Hoggs, whelks, nuts and nights out.

Another busy week passes, as the days get shorter. We had a brush publicity - the RSPB Award still attracting attention. The builder has departed from the farmhouse renovation having done a fantastic job, and we are in the novel position of having wood-chip heating whenever we want it, and even when we don't - but we are waiting for the plumber to come and finish off, and install a final thermostat so that we can control it all better! The boiler has been making us scratch our heads recently, with one or two minor faults - on pumps and valves on the plumbing side, rather than the boiler itself - and thankfully for those times we have been able to switch over to the fossil fuel so the our guests have been warm. I am as stingy as before on how much heating we have on in the house, as when you see that trailer full of wood-chip arriving, it is plain to see how much we consume in keeping our house, the office/laundry and the four Treshnish Cottages warm. A frightening amount!

We have had clear skies under a huge bright moon for several days, and good tides and kind weather for whelk picking. Several folk from around and about have been out picking the shoreline whelks. A back breaking job - and they earn every penny. Access to the shore is on foot in most places, so not only do they bend down for each and every one they pick, but they know in order to get them to their market, they have to carry each orange string bag full of them back up to wherever they left their car. A few seasons ago, Farmer was surprised to see a pile of whelk bags, representing all that work (and hard earned cash) left lying. Every time he went past he expected them to have gone, but they were left and ended up rotting. Sometimes the whelk pickers come in by boat. Last year a tent with food and sleeping bags was abandoned along the shoreline by Port Haunn, and we surmised this was from a mobile pair of 'whelkers'.

In November the hoggs (weaned ewe lambs kept for breeding) come in to the cattle shed to learn about 'nuts'. This especially formulated mix of flaked grains, peas and molasses is an important supplementary food for sheep, but unfortunately seeing it in a trough is not an automatic signal for the hoggs to know that they can or should eat it.

During our first lambing back in 1995, some of the older ewes contracted twin lamb disease (where they need extra food to regain condition, and quickly) but as they did not know how to 'feed' we could not get them to put on the extra bodily condition they needed. As a result we decided that from then on we would 'teach' our hoggs to 'feed'. In animal welfare terms this is a godsend, as it means you can nurse an animal more successfully back to health by bringing them in and knowing that they can 'feed' whilst you administer to them.

The 2011 hoggs have been causing us concern this week - we lost 2 to unknown causes. As in previous years, they were taken off their mothers when the main crop of lambs were sold, vaccinated, and set to graze the in-bye ground. Every day they have been checked and occasionally one has been cut out of the brambles, but other wise no problems - or so we thought.

Recently some of them seemed to have lost their usual 'bloom', their coats were 'stairy' - suffering from something but we were not sure what. The locum vet came to the rescue - she came over one evening and took blood samples so that we can find out what was wrong - as they are indoors just now learning how to feed this was quite straightforward. They had been given a combined fluke and worm medicine as soon as we realised something was wrong, and thankfully, they are now beginning to look better. And the sweet smelling 'nuts' are disappearing fast from the troughs. We will keep them in so that we can re-test or treat them as necessary and then they will go back out to the fields. As far as we can, we try to run a clean grazing system but with the extra flock on the in-bye now (the cheviots) it is more difficult to juggle within our new grazing management plan. This is obviously something we need to monitor more carefully, as we don't want the balance between animal welfare/good health and grazing regime/Conservation to get out of kilter.

The hill ewes have been gathered, and are in the fields waiting for the tups to go out with them. Farmer is still off work, though he is recovering well! The Contractors and Jamie did the gather, and picked up 2 'roughies' (unshorn ewes) and left another along the shore (on a particularly difficult part of the coast, where it is safer to leave the ewe than try risking getting a dog too close, in case she goes over the edge). Being a 'roughie' means that you have avoided coming in at shearing time and at spaining time (when the lambs are taken off). Bracken cover makes it easy for them to hide, as well as there being tricky hidden bits along our 4 miles of coastline.

Middle Cottage in November sunshine, with the 2010 corncrake nesting ground in the foreground. I have decided I would like to be on holiday here at the moment. The weather has been good for the last week or so. The island is quiet. The light at this time of year changes all the time - providing great opportunities for photographers. Lots of wildlife around. We have had visitors staying in 4 of the cottages this week, enjoying short breaks, winter weeks and special offers. A friend of ours is staying in East Cottage. She is an artist and has been out every day with her huge bundle of materials, ready for all weathers, working in the elements, and coming back to the cottage when she is too cold or light falls. We spent the evening there on Saturday, delicious meal, glasses of wine by the fireside, so warm and toasty. Coming out to fresh air and the short walk to the car, in the dimly starlit stillness of the sky, quite magical, and it was so very quiet.

Daughter's school at Ulva Ferry held a Bring and Buy Sale for Children In Need on Friday. They raised a whopping £271 in an hour and a half. The community was so generous bringing lovely items to sell, we think we will have to hold another sale at a weekend so that we can sell it all! One mum does fantastic face painting, and Farmer came home sporting a very colourful dolphin on his face. By the time he got home he had forgotten about it and went off to show in the guests who arrived to stay in the Studio!

