A late brood and a late night.

Montbretia flowering against the wall providing shelter and pecking ground for the hens.

Another surprise this morning as one of the Leghorns appeared with 11 fluffy little chicks.

The rest of the hens came up to check them out and the mother clucked on protectively if anyone came too close.

So out came the broody coop and run again and the coffee grinder to grind food for the chicks. They are now safely in the coop and run, and at least are safe from any scavenging Mink or Sparrowhawk and any autumn gales we may get.

I've lost count of how many broods have hatched this year. It is a bit late in the year for chicks to hatch but hopefully we can help the hen to look after them and they will be okay!

This last week since the English school holidays have ended, the self catering holiday cottages here on Treshnish Farm have had younger families staying and several times I have looked out to see young children enjoying feeding the hens and admiring Ruben and Apricot the two remaining Call drakes.

Seafood Night, Dervaig Village Hall.

Here is a very bad photo of a very good Seafood Platter!

It was the annual Dervaig Seafood Night last Saturday organised by Dervaig Village Hall. This event started 10 years ago - to celebrate fantastic local shellfish and has become a great annual happening - this year a few other events have been set up as part of a small but very popular Mull and Iona Food Festival.

About 80 people ( both locals and visitors) sat down to a seafood fest with live music and lots of good craic. It was a fundraiser for the village hall and RNLI. A late night by the time the washing up was all done. If you are sorry you missed this, check out www.wildisles.co.uk for listings of other island events - such as Producers Markets, Wild Isles Week.

Preparing for Lamb Sales

A ewe and her lambs with the Haunn self catering cottages below.

Cap: our top working dog.

Now is the time that our spring born lambs are weaned. The female lambs (hoggs) are selected to keep for breeding. The surplus females and the male lambs (wedders) are sold as store lambs.

The curious thing is that many people visiting the Isle of Mull may not be aware of any of this happening and yet it is such an important part of the annual seasonal work of the farmer and crofter. Like getting the silage in ready for winter, selling the lambs and letting the ewes back to the hill to gain some condition before the sea winds burn off the autumn grasses in the late autumn storms.

Fanks (sheep handling pens) are not always visible from the road. Unless you happen upon farmers, crofters, helpers working their dogs with flocks of sheep and lambs on the move, you may have no idea this is going on.

Our fank is fairly new, up beside the cattle shed and at a short distance from the Treshnish and Haunn Cottages, it replaced the old wooden one that was situated where the woodchip boiler now stands. Originally they would have been made of stone, and you can see disused ones in a few roadside sites on the island - there's a beautiful one towards Gribun from Knock, and in June the foxgloves in the one in Glen Bellart is a stunning carpet of deep pink flowers!

The nearest sale ring is Oban Livestock Centre in Oban and alot of Mull farmers and crofters take their stock there. Alternatives are to go to Dalmally or Stirling. Or you can arrange a private sale.

Organic sales are few and far between, and if we put our organic lambs through a non-organic sale they lose their organic status. For the last few years we have sold our lambs direct to the same organic farmer on the east coast - this greatly reduces the stress for the animals as they don't have to go through the market process and we enjoy the continuity of dealing with the same person and having agreed a price before the lambs leave the farm.

This year all the lambs are being vaccinated as part of the compulsory Blue Tongue Vaccination Programme - before they leave the farm. And they must have double ear tags as well. All the numbers recorded and as they are organic they travel with a medicine record of what medicines they may have had prior to sale.

So the Treshnish gathering will take place early next week - followed by a long days work in the fank - checking, selecting, vaccinating and tagging our organic lambs.

The woodchip story

The first load of chip is delivered.

When it all began....The Treshnish woodchip story began about 10 years ago when our architect John Renshaw suggested we had a good location for a centralized heating system powered by biomass. At the time it seemed to be too big an undertaking for us, plus there was no woodchip producer on the island at the time. So we put the idea on the back burner.

2005

In 2005 we had a Renewable Energy Study done to highlight possibilities on the farm for utilising small scale Renewables. Our goal was to produce enough electricity ourselves to offset the usage by the Treshnish and Haunn holiday cottages.

2006

In 2006 we embarked on a project to install a small micro hydro turbine on Treshnish lochan, applying for and being awarded a grant, finding the man to manufacture the turbine and install it. Unfortunately though, it turned out that the information within the Study was flawed and we didn't have enough head of water or flow to run a turbine however small. This was hugely disappointing. So back to the drawing board we went.

