Tag: croft

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Spring contentment and progress

I can’t remember how long I’ve nursed the fantasy of potting up plants in a warm greenhouse whilst sipping a mug of tea. Maybe listening to an audio book, or a podcast.

I’m such a party animal. I’m not ashamed to say that the quiet life is definitely for me.

Potting up

This morning I took my mug of tea out to the polycrub. I sat there in the warmth, perched at the camping table surrounded by the smell of damp compost and the sound of skylarks rising over the moors above us, and felt content. I even managed to pot up a few trays of young seedlings.

This was my first taste of pottering about in this sheltered space, growing things without being blasted by the south westerlies, and it was wonderful.

We’re slowly wheelbarrowing loads of woodchip from our tonne bag on the other side of the croft to make a weed surpressant covering over the cardboard. It’s about half way there, and whereas the old me would be stressing that I can’t complete it more quickly, the new me just accepts that it’s slow but that it will eventually get done.

There are several trays of young seedlings that will need potting up into my canvas grow bags over the next few weeks. It will happen.

The house is progressing well.

We have plasterboarded out some of the roof space walls upstairs now, so I have a much better idea of the bedroom dimensions now that the eaves have been boarded out.

A friend suggested a clever hack for extra storage in the often somewhat wasted space in the eaves. Most people put a cupboard door in the eaves, but it’s still a bit inaccessible.

Drawer units either side of the headboard space

We’ve bought a couple of drawer units and are building the eaves around them. Once finished, this will be plastered and painted white, leaving the two drawer units embedded flush in the walls. Easy to access, one on either side of the bed, and useful space.

I think it’s going to work well.

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Vegetable planting

Although it’s been warm during the days of April up here on the island, with temperatures of around 16C, the nights are still pretty cold at about 5C or less. So it’s time to still be cautious about planting anything tender out.

We’ve started prepping the polycrub growing area with a layer of cardboard followed by a layer of wood chippings to act as a weed suppressant.

It’s been heavy work for husband wheelbarrowing load after load of woodchip over the croft to the tunnel so that I could lay and level it. We’re not finished yet.

I’ve also started filling old sheep lick tubs and canvas grow bags with soil and compost so that I can plant out some of my seedlings. The local crofters give them away and they’re great to recycle as planters with a few holes drilled in the base of each for drainage.

So far I’ve got peas, borlotti beans, and a few squash and courgette plants in the tunnel. The salad leaves are in there too waiting to transfer into positions outside. The tomatoes, cucumbers, dill, parsley, basil and chillis are still too small to go out into the tunnel yet so will benefit from a few more weeks of growth.

I also managed to get the carrots and kale sown directly into the raised beds. Potatoes, onions and garlic are already in. So although the beds look pretty empty, they’re actually full!

A busy time on the croft. Days of lifting, raking, bending and sowing. I’m certainly sleeping well at night at the moment!

Wishing you all a great growing season with good weather and lots of greens. ❤️

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Sunset with polycrub

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.

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Polycrub on the croft

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 hoops installed

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.

Wooden struts going on

A good days work.

Polycarbonate sheeting being affixed

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.

End of day one

I’m very excited. Tomatoes, chillies, cucumbers, squashes, strawberries and courgettes here we come!

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The divine beast

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.

The polycrub

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.

Recycled salmon farm piping

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.

Man & mini digger

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.

Tomato babies

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Deer damage and alien life

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.

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Stormy days

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.

From the caravan

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.

Image Francis Yeats

I bake. I make bread and cakes to warm and sustain us. I make soups and stews and sweet, eggy puddings and crumbles.

Brioche buns. Just because.

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.

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The polycrub, seeds and spring

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.

Polycrub loveliness

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.

Seed porn

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.. 😊

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Emergency Cake

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.

Black Forest gateaux

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.

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Plastering, wiring, ducting & kebabs

Now is a really busy time for the build. We have two guys (the two Dereks) busily and speedily installing battens and erecting plasterboard panels, with husband wiring and ducting alongside them.

It means long days and not much in the way of breaks. He’s shattered when he collapses in front of the fire each evening. A good tiredness, I think – one born of a long days manual labour and visible progress, but certainly tiredness. We’re neither of us as young as we were!

The best I can do is provide tea and food as it’s needed, and finalise the many remaining decisions on bathroom and kitchen finishes from the caravan.

When I’m not browsing tile sites and bathroom fittings catalogues, or calling Home Energy Scotland for advice, I spend much of each day making flatbreads, cake, quiches, stews and soups.

My latest attempt at urban food is kebabs! Sliced leftover roast lamb, shredded red cabbage, garlic and mint yoghurt, harissa paste and baked soft flatbreads. When you don’t have a takeaway on the island, you make them yourself. Probably much healthier too.

I’m not even pretending that the pear frangipane tart was anything other than an indulgence…we need yummy things right now.

I’m also reading this. An excellent book, if slightly terrifying. It’s about the disappearance of insects due to pollution, pesticides, chemical runoff, changes in farming practices and climate change, and is written very accessibly and compellingly. Dave Goulson is well qualified to write about this, being a Professor of Biology, an expert on insect ecology and an Ambassador for the UKs Wildlife Trusts. Get a copy if you can.

So progress on the build is steady as we move through the highland winter. I’m starting to think about seeds and have ordered seed potatoes, onion sets and garlic. We’re still eating red cabbage and kale from the croft, at least what the deer haven’t eaten.

Soon, now. Spring is coming. Not long now.