Updates

It's been a while since I last put anything on the blog.

We have been so busy over the last few months.

We have managed to finish our new hay shed just in time for the winter hay delivery.

Once again the weather was with us when the hay arrived.

The two hay men are from Stirling and the hay smells absolutely wonderful.

This was the hay we saw being bailed a few weeks before in the fields.

I love the smell of fresh hay, it conjours up all sorts of memories from my childhood.

The hay men stayed for lunch, and we had what they call in the Highlands a good old cheildh (natter or gossip to the outside world).

The weather on the west coast has been a bit hit and miss, sometimes it is glorious other times the heavens open and it pours it down for days on end.

This is a great hindrance when you are trying to do anything.

We have kept two heifers back this year to add to the herd as some of the older cows will have to go away, we also put the young calf in with them who lost his mother a few months ago.

We called him Tefal, I thought he had a big head but he turned out to be a rather nice calf as did they all.

He cried for his mother for days on end, but the heifers soon settled him down.

We are going to winter him, so he will have a good life while he is here after his turbulent start.

He can be quite cheeky when he wants he looks at you with those large doleful eyes and my heart just melts.

The heifers have been good to him and looked after him, usually they can be bullies with the younger calves but I must say all three have been really quiet easily handled calves.

We called the heifers Joanna and Beauty.

Joanna has a striking resemblance to a cow we used to have except she is soft natured her name sake used to be rather crabby.

She is a lovely Red colour, Beauty is jet black and she also is soft natured.

They like nothing more than a good brush, they would stand there all day and let you brush them if you let them.

Love is in the Air

Myran


Claire & Sharon
Time waits for no man and things will move on even if you are ready or not.
Well it's that time of year again, and our Cheviot's are in the mood for love.
We have managed to acquire a beautiful ram who we have called Raf.
He is a two shear and stands well, he has a great set of horns which is sometimes unusual in a Cheviot ram.
He has been chosen to serve our Cheviot's this year.
He is quite a handsome chap and I hope they feel the same way too.

Already Claire has been served so that is one down two to go.
To some it may be a bit of a laugh as we only have three in the foundation flock but last years ewe lambs have come on in leaps and bounds, they are the next generation and anyway we love them all.
The Tup Ram who we called Creag Mhor has already started to show great potential.
He is really friendly and loves nothing more than a good old chin scratch.
We will miss him when he has to go away, but we are not letting him go anywhere for the present.
Poppit, Babs & Teeny the ewe lambs are still a little timid but they are all little beauties.

They were all rather noisy when we seperated them from their mothers, but that was only to be expected, just like any child would cry when they are taken away from their parent.

The Highlands & the Islands

Where to start.
Lets start with the Highlands.
We have been so busy this past couple of months time seems to have slipped past us so quickly.

The country has been hit with foot & mouth restrictions again, which is devastating in it's self, but for those of us who rely on the cattle & sheep sales at this time of year it is absolutely sole destroying.
Our livestock sales at this time of year help to support our winter months feed bills and such, so like everyone else in the country we will all be feeling the pinch at the moment, you can only pull your belts in so far.
A lot of the farming industry like ourselves will be feeding livestock already as the grass is scares due to the torrential rain we have been having of late in the east and west of Scotland.
Our fields are holding water which is making it impossible to even put round bales out with the tractor.
I suppose the festival goers would love all that mud, but not our animals or us.
Some farmers cannot even move animals across the road to fresh pastures because of the restrictions, so they have been feeding earlier than ever this year.
Lets hope the industry can get back from this without to much hardship.

On the Croft.
We have been busy trying to complete an extension on the Byre for feed storage, it has been slow going because of the weather, but we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, most of the hold ups are due to deliveries of materials, because we are in such a remote area the suppliers cannot guarantee when we will receive anything, this is because they like to try and fill their delivery wagons up for one big run rather than a half loaded wagon.
Then again they cannot fill the wagons to much as we have three small bridges on the road to Arisaig which all have height restrictions on them.
At the moment there is a new road widening project on the go for about ten miles of the single track road, we were told originally that the three bridges would be altered to take the new European standard wagons, but for some reason this has been put on the back burner, so we will get a wider road but we still will not get a good full sized hay delivery because of the bridge heights, well we live in hope that this will all change sooner rather than later.

