Skies and seas, eggs and sheep

The Easter holidays bring a welcome release from rigid time-keeping, especially with friends staying with us, and the cottages full of families on holiday. Last week, we had a full pre-Easter week - the true start to the season - and it was lovely to have some of our seasonal regulars around the place, as well as some new faces who have fallen in love with the place too. One 'new' couple to Treshnish came from Edinburgh on public transport and 'survived' (loved.... thrived....?) in this isolated place without a car. Sometimes I am asked whether it is possible to be here without a car, and it is always difficult to know how to answer - because it so depends on what people want from their holiday and how they view remoteness. It was great to see that these two had made the right choice as they had a fantastic time apparently - AND saw sea eagles, golden eagles, short eared owls..

Feedback from guests is important to us - good or bad. We never assume we will always get it right. It was wonderful to open up the Twitter feed at the weekend, and find these great tweets! Hearing how much our guests enjoy the place is a sincerely good feeling for us. So thank you all - you know who you are - it made my Easter!

I'd tell you to check out @treshnish but I'd rather have a chance of getting a booking every year for the rest of my life. #bestkeptsecrets

@Treshnish 140 characters could never do justice to the farm and Haunn in particular. Most perfect place I've ever spent time on all fronts!

@treshnish Thank you so much for a fab week; so many kind, wonderful folks. I can't put into words how good the place felt. So sad to leave.

Lovely to find this threesome. Wood anemone, Celandine and Violet. Lots more violets now and celandine littering the fields below the house, they seem to enjoy the same ground as the bluebells come to later on, sheltered by the dead bracken - it is good for something then?

A bit of colour for an Easter weekend. We have windswept hyacinths in the garden and the daffodils all too quickly are going over, not helped by the cold wind or the damp weather.

An Easter egg hunt in the garden, for the 2 girls almost, but not quite, too old for such childish things. Or perhaps they kidded on to keep the aging parents happy. It has been a few years since Farmer was spotted wearing 'bunny ears'!! The kitchen filled with too much chocolate! Some egg decorating and rolling too. Above is 'Dad', and below some beach rubbish, down at the boathouse.

I saw my first kingcup about 3 - 4 weeks ago - there are lots more of them around now. And we saw our first sea-thrift today too, just coming into flower. I did take some photographs to prove it and will upload them with the next blog.

West Cottage guests had a great otter sighting near the cattle shed. They were walking along the track with Badger (one of Jan's puppies from last year), and an otter trotted across the road in front of them, went across the field above Shian and Duill, over the stone wall, and towards the lochan. We restored the lochan about 6 years ago, and has had increasing variety of wildlife on it, but this is the first time anyone has mentioned an otter being seen anywhere near it.

Sheep have been in this field quite recently so the primroses are just beginning to recover a bit. Particularly where sheltered by brambles or bracken, or out of reach.

The beginning of a flush of new grass coming now. The cattle are ranging on the hill, still being fed a bit of silage but they are finding some roughage on the hill now too. We are looking at the grazing regime plan to make sure we keep the right fields locked up for the right time. It will be interesting to see how the flowers are this year compared to last year.

We are not sure what this white marking in some of the rock pools is, but it was present down by the boathouse this afternoon. It almost looks like salt marks but it was below the tide mark. In 2008, when we had a very hot May, we collected sea salt from the pools further up the tideline.

The pre-lambing gathers were completed earlier in the week. Farmer went to see John in Dervaig to see if he would be able to give us a hand with the gathering as it is easier with 3 people. John knows his way around our hill, and it was really nice to have him back giving us a hand. The gather went fine, it was cold and the ewes were slow, but then they are heavily in lamb - and it is a good few miles for those furthest away. The last time Farmer handled these ewes was after tupping, before they went back to the hill at the beginning of January. Putting them through the fank now was a good chance to sift out any who looked as if they needed a bit of extra nutrition. Condition scoring is a useful method of assessing their condition throughout the year, so you can adapt treatments/feed et cetera if you need to. Farmer was worried to see that some of our ewes have not come out of the wet and relentless winter as well as they usually do. He kept those ones back for extra feeding. This is where the training they get as hoggs helps, as sheep do not naturally know to eat the delicious ewe nut or 'cake' that comes in a shiny sack - they dont naturally know about hay either. These ewes are 6 or 7 years old now and will not have needed supplementary feeding until now. So to begin with, they look puzzled as Farmer pours out the feed into the troughs, but slowly they start to eat it. The rest of the flock are back on the hill again having received their annual wormer (still following the system we used when organically certified) and the next time they come in through the fank will be with their lambs at foot.

