The wind dropped eventually

I have finally got our internet connection sorted.  Farmer had spent some time balancing on the forks of the tractor raised over the old porch roof, to fit the new dish to the wall. He did that weeks ago. Then I finally plucked up courage to connect up the laptop and try and make sense of the very faded photocopied instructions that came as part of the Home Install Kit.  With a sophisticated message system between myself in the kitchen, Daughter outside the open kitchen window and Farmer balancing above the roof with a sledgehammer screwdriver, we managed to point the dish in exactly the right direction to maximise connection to Ka-sat.  Success - or so I thought.  

Suddenly the many internet connecting devices in the house started coming up with error messages and not connecting without a lot of irritating intervention.  Days passed.  Not surprisingly it didn't get any better.  In fact with the strong easterly winds it got worse.  We had been promised 18mb/s (10 x better than existing) but it didn't seem any faster - if anything a lot slower and more unstable.  

There hasn't been much time to look into it this last week, and I kept hoping it would get better all by itself.  But this morning I couldn't even load a page, it was like having dial up again.  Then the penny dropped.  We had had a warning email from Q-sat, our original provider, saying we were about to exceed our monthly usage. I was a little surprised because we were on a new satellite.. but I looked at their stats page this morning and saw that we had now used 100% - even though we were on the new satellite.  Or were we? 

Imagine my embarrassment and relief, after 9 days of difficulties and not being impressed by the new connection, to discover that I had mis-wired the router, and that we had still been using the old slower satellite connection...

A boat passing as the storm was weakening.

It has been a doubly good morning as Farmer had to calve a cow with a calf that was breached.   Thankfully the calving jack came into use for the first time and he was able to calve her, swiftly and without too much distress for the cow and calf.  The calf is now up and suckling. 

Blown away.

The hens were really struggling in the high winds but they are laying lots of eggs which is great and we will have some in time for Easter week guests arriving this weekend.  

The larches in the Langamull forest are much further on than the ones here because we are so much more exposed.

Farmer in the garden shed

Matt Baker's sculpture Maura (maquette for The Passage, Isle of Cumbrae) 

Need to start gardening

Silver sea towards Tiree

The warm renewable glow

Sunset behind the trees 

The team has been working hard.  Only Shian and Duill to finish now. Bathroom paint in Duill drying as I write and Shian last minute touches will be finished by tonight.  I hope to photograph them tomorrow! In the meantime here are some photographs from Studio and Toechtamhor. It will be interesting to compare the energy consumption on both cottages - before and after their eco-improvements.

New doorway into bedroom, Studio

New wood burning stove, Studio

Gallery bedroom, Studio

From the garden

New door, Toechtamhor

The original fireplace, Toechtamhor

Twin bedroom, Toechtamhor

Toechtamhor 

View from the kitchen sink, Toechtamhor

Farmer has been on sheep work again this week.   Gathering on Monday and in the fank on Tuesday.   John, who helped gather and in the fank, said he had never seen the hill so dry. There is such a risk from accidental grass fires now.  

A satellite broadband blog

Tiny burnet rose hips.

We have been having issues with the broadband this month, so this is a very short blog with hardly any images! We can only get satellite broadband here and as part of a Scottish Government broadband for all initiative, we had a dish installed about 3 years ago. It was a huge step up from dial up, and if it was slow to regular broadband users, it felt super fast to us. It is expensive though - we pay £57 a month for 25GB data download and a speed of between half and one MBps (when lucky). It meant we could install wifi in the Phone Room for our guests which we were really happy about, and didn't intend to charge for it.

The last couple of months have been touch and go as to whether we had enough download capacity, as we received emails warning us that we had almost reached our limit and therefore were about to be 'throttled'. (charming!). They usually come around the 26th-28th of the month so we would just manage to eek the supply out til the next month's quota began. However this month we had almost exceeded the limit half way through the month! Eventually I had to remove the router from the Phone Room in order to ensure the office could still get connected when it needed to. Daughter has been banned from Facebook (says its killing her social life) and Farmer was no longer allowed to use his iPad!

I am hoping that with the end of the school holidays and moving into the autumn months that internet usage will go down a bit, and we can stay as we are for the time being. But we will have to investigate alternative suppliers to see if we can increase our download package. Wifi in the Phone Room will be switched on again on Saturday!!

Farmer has been monitoring the grass and flower situation in line with our SRDP grazing regime, and it was time yesterday to move the cows into the New Field. They calmly waited for him to open the gate. It was interesting to see that they had not eaten the Devil's Bit Scabious as there was still lots in the field they had been in. They would be allowed into the Black Park but, like this time last year, it is still looking spectacular and we feel reluctant to let them in there just yet.

Lodestones.

Grass of Parnassus singly so elegant (above) and stunning in quantity (below). You could hardly move for them in the field near the Point.