The Islands
A couple of weeks ago my husband and I went out to Eriskay a beautiful island off the west coast of Scotland.
My husband had a job to do for a friend out there.
The weather was warm but not hot, which was better as if it had been to hot we would not of got to much done.
We took a ferry from Mallaig to Armadale on Skye, then from Uig on the other side of Skye to Lochmaddy on Uist.
The sea crossing was calm on both occasions and the scenery was beautiful.
We did not arrive into Eriskay until late so it was to dark to see much.
The next day we cracked on with the fence that my husband was out there to do, the ground is mostly rock in some places but once he found the sweet spots as they say he was on a roll.
We went out for a meal in the evening to the Pallahar Inn in South Uist it was delicious and we certainly had worked up an appetite.
My husband took me to meet some of his relatives on the island, his mother was from Eriskay originally before she settled on the mainland, so there are still quite a lot of relations still out there.
The people on the island are so warm and welcoming nothing is a bother to them, they all made me feel welcome too as it was my first visit to the islands, they were all pleased to see him as it had been 11 years since he was last out there.
We went to see my husbands Aunt Margaret and her son Iain, who gave us some of his home grown organic Maris Piper potatoes, he gathered the seaweed for fertilizer from the beach himself.
I can say they were the best potatoes I have tasted in a long while, not like the supermarket potatoes that are all battered and bruised by the time they reach the shop.
Iain's mother was in fine form, a woman of 85 years of age who to me seems as though she had a hard but rewarding life, nothing will come easy working and living on the outer isles even back in her younger days there will have been great struggles in life, it was nice to meet them both, in such a warm and relaxing atmosphere.
We also went to visit my husbands other cousin Joe and his Wife Marie ann.
He was not expecting us as we had told no one that we were going out to the islands, so it was a surprise for him to see us standing on his door step.
We spent quite a time there as they had a lot of catching up to do, but a thoroughly enjoyable evening mostly talking about the "good old days"
I myself would like to say thank you to all of the people we met and who made us welcome, let's hope the next visit is not as short as the last, but not so long till we are back.

Make Hay whilst the Sun shines

Well the weather has been a bit hit and miss during the past couple of weeks in Arisaig
Some days have been absolutely glorious and others, well you would think Autumn was coming in early.
As the weather was good my husband and I went down to Stirling last week to see the chap who we purchase our hay from.
Both himself and his wife were furiously making hay whilst the sun shone.
His wife was driving the tractor & hay bailer, whilst he was driving a loadall machine with a telescopic arm that could pick up eight square bales of hay at a time and stack them on top of one another.
We could see well covered haystacks all over the land.
His wife continued on whilst we had our trailer loaded up by her husband.
There is nothing that beats the smell of freshly cut hay.
They had been working none stop to gather the hay before the bad weather set in, if I might say so they were doing a fine job.
It is a long time since I sat and watched a square hay bailer in action.
In those days not so long ago the square bails dropped into a bed all higgledy piggledy, now the bed on the back of the bailer sorts them out into a kind of shoot once the eight shoots are full the back door opens and they are left behind in a nice neat squre.
The loadall comes along with the special grab that fits over the top of the bails collecting all eight bales in one go, which are then stacked on top of each other.
I think they were five rows high I could not be sure as I was busy trying to keep the dogs away from a prospective lamp post as you might say.
In the past men worked on the pile of bails stacking them by hand, I remember my father coming home with husks stuck in his back from lifting the bails and stacking them, my mother used to spend half the night taking the husks out of his skin.
Them days always seemed to be long hot and dry, these days we seem to have to race more against the weather.
We sat for a while our host had a flask of tea and home baking in a picnic basket, which in true Highland tradition we delightfully excepted, we were talking about the price of feed and the demands already being made for it, all the while we were watching the hay bailer, tractor and his wife working away in perfect harmony.
I could have sat and watched all day but unfortunately we did not have the time and we did not want to hold back the workers when they are trying to beat the weather.
The animal feed will be in short supply this year what with the flooding down South and the East coast not growing well either because of the wet climate.
We got home not to late and unloaded the trailer, the next day we put some of the bails out for the cattle and sheep it smells beautiful.
As they say the proof is in the pudding, our animals are fussy and will not eat just anything, they never left a bit so looks like they have given the Creag Mhor seal of approval.

