Turning of the tides - and a Happy New Year

This post will be short. Running out of year, before the New one rolls in. Farmer and family are off, before dawn tomorrow, to celebrate Hogmanay with friends and family - a tour round Scotland before school starts again on the 9th. So if there is not a New Year post for a week or so after we get back, please excuse!

The photos on this post are from yesterday (the tin shed near Penmore on its roof - blown out of the ground) and from earlier in the year.

Weather related issues have dogged the last few days. High winds (again and again!). Yet more powercuts! Yesterday's was caused by a fire on a hydro pole between Calgary and Ensay, which burnt through the pole. The hardy team of engineers managed to do a running repair - by lowering the top section above the burned out bit, and bolting it to the rest of the pole, thus securing the line.

Powercuts, coming when you least expect or want them, makes you realise how dependant we all are on electricity. Being connected to the national grid means that the turbine is automatically switched off in a power outage so having our own turbine and solar PV does not mean we are safe from the effects of powercuts - no smug, we are alright thoughts here! But without the electricity the woodchip boiler cannot work either (no controls, no pumps to circulate the heat) and as a result of yesterday's powercut, we discovered last night a safety feature we didn't realise it had - if the power cut comes whilst the boiler is firing, the boiler will 'boil over' and dump the excess hot water on the floor of the boiler room - so that it doesn't damage itself! It soon regulated itself once the power was restored. Thankfully 6 of the cottages have wood burning stoves and we are planning on putting in stoves to the other 2 in the coming year.

Lucky not to lose the 'solardome' greenhouse in our garden in yesterday's blast, as one of the windows blew out, but thankfully the rest of the structure stood up to the challenge.

The grass in the garden has gone yellow, from salt laden wind and excessive rain! Windward side of escallonia hedging salt wind singed and threadbare. Natural selection in the sycamore trees clinging to our garden edge, as dying branch tips hasten to the ground whipped away from tree centre by sudden gusts too strong to withstand.

Lots of candles at the ready for the next powercut - just in case!

The cows are safely in doors - dry and warm, easily fed - as long as you can open the sliding doors. Wrestling with gates in the wind that are almost impossible to open, fighting with feed bags and feeling the full force of battering rain or hail as Farmer goes to feed the hoggs is something else.

The tups are still working but they will be taken out in a week's time, and the ewes will be sent back to the hill once more.

We have had a fairly epic year all in all. Enjoyed almost all of it. Loved alot of it. Hated certain bits of it. And stressed about too much of it. What next year has in store time will tell! We don't expect to win any awards or get quite as much publicity as we got this year. But we will keep on keeping on at what we do - and a few things more than we have done before! 2012 bookings are looking good for a busy season ahead - lots of repeat guests which is always lovely, and some new faces too who we look forward to meeting.

During the coming farming year, we will be monitoring the fields and seeing how the new grazing management is affecting the bio-diversity, we will hopefully be doing something clever with excess wind power heating water for the district heating - and we will look forward to welcoming some of you here in the coming year. Happy New Year!!!

Tourism matters, corncrakes and a day out on Morvern

This glowing roundel of spring green beech is on the side of the Sound of Mull, on the way down from Drimnin to Lochaline.

It has been a week of excitement on the wildlife front.   Those who follow Prasad's birdlog will know there have been a few sightings of the elusive corncrake this last few days and we are hoping they stay put and breed - this would be a perfect conclusion for our last summer of the Rural Stewardship scheme.  

During one of our first summers here we had our initial experience of corncrakes.  We didn't see them but we enjoyed being kept awake at night by their calling in the field below the farmhouse.  

During the time those corncrakes were here, way back then, we earned some extra money by having two scenes for an Ikea advert filmed here.  Money for old rope we thought, but by the end of the day of filming, we felt as if we had earned every penny, as the crew completely invaded our home and our lives, asking for this, demanding that.  

One scene was filmed outside the Treshnish Old Schoolhouse (which had been transformed into a northern European cottage, with plastic roses round a plastic porch tiled in red plastic tiles).  A postman was to be filmed being bitten by a dog and defending himself using an Ikea chair.  In the event the actor-dog would not attack the postman as commanded!   

The second scene was of a boy cycling through the field below the house, through long grass, and something happened with another Ikea chair but all I can remember of this scene was that the corncrake was calling every now and then in the background, quite loudly, which disturbed the filming much to the irritation of the Director and to the amusement of all of us.  We didn't ever see the Ikea advert as it was made for the northern European market, but we certainly felt the corncrake had the last laugh!

We have 2 new orphan lambs today.  Think they are to be named Bob and Breeze - though this may change.  Brownie and Brian had moved into the deluxe Stack yard hotel next to the veg garden and they seemed very content.  Today they have been joined by the newcomers.   When we left them after the evening feed tonight, the two pairs of lambs were eyeing each other up across the Stack yard, a real sheep us and them scenario.

Apple blossom - usually towards the end of May we have some string winds which comes through especially to strip the blossom from our precious, wind-gnarled apple trees. And tonight it is suddenly very windy.

We had the Green Tourism Business Scheme inspection yesterday.  There is a daunting amount of paperwork and monitoring involved in this nowadays, but I am reluctantly realising that monitoring is a really good thing for focusing the mind, giving us a baseline from which to move, encouraging change and improvement.  In addition to the monitoring we already do, now we have the new Recycling Shed, I am going to attempt to start monitoring how much we send to landfill and how much goes to be recycled.   After nearly 2 hours of pen pushing and discussion, we went out for a look around, I showed him the Laundry, the wood-chip boiler and a cottage or two.  Hopefully we will have kept our Gold Award.

And today I went to a Sustainable Tourism event in Oban held by Visit Scotland.  The idea behind these events is to encourage tourism businesses to become more sustainable - but not just through things like energy savings or adopting renewables, but through 'community engagement' and 'waste awareness'.   I had agreed to giving a short presentation (my first, probably my last, and in all a very amateurish presentation) about what we do as a sustainable tourism business.  Afterwards I walked back along the sunny Oban sea front muttering to myself about what I should have said but hadn't. (which was quite alot)!