2007 Failed funding - 2008 successful funding

Over the next couple of years we looked at the other options and the one which stood out was the biomass, particularly as now there was a woodchip supplier on the island - within 15 miles of here. We tried for the Low Carbon Buildings Programme grant in 2007 but that didn't work out so we waited for the launch of the Scottish Rural Development Programme in 2008 and submitted our woodchip project in the first round of grant applications. It was worth waiting for as we were one of the first projects to get approval.

Now the Treshnish Renewables project could begin.

We chose Highland Wood Energy as installers. Based in Fort William, they seemed within easy reach and they had already installed 3 other woodchip boilers on the island. Our Froling 70 kW boiler with 1,800L accumulator tank housed in a shipping container was the first system of its size and kind to be installed on the island.

Work inside the cottages started in November - removing old storage heaters, fitting wet system plumbing and radiators (by a very experienced Salen based plumber), redecorating, laying reclaimed Junckers flooring. The outside work started in December - digging trenches, laying the pipe, backfilling the trenches, landscaping. The boiler should have arrived on 2 March. It eventually arrived on 17 March. Guests expected 3 days later. (A few anxious moments to say the least..) The boiler was lit for the first time on 19 March. Guests arrive the next day to warm cosy centrally heated cottages. Huge sense of relief!

Step one: Digging the pipe work trenches.

We lived with open trenches for most of the winter. The highly insulated pipe could only be ordered once the trenches had been dug and then measured as different sections of the project required different pipe sizes!

Step two: the insulated pipe arrives.

Step one: Digging the pipe work trenches.

Then it was delivered to the road end, as the trenches cut across the track so lorries could not drive in to the yard. The pipe was lifted off and brought in on the tractor and trailer, these huge coils of pipe.

Step three: backfilling trenches, leaving joints open.

The pipe was laid and the joints were sealed - a complicated system of heating and shrinking to ensure they won't leak at some point in the future. Then the trenches could be filled in. The joints had to be left accessible to be able to double check the seals under pressure once the boiler was up and running.

Step four: Arrival of Heating Station.

The container, weighing nearly 8 tonnes, arrived on the back of a lorry. The driver overshot the turning but thankfully stopped just beyond Burg and turned round.

It was lifted off with the HIAB, a slow motion aerobatic dance operated by a quiet and confident driver.

Step Five: Commissioning the boiler.

The benefit to us of installing a containerised system is that essentially that you have the boiler and the boiler house/fuel store delivered all in one go. But it still took time to commission it once the container was sited - connecting the underground pipe work, the water supply, putting up the shiny stainless steel flues and so on. Everyone worked very hard, long hours, to get it ready on time.

Step Six: The first chip delivery.

Couldn't light the boiler without chip so it was time for a delivery! The chip comes from Mull timber, processed and dried at Crannich Farm, in Glen Aros. The woodchip arrives in a 'scissor trailer'. The tractor reverses the trailer up to the side of the container. We use the 'remote' to operate the sliding roof from below. The trailer pours its 10 cubic metre load effortlessly into the fuel store. Over and done with very quickly!

And so, now the boiler could be lit for the first time! We expected some celestial sign, a significant fireworks display,a crashing drum roll perhaps? After all, this was the beginning of something very new and exciting for us..but no, it was lightly quietly and efficiently and off it went!

Living with Woodchip:

6 months on, now all the hot water and heating for the farmhouse, the 4 Treshnish cottages (Shian, Duill, Studio and Shieling) and the Laundry/Office is provided by zero carbon sustainable biomass heating.

Looking back: It all felt very daunting when it arrived. The boiler was huge. It looked bafflingly complicated. There were a few hiccups but they were ironed out, and now they are a distant memory! Gradually we have got used to the enormity of the boiler and how it works. We know what to do on the rare occasion it stops. (And we know who to call if we need to!) We check it every day, usually twice, more out of interest than necessity! We clean out the ash bins once a week. And once a month we have to clean the combustion chamber with a hoover. It is a living thing in the way that a fossil fuel oil boiler is not.

The local plumber is on hand should we need him and Highland Wood Energy provide a great back up service and are at the end of the phone with supportive, well experienced technicians - so we are not 'alone'.

The Salen Show

The Salen Show is always held on the Thursday before the schools on Mull go back for the Autumn term. This year the day in question was a lovely bright sunny, cloudy day - a perfect day for the show. Not too hot for the animals and no midges to bother the humans.