Screaming out load

Where do I start today?
I have been walking around in limbo since Saturday morning.
It all started in the early hours but we were unaware of a problem until we got up at 6:30am.
We have been rebuilding our feed store as the old one was getting past it's sell by date and has more leaks than Wales.
So we were keen to get going as soon as the light came in.
My husband got up to make a cup of tea then came running in to the bedroom saying he thought the old cow was dead as he can see a cow laying on her back with legs in the air.
We rushed to get dressed and jumped in the car, our road is an old dirt track road with large pot holes on it so we would probably have been faster running.
On the way down we passed the old cow a white Charolais called Snowy chewing the cud on the road side.
As we drove through the heard our minds were rushing trying to place which cow was missing.
Then I saw the orphan, his name is Tefal he is coming up for five months old, he was stood on the side of the road with his head hanging and calling every so often with a mournful heart breaking sound for his mother.
It was Pearl our three year old Simmental cow white and golden orange coloured patched.
She was laid in the middle of the dirt track with her legs in the air.
Her calf was running up and down the road calling all the time for his mother.
We ran to call the vet, he said he would come up as soon as possible, it is an eighty mile round trip for him to get to us.
Meanwhile we went back down and covered her with a tarpaulin.
The vet arrived later in the day, my husband called in on our neighbour and asked if he would bury her for us, he kindly said yes, his son came down with the digger.
In Scotland in certain places we are still allowed to bury our cattle because of the difficulty removing them from the peat bogs and so forth, so I was quite relieved when we were told we could bury her at home.
The vet thought that she had an eptopic pregnancy which burst one of her main blood vessels, she would not have felt a thing as she seemed to drop where she stood with out a struggle.
I could not take it all in she came up to me at the fence the previous night with her mother for a scratch behind the ear, she did not show any signs of illness or that anything was wrong, I wanted someone to explain to me why my young cow had died, without seeing anything.
The vet said we would not have been able to do anything for her it was so sudden.
My husband said he supposed it is like humans some are born to live to a great age some are born to die with out reason.
Our neighbour started to dig the hole after the vet had taken samples from Pearl.
He said he was sorry for us as he knows how much we care about our animals and left.
I could not stand to watch our young cow being put into a hole in the ground.
I walked away and left my husband and neighbour to do the dark deed.
As I was walking back up the track towards the house Tefal came running down the road again calling for his mother, I could not help it I broke down into floods of tears my heart was wrenched by this pitiful baby without his mother.
I heard myself screaming out load until I could not scream any longer what a waste what a sad sad waste.
He is still mourning for his mother this morning poor soul, but he will be spoiled by me his surrogate mother, I will watch out for him.
All of the heard went out on to the common grazing's by Pearls grave last night they lay down around about it, it's funny how they do that for a while like they are saying good bye then after a couple of days they leave.
It will take a little time to get over the shock of loosing Pearl but I will have her calf to keep me busy and occupied.
We never got much done in the end on Saturday as neither of us could concentrate on the job, I ended up hitting my thumb with the hammer so hard I nearly fainted, instead I let it all out the pain the loss the heartbreak, the deep scream from within, my husband grabbed me and hugged me, it does not mend anything but it makes you feel someone is there to catch you when you fall.

Waiting with baited breath

We heard this weekend that there has been an outbreak of the deadly disease Foot & Mouth again.
It appears to have broken out in the Guilford area in Surrey England.
We were supposed to be attending the Agricultural show in Lorn near Oban on Saturday the 4th Aug but we received a call from one of the organisers late on Friday evening telling us that there has been a movement restriction put on all Cattle, Sheep & Pigs because of a suspected outbreak.
Well we watched the news bulletins all through the night to find out what we could, I know we are a long way from Surrey but this disease can spread so quickly if not controlled straight away.
This time all movements were banned as soon as the outbreak was confirmed not like last time when shows and sales were still going on.
Millions of animals were slaughtered needlessly because of panic by the government agencies.
Hopefully it will have been stopped in it's tracks.
I think all the Agricultural sector at this time will be waiting with baited breath to see what happens in the next 10 - 14 days.
I don't think many more of us could stomach another catastrophe like the last one.
It will be even harder this time if it does get out as we are going into the Autumn quarter of the year soon and the animals will require feed and if movements are still suspended that means we will be feeding surplus animals through the winter because we cannot sell them until the movement bans are lifted.
We have been told by the press agencies that the outbreak is suspected to have come from a Government testing laboratory 3-4 miles away from the outbreak.
Isn't that ironic, we are penalised and jumped on from a great height if our quality procedures are not adhered to in any way and the government let the most vicious of bacteria escape from their laboratories who will penalise them I ask myself?
So we are all praying that this is a one off incident and no more outbreaks will show up, but god help us if it gets hold.
I worry about people traveling up on holiday over the border from the south this disease is an airborne virus and can travel for miles.
It all has a knock on effect even to tourism which parts of our area depend on.
In our area most of the livestock is on small farms and crofts, this would mean devastation for our area if it broke out here.
We just seemed to get back on to an even keel and import, exports on the go again when bang we are dropped from a great plateu into darkness again.
If this is our governments fault they will have a lot to answer for by the agricultural industry.

