Ravencroft Skye

Our olive tree, Esmerelda, seems to be thriving in her indoor home.

I’m so relieved. She’s so monumental both in size and stature that the thought of killing her inadvertently through my usual combination of over or under watering is a terrifying one. Almost like killing one of the family.

I’d noticed that there were a few new leaves appearing on her recently, which was a hopeful sign. At least they’re replacing those that the cats have knocked off whilst clambering up into her canopy, or have eaten…

Don’t worry, the leaves aren’t toxic to cats.

The house is very light with those big windows, and I think that this helps enormously. I mist her foliage most mornings and give her a couple of litres of water a few times a week to drink.

She’s rewarded us with her first olive flower, a small, insignificant, but delicately scented blossom.

Who knows.. I had no real hope of fruit, but could we be snacking on a few croft olives later in the year with our gin and tonics?

There’s always a warm spell of a few days with glorious sunshine and soft spring air to fool us into believing it’s safe to plant out here in the Highlands, just before the lambing snow arrives.

The seedlings in the polycrub are doing well, cosseted by the recent high temperatures. The lettuce is sprouting, the beetroot is fairly rampaging away, borage and nasturtiums – which I’m growing as edible flowers for cakes and the pollinators – are greening up nicely.

The kale is pretty bulletproof and is growing happily, and I was given some Brussels sprout seeds by a friend, something I’ve never grown before, which have also germinated well.

The seed potatoes are planted in pots in the polycrub, and onion sets are planted out in the beds. We’re getting there slowly.

Indoors the tender heat-loving plants, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgette, coriander and red basil are all growing steadily.

As is always the case at this time of the year, growing space is at a premium. When we reconfigure the polycrub growing space I need more shelving and a potting bench to maximise the use of the space. The good thing about waiting is that I’m much more sure of what my needs are now!

As I write the sleet is coming down in rods and there will be more snow lying on the tops soon. Hopefully this will be the last of the winter weather now that we’re in April. Bring back the sun!

Friends birthdays seem to arrive in clusters.. and this month they’ve arrived just as my baking schedule is at it’s fullest.

Yet there’s still a need to mark the occasion with cake. All birthdays should have cake.

This is a spring elderflower birthday cake filled with lemon curd and fresh cream, topped with a lemon cream cheese frosting and dried edible flowers, some from the croft.

On a completely different note this is a chocolate cake, filled with maltesers, fresh cream and chocolate and topped with chocolate ganache and more maltesers.

It’s another early start tomorrow to bake up cinnamon cardamom buns and blueberry lemon buttermilk scones for The Stables.

We’ll see how much my love of baking holds out….

Friends told us a story that I just have to pass on. It’s true, and just too good not to share.

For his birthday a friend received some koi carp and a dwarf sturgeon, a remarkable looking fish. They were duly installed in his pond and seemed to be settling in well.

One day soon after arrival however he noticed that the dwarf sturgeon was swimming head down, bottom up, and clearly that wasn’t right.

A Google search highlighted that this particular species of fish is prone to wind, which collects in the swim bladder causing the “bottom up” scenario, and if not released can cause the death of the fish.

Being of a kindly disposition he did as the source suggested and gently massaged the underside of the fish until a gas bubble was released, and clearly relieved, the fish righted itself and swam happily away.

How many of us could respond to the question “what did you do today?” with “today I was mainly burping the sturgeon”..😝

Life on Skye continues to astound us!

Our local Clan (Clan MacDonald) opens its gardens and castle to visitors from Easter for the summer season, and feeds and waters them at the adjoining Stables restaurant.

Under new management this season, there’s a different approach at the Stables. The new manager is keen to showcase local produce and we crofting folk are keen to oblige.

I shall be baking homemade cakes from the croft for them, and in the summer providing them and hopefully other local outlets with fresh herbs and salad leaves.

The saladage is but a tray or several of tiny seedlings at the moment, but cakes happen all year round. At the seasonal opening a few days ago I provided Swedish cinnamon buns, a chocolate yoghurt cake and an elderflower and lemon cake for the locals to enjoy.

This is the first actual croft produce we’ve sold and it marks the croft as it’s meant to be run. Multiple small sales streams to supplement our regular income. We’re never going to get rich from this but it helps root us into the community, and I get paid a small amount for doing what I love.

Cinnamon buns take three hours though, and need to be with the Stables before they open at ten.

And I thought that 5.30 am starts were a thing of the past..

We hit the vernal equinox this week, that point in the year where for the first time the hours of daylight are longer than the hours of darkness.

Each day we now welcome back a little more of the light.

Despite this auspicious milestone we’ve had such mixed weather. A beautiful blue-sky day midweek, with warm winds and not a cloud in the sky, followed by days of rain, gales and hailstones.

It’s a bit confused. I’m a bit confused. Goodness only knows what the seedlings think.

To encourage Spring I’ve made a Spring Cake for a friend’s young daughter’s birthday. A lemon sponge with lemon cream-cheese filling and frosting scattered with raspberries, edible flowers and lemon balm from the croft.

If this doesn’t do the trick to welcome in official spring I don’t know what will. In fact just to be on the safe side this week, I made two.

Let’s hope that the Goddess enjoys lemon cakes and the sacrifice of the last of the primroses from the croft bank.

We had to stop unpacking book boxes many months ago due to various complex build logistics and the unfinished electrical work in the house, especially in the rooms we’ll be using as studies, the next area that would take the bulk of our remaining books.

However, frustrated by lack of progress and needing the shed space currently filled with books to set up a workbench area for woodworking, we’ve started the unpacking process again.