The showground is a pretty field beside the road at Aros Bridge - the setting is perfect and incredibly photogenic with the shore just the other side of the road.

The organisers put in a huge amount of work behind the scenes before the show getting the field ready and on the day itself, and this year there was a good turnout and everyone seemed to have a grand day out!

Treshnish Farm has never shown any livestock at the Salen Show, but the stock judging for me is the heart of the show - that and the home produce tent of course!

This year the North West Mull Community Woodland were there along with other environmental groups like Mull Renewables represented by the Powerdown officer.

The sun is shining today, blue seas and blue blue skies, and the heather on the sitheans (pronounced Shians, like the holiday cottage here at Treshnish of the same name) is looking so vivid and strong. Walked the dogs up there at midday - the air was full of the sound of little bees buzzing in amongst a carpet of tiny purple flowering mounds of heather, and the heady scent of heathery honey sweetness. So beautiful. Seedheads of bog asphodel bright orange contrast to the purples of heather and rusting greens and browns of bog. Worn out Scotch Argus butterflies fly clumsily in front of us. And in the distance views out towards Rum and Skye, on the way home along a path of grassy turf dykes, part of the historic ruined settlement, leading across the bog to the lochan above Treshnish Old Schoolhouse.

Silage made on Monday

Our farming calendar has now turned a corner. Nothing to do with the weather. More to do with preparing for winter. Like the premature Christmas card catalogues arriving on August 1st it seems a bit early to be thinking about winter - but we are allowed to cut silage in our ground nesting bird fields after this date.

And now thankfully the silage is safely made - a bumper crop from the field below the Treshnish Farm Cottages. The traditional organic system of rotation/fallow would seem to be paying off as we have made about 25% more silage from this field than when it was cut last 4 years ago.

Earlier in the summer this field was ablaze with wild flowers. Sailing north of Mull towards Barra you could see these fields from the M.V Clansman - a long bright yellow streak in amongst the vivid summer green of the Treshnish headland.

Last night's sunset reflected in the windows of Sheiling and tinted the whitewashed walls of the farm steading as it set over Coll. Around midsummer the days are so long and the sun sets up near the Cairns of Coll when seen from our front window, but it is steadily creeping back along the island of Coll, and is setting nearer to Tiree now! They are still fantastic though - and last nights was no exception.

Today it is beautiful, bright, sunny and breezy. The hen mentioned in the earlier post lost one chick but the remaining 11 are growing fast.

Shearing ewes and a clutch of chicks

The shearers came on Wednesday to do the 'milk clip'. Our regular shearer is from Connel outside Oban, and he arrived, just after breakfast, along with his daughter (who rolls and packs the fleeces) and a female shearer from Somerset in England.

Every year they stay (camp) in a bothy up a glen for the time they are on the island. They bring a specially adapted shearing trailer that has a race for driving the woolly sheep up to the 2 shearing stances. Most of a shearer's day is spent bent almost double wrestling with frightened animals and carefully but speedily removing their wool - hard hard work. They earn every penny they take home. They sheared over 300 ewes and were finished by late afternoon.

The flock had been sorted out the day before and the ewes kept indoors in case of rain over night the night before. You cannot shear a wet ewe without giving yourself alot of extra work trying to dry fleeces properly before packing into the giant woolbags.

A noisy reunion that evening in the fields around the cow shed, where the shearing takes place, once the shearing was over - as the lambs and ewes 'mother up' before going back to the hill. Each bleating their individual call to help them find their mother/lamb - x 300!

The hoggs had been sheared in June (and as a consequence of being shorn they turned into gimmers), but there is another story...

At this time of year our hens lay a varying number of eggs as some of them are rearing their chicks and others well they are just having a rest from egglaying. We give any surplus eggs to our guests in the Treshnish and Haunn Cottages.

One young hen (a year old cross from the leghorn cockerel that came from Tobermory Childrens Farm and a black rock hen who had come from the Isle of Skye) had completely disappeared and we had to assume the worst - that a mink had got her. But when strimming the long grass in our garden the other day Somerset found her sitting on a clutch of eggs.

2 days ago she appeared proudly with a family of 12 chicks to re-join the hen community who free-range the farm yard - and sometimes visit the holiday cottages gardens. All day she roamed around the yard proudly clucking and scratching and moving them on until we managed to steer them all into a coop and run for imcreased safety. She had nurtured those eggs for 21 days - through all weathers and against all odds.