The weekend

Farmer did some painting on Friday and now the tups are all out with the ewes.   He was watched by the 'spare' tups who stood in a line by the wind turbine field fence looking down at the fank.   It is not their time yet, they have a further 17 days to wait, until they get painted and put into the fields with the ewes!

We needed one more tup, so went off on Saturday morning to Knock Farm to look at the tups they had for sale.  We selected one, and after a cup of tea with Donald we headed home via Loch na Keal and Ulva ferry. Torloisk were gathering the hill at Kilbrennan so we stopped a while to let their ewes get in to the right place, and watched the already gathered ewes who seemed to be watching this gather too! 

Sunday dawned bright and clear, and remained so all day, until a truly beautiful sunset sky.

Gearing up

Possibly the biggest excitement of the week has been Prasad's photographs of the chough that he and others have been seeing over on the other side of the headland.

The weather has been cold, crisp and clear over the last week or so. The ground is frozen and I have been enjoying walking across the bogs. I love the way the frost picks out the shapes of the mosses and the way the low sunlight picks the detail out.  A good photographic challenge.

I was quite surprised to find a thistle looking as if it was about to flower, given that it is December. I will keep watching it now to see what it does.

Farmer put the 'chaser' Tups out on Saturday while Daughter and I were away.  The premier team of tups were 'put out' 3 weeks ago, and the idea is that these chasers will catch the ewes that the first lot might have missed.  The blackface ewes are still on the Point, but there is plenty of grass and they are doing a very good job in eating the 'foggage' down. 'The Point' is a mixed habitat having some good areas of coastal heath, and pockets of herb rich grass, it isn't in our 'scheme' which means we can be flexible with when we graze it - an insurance policy for times when we are short of grazing, perhaps due to a cold late start in the spring or extra long dry spells (yes, really) both  inhibiting grass growth. Farmer deliberately leaves the Point for tupping knowing that there will be more than enough for the ewes to eat, and more than enough ewes to take the grass down to the level that we need for the flora and fauna.  

This gate leads from the field which surrounds Shian and Duill into the boggy new woodland area.   The thin shrubby plants in the foreground of the photograph below is the evidence the natural regeneration is working, and it is really good to see.  Our aim to create a wildlife corridor across the in-bye connecting the small areas of woodland to each other - it doesn't happen overnight!

Calgary Bay and the pier just showing up in the distance.  

The cows are grazing in the Black Park at the moment, and are being fed some 'cake' every morning.  As long as it is dry, we are quite happy to keep them outside, but if it turns wet we will bring them in so that we minimise the damage they make to the fields in wet weather.

James has been doing some road works with the digger, creating better access for tractor onto the Point so that Farmer can cut the bracken up on the flats where 50 years ago they grew wonderful crops of oats.  We won't start ploughing it up, but it will be good to get the grazing back.  There are lots of 6 spot Burnet Moths in that area in the summer.

With this steady spell of clear skies during the day, we have enjoyed some fantastic clear night skies at night too.  One very bright planet reflecting on the sea in the same way the moon leaves a path on the water.  Stunning!

  

Near Shian and Duill there is a small lochan, and today it was frozen over. Gary the electrician is working in Duill just now putting LEDs in the bathroom and a fantastic almost silent bathroom fan.  Neil is working at Haunn with lots of paint pots whilst Angus and Ben try and squeeze a new window into the gallery bedroom in Studio! The insulation makes the place feel so cosy already - and the wood burning stove arrives next week.  

While we were away at the weekend, I went to look at some furniture for the cottages, that I had initially seen on Ebay and then found the seller's website on google. It was all a bit cloak and dagger as I was given a mobile number but not an address, so going against everything I am teaching my daughter about internet safety, off I set - into the sunset (literally - see below) and I was guided to the farm step by step.  (I had surmised that they are not really a 'showroom' and possibly that the farmer they lease the building from frowns upon visits from the public!) Anyway, I turned into a tarmac drive (Farmer would like one of these) with neatly mown verges (no wild flowers then) and drew up to 3 huge towering farm buildings.  My armchairs were lurking in the middle one, through steel doors into a cavernous shed, stacked high with salesroom buys. It was a successful foray into unknown territory as I bought bedroom chairs for Studio and Toechtamhor, and a lovely faded  Victorian mahogany bedside cabinet for West!  Plus they are being delivered to Oban!