Skies were changeable today as they have been all week. Blue skies in the morning, and then threatening rains and hail, and then sun again. By the time we got back to the house, we had been soaked by yet another downpour though.

Bracken fronds, fallen trees and magnolia blossom

This is one of the tall trees we lost in the winter storms. Older and vulnerable hazels have fallen too, but this one is quite dramatically down a gully, the potential firewood will have to be left for the insects, as there is no way we could safely retrieve it for our own use.

Daffodils are out. These are the leftovers from a 1970's farm diversification scheme, called the Hebridean Bulb Venture.

This field has been well nibbled down by the Cheviots. Stock are out of the graveyard field now. Hazy light.

It has been a mainly dry and warm week. The fields have dried up sufficiently for Farmer to do some field work on his tractor, and he is contemplating putting the cows out on the hill again tomorrow.

Time had to be taken to walk through the woodland area above the Ensay Burn. The exotic Magnolia is flowering so strongly. Not quite so wonderful to see are the first bracken shoots - bear in mind please it is only March.

Something very unexpected about staring up at the sky and seeing this in a hazel woodland on the north west coast of Mull.

Our damp climate helps support abundant lichen and fungus. We manage the woodland to protect the hazel glove fungus in particular. This means trying to keep the deer out, but they manage to sneak in when we are not looking. Their tracks follow along the deer fence, down the bank to the Ensay Burn, and across the shallower bits, you can see their tracks continuing across our neighbour's field. And back up to the hill. Some browsing is encouraged as hazel glove fungus needs air and light as well as shelter - a balance.

The forecast is to stay good for the next 7 days..lets hope so. The spring season has started - cottages busy and lots of walkers coming through to enjoy the Headland walk.

All kinds of things going on, and puppies growing on..

The farmhouse repairs are not finished but we have moved back in as Studio is now booked through the summer until September. Living in Studio for 2 months was a useful way of making sure it worked as a living space - and resulted in a little furniture moving (my favourite) means the sitting room feels refreshed and the kitchen enjoying a change as well. In addition, buying a small (low energy) TV for the main bedroom so parents can watch TV in bed, if they want to, once children have gone to sleep in the cosy boxbeds!

The farmhouse now has running hot and cold water again, with a working bath and loo (what a relief) and one day soon (I hope) we will have zoned central heating which will enable us to heat different areas of the house at different times. The ancient heating system we had before was all or nothing - I am appalled to admit there were not even thermostats on the radiators, so we will save energy with the ability to control!

As there is residual damp in the thick stone walls we are using breathable (woodfibre) insulation and Earthborn Claypaint which we haven't used before - these paints have no plastics or vinyls in them and will breathe with any moisture present in the walls, rather than blister or peel. It is lovely paint to use - a limited palette of colours which is quite a relief compared to the excessive choice of Dulux world. We have used LED lights in the kitchen and 2 of the darker rooms in the house, and what a different the spread of light makes. LEDs are low energy to run but expensive to buy initially. They pay for themselves in 2 - 3 years apparently and last for 10. (we'll see)

Where floors had to be replaced (rotten joists and the like) we have used reclaimed Junckers from the same source as used for the cottages - this time the batch we were sent (having not gone to look at it first) is covered in sports pitch lines so the floors look like jumbled up linear abstract paintings. (nice winter occupation with a blow torch to remove the lines? or careful siting of rugs?) And the leaky draughty north facing windows have been replaced by aluminium clad wooden windows giving these rooms a noticeable silence in a gale compared to before. The adhoc 'team' of local people working on the house have been fantastic, working hard and consistently - hopefully we will be finished soon!