We had a nerve-wracking day on Tuesday. Mark Stephens from Radio Scotland Out of Doors came to interview us. We stuttered our way through his questions and hopefully didn't make too much of a fool of ourselves. Dread hearing it on the radio though! Once that was over, we met up with Leianna from RSPB Scotland who had come across to make a short film (thankfully only minutes long) for the Oxford Farming Conference in January. Dave Sexton came over to be interviewed by Mark too. Dave is our local RSPB officer, and once Mark left, Dave used a flip camera, for some 'informal' filming, whilst Leianna did the more official interviewing and filming. There was an air of unreality to the whole thing particularly with 2 of them pointing cameras at us! But it was lovely to have an excuse to show them round the farm again, not that there were many flowers to look at (it is November) but the weather was fantastic and Treshnish was looking very beautiful - full sunshine and clear views.

There are still lots of European blackbirds around, with their black beaks. There are 2 of them in this brave sycamore in the farmhouse garden.

Screen Machine has been on Mull for a few days, so we had another night out this weekend - going to see Jane Eyre in Tobermory. We ate at Cafe Fish who have won the Good Food Guide Fish Restaurant of the Year 2012 - it feels very 'seaside', sitting above the ticket office on the Calmac pier, looking out on twinkling lights across the Bay through the rain streaked window panes, eating freshly caught seafood. I still do a double take when the lights come up at the end of a film and you are not in a large multiplex cinema but in the back of a lorry in Tobermory car park.

On Tuesday the last of the 2011 lambs go to Oban Market. The end of another sheep year. The Contractors, whose help has been invaluable over the last few years, are off to pastures anew in the New Year. We are extremely grateful to them for their help and we wish them well. We are lucky to have found Jamie to help us in the future.

Thank you to everyone who has been asking how the Farmer's recovery is going. He is well on the mend now. Still a long way off being able to work but happily walking a few miles again - and not in pain.

Silage, seals, sharks and sheep on a Sunday

Silage has been baled, thanks to a helpful nearby farmer with a huge tractor and baler, and here in this photograph being wrapped by Farmer and his brace of (much smaller) tractors.

This year we made silage in a far smaller field than last year so the number of bales is half the amount. This is an expected outcome, as we manage our fields in a traditional system, using the old fallow method to rest the fields one year in four, and hopefully create a more natural balance. The fields are not all the same size - so the yields will always be different! We don't use artificial fertiliser so rely on FYM from in-wintering our cows to feed the soil fertilitiy. From a flowers point of view though, the yield is huge, as the bio-diversity of these fields seem to improve year on year.

The silage is now wrapped and safe from the weather. The ends of the plastic wrap are tucked in to keep it airtight so that it can start to do the heating up and fermenting necessary to pickle the cut forage. At the end of every winter we have piles of silage wrap and farm plastic waiting for collection, to go off to Solway Recycling (who turn them into picnic benches).

Next task for Farmer is to take each bale back up to the stack yard before the bale starts softening. The Cheviots gimmers are let into this field to nibble the 'aftermath' - the sweet grass that comes after the silage is cut. Lamb sales in other parts of the country bring our attention to our own lambs and when to gather. The lorry is booked to take our lambs on the 21st September to Oban.

The heather has been vivid again this summer. Across the burn from the Treshnish farm steading is this pretty bank of heather. We fenced the sheep out of this area about 8 years ago, and it has taken all this time for the heather to recover, and for this young rowan to take seed.

A Sunday morning walk along through the Black Park and down to the shore on the northern side of the Point. Heather, late flowering birds foot trefoil, devils bit scabious and harebell in one of our in bye fields.

In the Black Park, huge clumps of knapweed.

...and colourful devils bit scabious with the yellow of hawksbit.

Walking along the northern shore, we can hear seals calling. There are 5 lying in the sun at low tide on the rocks - we don't see them here that often. A basking shark slowly cruises past a few metres off shore, and gannets drop like missiles into the water. Rocky outcrops with ungrazed wild flowers. Bees buzzing in the sunshine. One of those magical walks.

And a bowl of salad leaves from the garden with edible flowers to accompany a sunny Sunday lunch out of doors when we get home!

Hail and shine

Lambs lie together in old tyre tracks or shallow dried up burns, catching the warm of the sun but out of the wind which is bitter today.  (This is Brownie, above) The sun is so bright but it is still very cold.   

In our corner of the island everything is a little behind, so a trip out today in the car to Dervaig and our fantastic village Post Office to post some parcels and do some shopping, was a good way of seeing how spring is progressing elsewhere.  The beech woods at Calgary are almost luminous with the sun casting its contrast between the dark shadows and the brightness of fresh young leaves unfurling.  

This can seem like a cruel time of year - the sun is shining but the grass is still slow to grow.   At a time when the ewes need to recover their strength after a winter pregnancy and provide a good supply of milk for their lambs, there is still a way to go before we reach the abundant grass stage!

Resting fields allows it to recover and we do that here and there in accordance with our 'open grazed grassland' management, this enables the grass to grow and along with it the flourishing of herb rich flowers, and provides a safe haven for ground nesting birds at the same time.