Before the evil flu bug hit too badly, Hugh brought in about another 20 boxes of books so that whilst we snuffled about and drank honey & lemon we could at least be sorting things out indoors. With lots of rest.

It’s like watching ink being sucked up on blotting paper, this process of finding homes for books. Slowly, slowly they have started filling the shelves, migrating to various places based on their classification.

We’ve definitely got some pruning to do. It’s inevitable, I guess, when the lives of two lifelong book lovers come together.

I’ve found at least three copies of Nigel Slaters Kitchen Diaries, lots of duplicates of Terry Pratchett, Hilary Mantel, Ian M.Banks, Asimov, Carol Ann Duffy, Maya Angelou, and a lot of duplication in the natural sciences, myth and folklore and art book sections.

It’s such a slow process, this book unpacking business. Finding old friends and running hands over book jackets and spines, opening unknown books to look at illustrations and read short passages, removing bookmarks from previous uses over the years. Dusting. Sorting. Adding to their new home on the book shelf and adjusting and reordering as necessary. We are going to have to do a re-sort once the shelves are fully populated as we’ve got a complete mix on many of them.

And so it continues. Hugh thinks there are still about seventy unpacked boxes of books in the shed.

We’re going to need more bookcases..

We’re both laid low with some sort of flu bug. As is always the way, it’s come just at the time that we have a period of dry and relatively settled weather on the island, which we could otherwise have used to work out on the croft. Ah well. The heavy work on the raised beds will just have to wait.

I can at least sow seeds whilst incapacitated, so I’ve started lettuce, herbs, beetroot, onions, celery, chillies, nasturtiums, calendula, borage, kale and tomatoes. Most have germinated well.

Whilst we’re laid a bit low and healing ourselves with hot honey-lemon drinks, and chicken soup with dunkable cheese scones, we can also do a bit of something useful indoors. Book unpacking. The shed is still full of book boxes.

Before his cold got too much, Hugh brought in several more boxes of books and when we have the energy between coughing and sneezing fits we sort through a few more of these and get them onto the bookcases in the living room or the study.

He estimates that there are only about another seventy boxes of books to go, so we’re making progress!

Meanwhile, we are slowly staggering back to the land of the living and my symptoms at least seem to be abating. I’m a good week ahead of Hugh so he’s still sadly got the worst still to come.. better get making more soup.

When we first moved to the island we bought a standard wheelbarrow made of metal from one of the local hardware stores. It’s been fine, but over the years the paint has flaked off and the metal is starting to rust.

It’s still useable, but with all the planned earth and compost moving that we have this year we got to thinking that a second wheelbarrow for the croft would be a good idea.

Big Bertha came into our world.

She’s constructed of bright orange plastic, an orange so loud that if we leave her out on the croft we’ll have no fear of losing her. She will shine out beyond the rushes.

So bright that the low flying aircraft that occasionally buzz us as they swoop down over the hills and passing shipping in the sound can navigate by her.

I’ve had to ask myself, are you even a crofter if you don’t have a neon-coloured wheelbarrow with attitude?

Real crofters now.

On days like today it’s easy to forget that here it’s still winter. The birds are singing, the sun is out and there’s hardly a breath of wind.

The seeds are coming along nicely. I’ve just sown a third tray of mixed lettuce and a tray of rocket, but the chillies, tomatoes, celery, summer savoury, red basil and leeks are all germinating.

I love this time of year with new growth. I’m not so keen about the pricking out which comes next, but it’s worth it for the end game.

Freya continues her antics whenever we’re outdoors on the croft. She stays close and skips around us like a puppy. I was working in the polycrub today and she decided she’d ‘help’.

A friend who weaves willow baskets has planted some willow whips on the croft, and Hugh has been busy whenever the weather permits putting cardboard collars on them and mulching them all with woodchip bark to keep the weeds from strangling them.

Hopefully soon we’ll have a willow grove growing there! And Laura will be able to weave more with her own willow.

I’ve been doing a lot of baking recently. Leek and cheese pasties for hastily grabbed lunches, and sweet treats for rainy days watching the winter gales by the fire.

But more and more the days are stretching out, and we are able to spend longer outdoors each day.

Experience tells us that there will be more snow, so we’re not fooled by this. But it is lovely to feel the sun on your face after a long, wet winter.

It feels as if Spring is well on its way at last.

I’ve always wanted an olive tree.

It’s strange, when I lived all those years in the warmth of the South of France where an olive tree would have been in its natural environment, I didn’t have one.

Now I live in the cold, wet, windswept expanses of 57°North I have at one at last.

It will live indoors. It has to, really, although it might survive in the polycrub. I suspect it will never fruit in this climate, but I don’t care. It’s just a beautiful thing.

She (do trees have gender, I wonder? If so, this is a SHE) is a beauty, with an old, gnarled trunk, deeply fissured and twisted through years of living in a Spanish olive grove. I wonder about her age.

She arrived on a lorry this afternoon, deceptively heavy even without the pot. Husband and friend Andy manhandled her slowly indoors, and put her into position. Thank goodness for strapping friends and neighbours and I sincerely hope that I haven’t done husband’s back any serious injury.

I’ve chosen a spot with good light from all around due to the position of the big windows. I’ll have to mist her foliage regularly and keep her well watered, and do my best to keep the cats off her..

The cats of course love their new cat toy. A scratching post and deluxe cat loo all in one! Within minutes both had scaled her trunk and were balanced at the top in her spindly crown looking triumphant.

The one in the pic is Freya, of course 😂.

Husband has rigged up a temporary cardboard cover to protect her until we can gather enough beach stones to cover the soil tomorrow. Not pretty, but essential.

I’ll have to give her a name.