The Wanderer Returns

The Wanderer being our Belgian Blue cross called Bella.
She takes to wandering off like a nomad, not exactly part of the heard but always there or there abouts.
We bought her about three years ago with a calf at foot, she is so placid and easy to handle you would think she had been here all of her life.
Well she returned with a beautiful brown and white bullock calf on Saturday his father is a Charolais called Simpsons Greag.
She was about a week early but I am not complaining he is so pretty.
We called him Jocky he has a brown spot on the side of his cheek and two ringled eyes as they say up here which means that his eyes have rings around them.
I struck up the lawn mower and over she came for the cuttings.
That is her party piece, it does not matter where she is if she hears the lawn mower from anywhere home she comes for the free dinner.
She is so fly that she will walk around the back of the heard and come in the long way round so that they do not see her and she does not have to share, the others have not twigged as yet but it will not be long before they do.
We could not see the calf later in the morning and went out to look for him in the park.
There he was curled up in a small ball in amongst the tall grass all that you could see was a little piece of white from his forehead.
If you did not know he was there you would have walked straight past him.
I always find it amazing how the cows manage to hide their calves so cleverly.
Well I have a couple of pictures so I will post them later on this evening.
I really must get my act together and post the pictures for you to see.

Gathering Winter Fuel

It only seems like 5 minutes that I last entered something on my blog.
But there you go life on the Croft has been so busy that I do not have as much time as I would like to dedicate to putting thoughts down.
So I have a bit of catching up to do with myself.
We were cutting Peat in the late spring on the Croft it is a great alternative to coal & oil for us in the winter.
It is hard work but rather rewarding in the end, just imagine on a cold winters night you sitting in front of a raging fire with a distinct smell that only peat gives out wafting around the room.
Peat cutting is almost extinct in our neck of the woods, I think there is only one other Croft doing it, the chap is in his 90's and still cuts peat, a hardy character and not many of them left.
Peat gathering used to be a great annual event for the crofters, everyone used to help one another gather but no-one seems to bother much now, maybe they find it to hard work for very little gain, why bother when they can buy fuel from a merchant instead without the hardship.
The tool used is called a toirsgian (pronounced treshcan) it is a Gaelic word which I believe means peat knife.

We have been rather fortunate with the weather this year and managed to get the peat dry rather faster than usual.
Peat as I said earlier is cut with the toirsgian which is a long wooden handled tool that has a thin metal blade on the end of it, on the left side of the blade as you look down on it there is a right angle piece of blade pointing outwards away from you, there is a small notch on the right this is used rather like a spade, you use your right foot to push the blade into the peat which is a little strange to get used to as we all tend to use left foot to push a spade into the ground.
It is far better if two of you gather peat as it is quicker and easier.
Firstly you have to remove the heather and other plant life from the top of the peat.
The toirsgian is pushed into the peat, the toirsgian cuts a brick shaped block of peat about 10" long depending on the size of the blade you have, the user then passes the block of peat over to the collector who uses a fork to pick the peat up and then place the peat in a gathering area, it is spaced out to dry for a short while turning it every so often so that it is dried on all sides, then placed into
stacks which are shaped rather like huts.



Once they are dried out the shrink to about half the original size, they are gathered up and stored away in our old byre for the winter.
We give a few bags to some of our older neighbours as they love the smell of peat, and as I said it has a distinct smell, the older folk reminisce about bygone days and old friends passed.
I too love the aroma especially at Christmas time it makes the season feel more festive.