Sunset from farmhouse garden, through sycamore leaves.

The cows seem to have settled into their new groups and found their new order.   Soon the large group of cows and their calves, along with the bull, will come into the 'Field beyond Haunn' and graze the fresh spring grass we have been saving for them.  This means for anyone wanting to walk a dog along the coast path, they will meet a sign reminding them that it is not permitted to walk a dog through young stock, and that they should find an alternative route.  (in this case it means skirting along the outside of the field, going through the deer gate by the cottages, walking above the deer fence and coming back to the track or path on the other side of the field).  

Some regular guests of ours sent us a lovely email yesterday about how much they had enjoyed the 2 different holidays they had had at Haunn recently (one at Easter and the second just last week).  They usually expect to see otters at Port Haunn but on their last visit they didn't see them there. However they did have a wonderful sighting at Calgary.  In AB's words:  "On our visit at Easter we spent well over an hour watching 2 otters (mum and teenage cub?) in Calgary Bay.  One was busy catching fish while the other rolled about in the water, floated on its back and generally messed about, suggesting teenager to me!  They eventually climbed out of the water, groomed each other for about ten minutes then curled up under a rock and went to sleep." What a memorable sight.

Brownie and Brian now have a trough in their pen with some lamb nuts in it - time to tempt them onto

solid food. As it is whenever he gets the chance Brian tries to eat stones. They are growing, becoming more adventurous.

And the trees continue to burst forth in so many hues of spring colour - not all of them green. Pictured 

above, oaks on the road between Treshnish and Torloisk - and below, near the Eas Fors waterfall - ash 

tree flowers. A shower of hail as I took this photograph!

For more photos of the light and the trees look at http://headlandoftrees.wordpress.com

Ewe rescue, young trees and a Buoy story

After a big storm a couple of winters ago, we found a buoy washed up on the rocky beach where the Ensay Burn meets the sea, which had the words Dragon Lady painted on it.  This was not the name of any local boat that we knew of.   It joined the growing collection of buoys and we occasionally wondered where it had come from.  

Farmer had to rescue a ewe this afternoon, which was 'trapped' on a ledge on the cliffs near Port Haunn,  15 or so minutes walk from the Haunn Cottages.  Sometimes they end up on precarious ledges because they have grazed there, enticed by nibbles of sheltered grass, at the same time not noticing where they have got to, and once there, they don't realise they can get down by themselves.  Sometimes they take a leap into the unknown when they see a strange dog on their patch.  

Luckily for us all, this ewe did manage to get down safely.  The sight of Farmer and his Dog and the accompanying threat of being handled by Farmer (turned Rock Climber or the sheep version of a Cowboy complete with lasso) was enough - in a flash, she jumped onto a lower ledge, down onto an even lower one, and then onto a steep grassy slope and away.   So Farmer did not need to use his lasso this time after all.

It had been a bit quiet in the calving shed.  No calves for quite a while despite late night and early morning vigils.  And then this morning two cows gave birth within minutes of each other.  Both calves and mums doing well after a quiet day in the cattle shed in pens on their own.

We ordered some native trees today from a tree nursery outside Oban.  The prolonged cold spell over the last 6 or 7 weeks has meant that they have been unable to lift any trees all that time. The burn next to our house has these amazing ice crystals on it now.

Some time later, we did find out that the Dragon Lady belongs to one of the skippers filmed in the 'Deadliest Catch' and that they had lost hundreds of creels (and their buoys) in a big storm, worth thousands of dollars.  Had this bright pink buoy burst its rope in that storm, crossed the Atlantic and washed up here on the island of Mull on our home beach at the end of Calgary Bay?

Winter sun on wetland habitat

In the foreground of the above photograph is the wetland area bordering the Haunn field where the remote holiday cottages are. In the hazy late afternoon light the island of Rum seemed almost etheric.

The Cheviot and Blackface (ewe) hoggs are all now trained to the food. Their stint in the cattle shed over, both flocks are now grazing together in the Park - coming each morning to a long line of troughs for their food. You only have to linger a moment when walking through at other times of day, on the track to Haunn, before they start gathering themselves around you expectantly - waiting for a little more. Below is a photograph taken of some of them, late afternoon yesterday (hence the camera shake).

Some farmers on the island choose to 'winter' their hoggs 'away' instead of doing what we do here. Away wintering involves taking the hoggs off the island to a farm on the mainland - perhaps in Aberdeenshire or Perthshire. They might leave in November and return before lambing. This traditional arrangement helps both farmers - the island farms rest their ground with less mouths to feed over the leaner months, and the host farms may have grown turnips for this purpose or may have surplus grass to use up before the spring. Our overall flock size seems to fit our ground - there is enough forage for them all and the grassland benefits from the hoggs and the cast ewes living on the in bye in the winter.

Animals and humans alike benefiting from a cold spell. Dry and clear weather, and frosty ground in the mornings. Approaching the shortest day, the bright sunlight gives valued extra daylight.

Duill Cottage is having tiles laid in the kitchen and bathroom - nearly finished thankfully as the Christmas guests arrive soon.