I have been keeping an eye on the turbines and how they are working.  It is unnerving when you see the new one not turning, when the older one is. So I wanted to see how they perform in relation to each other.  There is no risk of me turning into too much of a geek with this as I clearly have alot to learn regarding record keeping!  In the last 2 weeks it looks as if Turbine 2 has made 30% more electricity than Turbine 1.. which leads me to doubt that I actually took the meter readings on the same day - so I am going to start again!  

This is the field where we fenced off an area of boggier ground to see if natural regeneration will occur from the birch and hazel woodland below.  It is rewarding to see it is working and that the existing woodland edge is spreading.  

A robin was enjoying the self seeded young birches, almost matching its red breast. I was excited to see my first Great Spotted Woodpecker today in the trees around the house. I have seen them elsewhere but never here!  Alot of fast and furious pecking in the sycamores. 

The zwartble hoggs are looking good. They seem to be thriving in this cold weather.  We have Guy putting in a new fence in the Park which will help hugely at gathering time, and give Farmer more flexibility and control on grazing.  

Coco the puppy seems a bit better than she was last week, and was merrily destroying Christmas decorations and Santa hats this evening as we got the boxes down from the loft and pulled out all those old familiar decorations to dress the tree.  

We have been seeing alot of the vet recently - a couple of weeks ago, Farmer had a meeting with The Vet to write his Animal Health Plan, which every farmer has to do in conjunction with a vet;  last Wednesday Coco had a blood test taken by The Soon To Be New Vet as we continue to try and work out what is wrong with her, and then on Monday just passed, The Vet came over to Treshnish with Soon to be New Vet to do the routine BVD testing that all herds in Scotland have to have done by February 1st. I dont know when we will hear the BVD blood test results but Coco's came back showing she was in need of some Vitamin B12!  So we will be off back to the vet for her to have an injection next week.

We had an interesting visit a few days ago, from a couple who had lived and worked at Treshnish in the early 1970's.  They knocked on the door just as I was pulling on my wellies and going out somewhere.  Off they went for a walk down to Haunn, but came back the next day for tea. It was fascinating to hear what it was like when they were here. It was also lovely for us to hear their impressions of how things are now!  They lived in Shian, and it was his first farming job.  He worked with Tommy and Colin, and together they looked after 30 cows and about 300 sheep.  There was a manager from Dervaig who would come in to see how they were getting on every now and then! They made silage with the tractor (Massey 35) we bought with the farm in 1994, using the silage pits you can still see in the Haunn field and down below the house.  East, Middle and West were rented out as holiday cottages then, and she looked after that side of things.  There was no mains electricity, though the diesel generators were replaced finally with mains electricity while they were living here.  He talked about what we knew as 'Tommy's shed', long since renovated into an office.  By all accounts, many a dram had been taken in Tommy's shed after working in the fank, and many a story told! 

Looking over the tree tops to Caliach Point and the faint mountains of Rum behind. 

Winter feeding and energy planning.

It is always a bit daunting when winter feeding starts. It is not a job that you can not  stop once you have started - until the weather improves in the spring and the grass starts coming again. But the cows are in good condition and Farmer doesn't want them to lose condition as winter gets underway.  

So earlier in the week, the cows got their first feed of the winter - a bag of Hill Cow Cobs.  This means they can be fed on the ground, in a different place each day, no need for the troughs (better for Farmer's back) and with the ability to move the feeding spot each day there is less chance of poaching the ground when it is wet underfoot. 

They run for the bag!

Time to stand back and check how they all are.  

This cow was very ill as a heifer, and didn't go to the bull until she was a year older than the other heifers.  Since then though, she has had successful calvings every time. She is very calm and having been so ill, she is quite used to being at close quarters with humans.

Coming to have a look.

The weather has dried up after a week of fairly grim wet weather.  It has been lovely the last few days, and particularly good sunsets.  Calgary Tearoom was open this weekend for a Christmas sale, so we headed down there for tea and cake - and a walk at sunset on the beach.

This view of Treshnish Point is at the corner just beyond Calgary tearoom, before the road drops down to sea level.  When we first moved here, my stomach would turn over as we caught sight of it, in a sort of ' oh god what have we done?' way.  It still catches me now, 18 years later - no regrets at all - but still moved by the headland's powerful shape and drama.

The sunset. 

Calgary headland.

And Treshnish headland again.

The moon and the T LEC CAB sign.

Lichens at Haunn.

Another view we cannot tire of.