What have we learned from renovating the house? It will never be as energy efficient as a modern house in terms of consumption, but it will be much better than it was before - using 'airtightness spec' round the windows, some additional insulation in walls, and controllable heating.

In a parallel world, the farm has been moving towards spring. New grass is slowly beginning to grow in the in bye fields; primroses are flowering in sheltered corners away from browsing sheep. Lambing is due to start any day, so Farmer is busy keeping a look out for any earlies. He is particularly anxious about the Cheviot Gimmers (Alice and her pals) who are lambing for the first time. Daughter's focus, I have to admit, has been transferred onto the seven growing pups, who consume alot of her attention. This is perhaps a good thing as previous to their appearance she was planning a private maternity bay for Alice in the stack yard, with 24 hour nursing care. Perhaps Farmer will be able to leave Alice to do as nature intended after all and just keep the usual watchful eye at an appropriate distance!

The cows are out on the hill with their calves, and fending for themselves much more. In the few days of heavy rain earlier in the week Farmer was tempted to bring them all back into the shed for some shelter but decided it was better not to interfere. The pre-lambing gather and treatment was done a couple of weeks ago, with the old team helping out.

For a long time Neighbour and His Cousin from Dervaig helped with gathering the sheep in off the hill, and at fank work over here, and Farmer would repay the favour helping out next door - a process known as Neighbouring, and a lovely tradition it was. But more recently the system has changed, and whilst Farmer and Neighbour still help each other out in other ways and at other things, Contractors have taken over the role of 'Neighbour' (whichever side of the boundary fence you are on). So the usual team is now Contractor and Neighbours Cousin from Dervaig, but Contractor had something more important to do (getting married!)(for which we all send Congratulations!!!) when we need to gather for the 'pre-lambing Gather' so the old team of Neighbour and Cousin came in to help instead. The ewes were given a treatment against worms and fly. This is very similar to the treatment they would have had when we were farming organically, they were allowed one prophylactic worm treatment a year and this is the time of year it is recommended to do it, prior to lambing so that they pass protection onto the lambs through the milk.

In late autumn Visit Scotland asked if they could nominate us for the first ever VESTAs European Sustainable Tourism Awards. Great, flattering, but not a chance of winning we thought! In February I realised that I had been ignoring an important email from the organisers of the Awards, thinking it was junk mail. It was only the words 'EXTENDED DEADLINE' which finally caught my eye. Oops. This was an extended deadline for nominees to complete a Profile Form so that our business could be profiled at the Awards Ceremony in Berlin. The questions were interesting (clumsily translated from German into English) and seemed geared towards far bigger businesses than ours, but I persevered and sent some photographs.

We decided early on that we were not going to accept the invitation to go to the Awards Reception in Berlin on March 11th. (As we try not to fly, it would have involved days and days by train - for a 2 hour Reception....I don't think so.) Imagine our surprise and delight though, when we heard that we did 'win'. We have been selected as one of 12 'Outstanding Examples' of Sustainable Tourism in the whole of Europe!! A small enterprise from a remote corner of the Isle of Mull.....it hasn't quite sunk in yet.

Tweets... the first Swallow. Garden full of daffodils. Goldfinches at the bird feeder. Wheatears. Wagtails. Frogspawn. Larches greening up. Strange cars on the road. Signs of Spring. Of Summer. Yesterday was windy but with balmy air out of the wind, and warm milky sun. Lovely to see familiar faces as regular guests return and to meet those experiencing Treshnish or Mull for the first time.

Treshnish is now on Twitter. I haven't quite got the hang of it yet, but finding some interesting Tweeters out there - like Guardian Eco, Lucy Brown and Scots Renewables.

At last some photographs of the puppies dotted through this posting. We still have a few boy pups to find homes for. Their father Cap is an incredibly good natured dog with a huge out-run, born and bred as he was on the high hills of Glen Lyon. He is good at going the distance when gathering along the headland, running up and down the cliffs. Jan their mother is happier in fields but useful on the hill too. She also has a keen eye and would work until she dropped given the chance. Please email via the website if you are interested in giving one of these pups a home.