to boil on the stove!) and the spaniel has assumed his prone position by the fire. It’s not a day to be working outdoors.
In the field looking east across the hillside there are a large number of crows, all wheeling and soaring together, an impressive sight. There must be at least thirty or forty of them, collectively called, I believe, a murder of crows. I’m convinced that they’re playing in the wind.
Occasionally one will take off and hover in almost motionless balance, trying to hold its own against the force of the wind before tipping its wings and allowing itself to be blown backwards and upwards across the hill. The others then do the same in sequence, like dancers in a ballet . It’s definitely a social activity of some sort!
We also have a raven. We may have more than one, as they’re often in pairs, but we definitely have at least one.
I heard it calling yesterday morning, a gutteral, deep sound quite unlike the crows. I’m so pleased to hear that it’s still here. We named the house Raven House because we spotted a couple of them overhead when we first visited the croft.
Such enigmatic, intelligent birds. They seem very at home here on these rainswept hillsides.
And according to legend, where I discovered that they are the symbol on the MacDonald Battle Flag, whose lands we are on, they’ve been here since time immemorial.
I like that.
Ravencroft Skye 