I went to a Visit Scotland energy saving event at the Tourist Office in Craignure earlier in the week.  I took leaflets from the Green Business Tourism Scheme to hand out to anyone who was interested in joining.  It was a horrendously wet day and not very many people ventured out, even though Brian from Energy Saving Trust was there with lots of information.  He and I know each other from the school closure threat days, so we chatted and he gave me some very useful advice about interest free loans for businesses (including farmers).  This was good to know as the last time we tried to get one we couldn't because we farmed.   More form filling though.  We are going to have one of their energy audits done. This will give us a chance to apply for the interest free loan. We will be especially looking at Toechtamhor which is a higher user of energy, being bigger and of a different construction than the other Haunn cottages.    We have plans to put better windows in, using the same airtight method as we used in the farmhouse - and possibly an air to air source heat pump to reduce electricity consumption.

Studio is already for the builders to arrive to do some eco-improvements in the living room and downstairs bedroom - we are increasing the wall insulation and putting in a wood burning stove as well as a window in the north wall of the bedroom.

We have had kindling supplied for the last 10 or more years by a sawmiller from Salen.  Unfortunately he has just told us that the next 10 bags (for our Christmas and New Year guests) will be his last delivery.  This is because of the difficulty he is having in sourcing dry wood.  So now we are looking into what we can do instead.  If the community woodland supplied them we could buy them from there, but I don't think they do them either.  So if we cannot source them on the island - what to do? Do we stop supplying kindling altogther, and get guests to bring their own? Do we supply firelighters instead? You can get eco ones, but we are having problems finding out where they are made and where they come from.  Do we provide an axe and allow guests to chop their own kindling?  

The hoggs are doing well on learning how to feed, and they will be able to go out again soon.  The field in this photograph is one of the fields Farmer is finding it difficult to put the hoggs in - because of the brambles. Hoggs will often get 'caught' in the brambles and whereas the stronger ewes can pull themselves out of them, hoggs tend to get stuck. This is a side effect of our environmental management agreement which prevents us from grazing cattle at certain times when the brambles are growing. In areas where the cows can graze during high summer, the brambles are kept in check.   So the Black Park is one of the fields where the brambles are spreading, so there is an increased risk if the hoggs are in there.  Even with daily checking. 

Farmer has been out checking the tups.  The blackface ewes and tups are on the Point - so he goes with Jan and walks quietly through them, spying through his binoculars to make sure every one of them is present and correct. 

Farmer used his new livestock trailer this week. He took some left over lambs and cast ewes to the sale in Oban.  We managed to get an all-time record price for one lamb - but not in a good way - £2.  This would not have even covered the cost of getting it to market. 

We had 3 nights this week when there was no one staying at Treshnish apart from us. This is the first time since early March.  It feels very different when there is no one here, but this weekend some regulars have come across from Edinburgh for a long weekend, having seen the weather forecast (good here for the next few days) and other regulars are staying in West Cottage for a week - they only ever come in the winter!  

No matter what - it is tupping time

No matter what else is going on in the world. It is the 19th of November so the tups must go out. Well, a couple of days ago, it was the 19th and so the tups got their war paint painted on, and numbers scribbled on their sides.

Their feet were all checked a couple of weeks ago, and the special foot bath stuff we brought home from a huge farm supplies place on the edge of Dartmoor put to good use. Trailer loaded and off they went. Farmer took Friend with him to take a few pictures as I am a bit distracted by the Education Dept of Argyll and Bute at the moment (to say the least).

And that's it - the tups are out. These guys standing under the wind turbine are the Reserves -they have to wait a while longer. The hoggs - blackface and cheviot - are indoors at the moment, taking a few days off from grass ration to learn about lamb and ewe nuts. They are very skitterish, not at all used to farm buildings initially, but they soon calm down and learn to love the shake of the bag.

Serious neglect continues in the garden but a few long suffering veggies survive. We have already had a few frosts but miraculously sweet peas still flower in the Keder, and one last delphinium flowers, unbelievably, in the tunnel. The strawberry leaves have turned as have the blueberries which are so beautiful in every season.

There have been one or two serious blasts of wind in the last week and the turbine has been working hard. We have just received a quote for solar PV panels which we are going to install on the roof of the steading above the laundry.

The Councillors for Argyll and Bute meet again on the 25th, and we are hoping that they will vote to throw out the very flawed Proposal to close 25 schools. We will be there with our banners. Wish us luck!