Road to the Isles Sheep Champion

Myran Creag Mhor & Creag Mhor himself.


Meet the new overall Sheep champion of the Road to the Isles Agricultural Show.
This was her second outing, her Tup lamb Creag Mhor was second in his class and they make a perfect unit.
It is the first time in the Agricultural Shows 12 years history that a Cheviot has ever won the overall Sheep Champion, this honour is normally bestowed on the Black Face Sheep.
We entered her with her first lamb, she was so well behaved and stood with grace and elegance, I was so surprised as to how well they behaved, I was even more surprised to lift the coveted Trophy.
She was breed on Skye, by Mr & Mrs C Carter of Sarsar Farm in Waternish on the Isle of
Skye, her Sire was owned by Mrs Joyce Campbell of Armadale. Sharon & Claire who were also from the same flock came 2nd & 3rd in their class so we were ecstatic
We spent all of the day before clipping and washing all three sheep and four lambs.
They were like white clouds when we finished with them.
I went into the Byre the next morning to find them all lying down except for Creag Mhor the Tup.
He was trampling all over their backs with his dirty hoofs, he causes so much havoc for such a small thing.
He has even started jumping on my car bonnet he thinks it is great fun to jump on anything and everything at the moment.

Bye Bye Babies

We said good bye to some of our babies on the 1st June 2007.
It was time for some of our cattle to go to market which is the bit I always hate.
I know you are supposed to be hard and some people would say money orientated, but I would keep them all if I could.
We had two bullocks and three heifers plus a three year old Charolais Cross cow in calf to a Limousin Ronwick Iceman.
We spent most of the previous night washing and clipping them, just spending our final hours with them as we always do, talking to them and brushing them up, I now it sounds foolish but that's what we do and I think it settles them down a little bit as they know something is going on.
They are all around about the 9mth old mark and all well behaved.

Trudy the Charolais was the choice between two cows, we have not got enough room for her and she would not tie in a stall.
She is a bit of a bully with the younger ones and was not frightened to put her head down to you on the odd occasion so we decided to keep old faithful.
She held herself well in the ring and we got a very good price for her, even though my heart sank when the hammer went down.
The good thing is we always make a point of finding out where they are going and who is getting them, she is going to be kept as a breeding cow so I was really happy that she will be going to a new home.

Jasmine was the other one I would have liked to keep, she is a simmental cross, chocolate brown in colour with white patches all over, she is really placid and spoiled.
They were all bidding on her everyone likes a coloured cow, she did best of all in the ring.
She also went to a good home for a breeding cow.
All the Heifers will be used for breeding cows, unfortunately my boys will end up the way all boys do.
We said our final good byes after they had all been sold and told them to be good.
I hate walking away from them I feel like a mother abandoning her children, or having them torn away from me.
Sometimes I feel so empty after they have gone, because you are always looking for them amongst the heard.
It is usually quiet in the car on the way home as we are lost for words.

I always remember my first cattle sale on the way home it was hell, I had a black Aberdeen Angus Cross called Prince, he was Angela's son, he had preformed really well around all of the local Agricultural shows we got a couple of reserve champions with him.
When it was his turn to go to market I cried all night, he had been my pet, always there around your feet.
When he came running into the ring, he slammed on the anchors and looked at all of the faces watching him, he spotted me in the crowd and bellowed continuously until he went out, he never took his eyes of me.
I left the ring with him and followed him to his pen.
I clapped him, brushed him and talked to him, I think he was as heartbroken as I was.
My husband said it was time to go we went to the car I could hear Prince calling they were loading him onto the wagon he spotted me on the way up the ramp, he ran to the back of the wagon and poked his nose out of the little slats on the side, calling all of the time for me to come and get him.
I will never forget how hard it was to walk away from him, I cried for 4 days solid and could not sleep or eat, I still have a little tear for him even whilst I am putting this down in words.
It is the worst thing in the world to feel loss even if it is an animal.
But even if it is only an animal they can give you as much pleasure and happiness than some human beings can.
I would like to think that I am a guardian to all of the animals that are in my care, and as such I have a responsibility to be kind, gently and compassionate towards them.
What we sow in life we will be rewarded for in Heaven as my nan used to say.