Weaning calves

It is always a sad day when the calves are weaned and go off to market.  The cows holler and call for their calves, roaming around the fields looking for them after they have gone.

Before we bought our own cows our neighbour used to graze his cattle here in the summer.  When it was time for the calves to be weaned he would walk the cows back over to his farm, the calves would go from there to market in a lorry, and the cows would be put on to his own hill again.  Several times we woke in the morning the day after the calves had gone to find his cows had made their own way back to Treshnish searching for their calves.  

In these photographs the cows are calling for their calves.  It was morning and the calves had just gone. By the afternoon they had started drifting off to the other side of the hill park to graze.

The next morning Farmer walked them down towards Haunn and they went into Scoma. The bull chivalrously waited until all the cows had reached the gate before he went through himself.  

 

Preparations

Farmer is well and truly into the winter feeding regime now.  The bull is in the cattle shed with a young stirk (bullock) and our oldest cow No 63 to keep him company, and the rest of the cows are still out enjoying the roughage in the Black Park and a bite of 'cake' in the mornings. The hoggs are in the park near the cattle shed, and are mostly coming to the food now. Disappointingly there are about 15 out of the 100 who have not got the message about the 'tup tup tup' call accompanied by a rattling bag and so Farmer is going to get them in again and see if they will learn.  It is likely that they are eating the hay so they are not losing condition, it is just useful to know they will eat ewe nuts if they ever have to come into the shed at any time. 

We are busy getting everything ready for Christmas and New Year visitors, the first of whom arrive in a day or two's time. Neil has been busy painting in West, Middle and East and now he is finishing off a wee job in Duill kitchen and helping me order the right amount of materials for the new bathroom, which we are doing in January. 

The builders have been putting the plasterboard on in the Studio, the new window upstairs caused a bit of hassle but it is finished now, and floods the gallery bedroom with westerly light and views of the Point and the sea.  (I will be ordering thermal blackout blinds soon!). I will post some photographs when I have some record of the progress.

We have had some good dry frosty mornings with ice on the puddles, and pockets of frost staying white all day, but the wind is getting up tonight bringing some warmer wilder weather overnight.  Today was another of those beautiful still bright days so I stole an hour to go and look at the cheviots and enjoy the golden orange sunlight on the bay.  The tide was very low. 

Fuchsia growing through our garden wall.

A sculpture given to us by our friend and artist Matt Baker.

The Cheviots and Zwarties are grazing the field below the house.  There is still plenty of grass for them. The tups have been out for 4 weeks now so Farmer would expect the majority of the ewes to have been served by now, but this tup was showing an interest in the ewe, so just as well they are all still together. The tups will come out at the beginning of January, and will come in through the fank to get some health care before they go back to the hill. The tups are then kept separate from the ewes and the hoggs until the same time next year!

You can see the second turbine on the skyline in the photograph above.  It would appear that I have been reading the meters correctly. Having in the last post noted a 30% difference between the new and old turbines I thought I must have made an error so now  I am re-reading them every few days just to see what happens, and on the latest comparison, the new turbine was still generating more than the older one, and this time by about 50%. It will be interesting to see if that continues or not.

We have the Energy Savings Trust coming to do an energy audit in January. I am hoping that I will get some hints as to how we can reduce our reliance on electricity for heating down at Haunn. Being the largest cottage at Haunn, Toechtamhor is the largest user and we are working on reducing the amount of electricity we use. The cavity wall insulation installed last year should have helped as should the new windows going in in February, but I am hoping the EST auditor will come up with something really radical to help reduce energy use even more!

I think you could call this 'extensive' grazing. At this time of year it can feel so wild, and so sparse compared to the abundance of summer, when the fields are carpeted with wild flowers and herbage.

It is getting close to the solstice, and lovely to have this rich sunshine which lengthens the daylight preciously at this time of year when the days are so short. I sat a while and looked at the view out to sea, it was so quiet and peaceful. No sound from the sheep, almost no movement from the sea, occasional gulls flying past soundlessly, and again I was reminded of how lucky I am to have this on my doorstep.

The dark pool in the foreground of this picture is the Treshnish 'swimming pool'. It is often filled with kelp fronds but today I could see its sandy bottom.  There is another pool at Haunn on the beach where Donald Sutherland gets shot in the last dramatic scene of the 'Eye of the Needle' which was filmed here (and at Cameron Farm, Loch Buie) in 1981. East, Middle and West were used as the dressing rooms, and there was a lighthouse built on the Dun at Haunn.

Thank you to all the new faces we have met at Treshnish over the past year, and to the more familiar ones who keep coming back - you are an important part of what makes Treshnish hum.

I will leave you with a photograph of Iona to wish you all a lovely Christmas/winter solstice and a Happy New Year. 

Road repairs, snow and starlings

Whilst the rest of the country suffered the snows over the last few weeks, we escaped it all. So there was a little gentle excitement in this snowball loving household when it started to snow yesterday afternoon as it was getting dark.

During the evening, the wind got up and we had some impressive blasts before I fell asleep, with hail stones being hurled against the windows, sounding more like rapidly fired pebbles than hail. It never ceases to amaze me that during a gale we can feel the floors upstairs move in the wind - in a house with 2 foot thick walls. Good job we are sorting out the draughts and replacing dodgy windows in the New Year.

Daylight reveals the usual smattering of snow at Treshnish compared to heavier falls elsewhere but some great vertical accumulations up the windows of the house. (On Christmas Day morning 1995 we woke up and looked out of the north facing windows of the house to a total whiteout, and thinking it was foggy, Farmer opened the window and a wall of snow tumbled in to the room.)

School has been cancelled today, and therefore the Christmas party this evening. School closures meetings etc have kept me from the camera so not many pics on this posting. Morale fluctuates from high to low. Mike Russell (the Education Minister) visited the school on Monday. Pupils interviewed him as part of a project they are doing about the World of Work. His visit was a high point in amongst the lows, as he is a charismatic man and made us all feel more positive.

The metre long bird feeder was at a jaunty angle this morning blown sideways by the wind. Over the last week or so we have had a few extra visitors - two cock pheasants and a small flock of starlings. The two pheasants try and chase off the smaller birds on the ground - generally unsuccessfully, but the starlings are tending to dominate the feeders which is difficult for the other regulars who are not getting their fair share.

One of the main jobs at this time of year is ensuring that the nutrition of the animals is kept at the right level. Whilst there is plenty of foggage (grass left standing) in the fields and on the hill, it is of a much lower nutritional value than in the summer. The cows are on the hill at the moment and have been grazing right out away from their morning feed area - ranging the hill, and last night they will have gone to the south side of the hill to find shelter from the cold north blasts. So Farmer has to wait for them to come back to the troughs - if he goes at first light, they are nowhere to be seen.

The ewes are still with the tups in the fields, so if the snow stays it is easy to get supplementary feed to them. The hoggs are indoors in the cattle shed enjoying the kinder option. And Farmer is enjoying not having to pull them out from the brambles.

West and East have new wood burning stoves so they will be cosy for our Christmas guests. Perhaps we should move down there ourselves as the Farmhouse is still without central heating.

That is the snow on again - completely white out there now.