Sales and sails, chicks and cruises

At the weekend the village hall (Dervaig) hosted its 9th Seafood Extravaganza. Two long tables and one small one. Huge sails hang and successfully drop the height of the ceiling. All day the hall has been filled with busy people preparing, laying tables, opening bottles, prepping in the kitchen, shucking oysters by the hundred, plating up the amazing Platters and plates. And over at Croig shellfish was cooked in huge quantities. Towers of plates. Hundreds of plates. Countless glasses - actually I did count them - vaguely. 80 settings, with wine glass, water glass, whisky glass and I think even a second wine glass - makes for alot of washing up.

80 guests ate canapes, oysters, crab and Mull cheese tart and salad (above), tomato fish soup,

the Platter (above - lobster, crab claws, prawns, salmon) followed by meringues and cream with Treshnish blackcurrant coulis, followed by coffee or tea with Island Bakery shortbread and Michelle's tablet, accompanied by Isle of Mull whisky.

Iain Thomson Band played on and off during the evening and they were great. All in all it was a fantastic evening, whether as guest or volunteer waitress like me. And a really good advert for delicious local food.

Farmer has been out gathering in the sheep today. Thunder and lightning was forecast and did perform along with high winds. It didn't rain on them, and the new dog Jan was out on a hill gather for the first time. The lambs will be taken off their mothers on Monday and given their EID tag with its unique number - and off to market on Tuesday. The end of another lambing season.

And the one that got away. This little hen appeared yesterday with 6 pretty little chicks. Now you don't see them.

Now you do see them.

Tomorrow Farmer and family are off to The Scottish Thistle Awards 2010 Finalists celebratory 'champagne and canape' Reception on board a boat for an evening cruise on Loch Ness. This is not the night they announce the winners but a chance to meet the other finalists and celebrate the achievement of getting this far. Will report all about it once we get home.

10,000 units, 3 finalists and lots of potatoes

Great excitement in the farmhouse just now, at the news that we have been shortlisted for the Sustainable Tourism category of the Scottish Thistle Awards 2010. We are so delighted to have got this far. The overall winners are announced in each category on 29th October.

We had to harvest our potatoes earlier in the week as the shaws suddenly turned and we were afraid of getting blight. The wall of the vegetable patch marks the edge of Shian and Duill's garden and looks over Caliach Point to Rum and Canna.

The birds have not yet started on the rose hips from the Rosa rugosa in Studio and Shieling gardens.

Self seeded pot marigold in amongst the spinach and onions waiting to be harvested.

And the flowering cardoons are almost artificial in their luminous colour. I haven't been blogging this last week or so, because the weather has been so good, it has been difficult to stay in doors. The sun has had real warmth to it, and the light that autumnal clarity.

Farmer has been catching up with a few jobs, including repairing the track out onto the hill where he will feed the cows in the early part of the winter. He has also had lots of animal work to do this week - sheep to check as usual, different lots of sheep and the cows to move from and to various places, and an important 10th birthday party to prepare for.

Jan, our lovely friendly keen new dog, got a workout with the Cheviot gimmers (who are looking really big now compared to the blackface ones!) and did really well. She works more closely in at hand than Cap, (who has a huge outrun - often disappearing completely out of sight in order to take in a huge sweep of ground) but all of a sudden he seemed more reluctant to go out as far as he usually does....a little bit of competition??

Egg production has slowed right down, but the hens are still hungry all the time, and in the early afternoon they follow anyone who walks past the feed shed, hoping they will open the door and throw some wheat out for them on the grass. I assume the tactic is successful or they would stop doing it. Lots of our younger guests (and some of the more mature) come past with scraps of bread for them too. There is one hen who appears from the broody coop every now and then, and I suspect any day now we will find she has a brood of autumn chicks.

This ruined black-house is at Haunn just beyond West Cottage.

Devil's bit scabious. Food for Marsh Fritillary butterflies. Looks amazing just now, that wonderful blue colour amongst all the grasses and other late summer flowers in the Black Park. The cows are grazing this field now, without the bull. In a few weeks time the calves will be weaned and sold. They are all looking really healthy and happy - their coats glowing and some of the cows look quite fat on the abundance of grass around.

It is 4 a.m and an autumn wind is howling round the thick stone farmhouse kitchen walls, and rattling the windows. I can't hear the turbine but I can hear the rustling of leaves, and wonder how many will be blowing across the garden and the farmyard when daylight comes.

The wind turbine has made more than 10,000 units of electricity in less than a year, so we have exceeded our goal before the end of the first year! So now I am hoping that we can get to 11,000 by the time the turbine is a year old!

Silage, seals, sharks and sheep on a Sunday

Silage has been baled, thanks to a helpful nearby farmer with a huge tractor and baler, and here in this photograph being wrapped by Farmer and his brace of (much smaller) tractors.

This year we made silage in a far smaller field than last year so the number of bales is half the amount. This is an expected outcome, as we manage our fields in a traditional system, using the old fallow method to rest the fields one year in four, and hopefully create a more natural balance. The fields are not all the same size - so the yields will always be different! We don't use artificial fertiliser so rely on FYM from in-wintering our cows to feed the soil fertilitiy. From a flowers point of view though, the yield is huge, as the bio-diversity of these fields seem to improve year on year.

The silage is now wrapped and safe from the weather. The ends of the plastic wrap are tucked in to keep it airtight so that it can start to do the heating up and fermenting necessary to pickle the cut forage. At the end of every winter we have piles of silage wrap and farm plastic waiting for collection, to go off to Solway Recycling (who turn them into picnic benches).

Next task for Farmer is to take each bale back up to the stack yard before the bale starts softening. The Cheviots gimmers are let into this field to nibble the 'aftermath' - the sweet grass that comes after the silage is cut. Lamb sales in other parts of the country bring our attention to our own lambs and when to gather. The lorry is booked to take our lambs on the 21st September to Oban.

The heather has been vivid again this summer. Across the burn from the Treshnish farm steading is this pretty bank of heather. We fenced the sheep out of this area about 8 years ago, and it has taken all this time for the heather to recover, and for this young rowan to take seed.

A Sunday morning walk along through the Black Park and down to the shore on the northern side of the Point. Heather, late flowering birds foot trefoil, devils bit scabious and harebell in one of our in bye fields.

In the Black Park, huge clumps of knapweed.

...and colourful devils bit scabious with the yellow of hawksbit.

Walking along the northern shore, we can hear seals calling. There are 5 lying in the sun at low tide on the rocks - we don't see them here that often. A basking shark slowly cruises past a few metres off shore, and gannets drop like missiles into the water. Rocky outcrops with ungrazed wild flowers. Bees buzzing in the sunshine. One of those magical walks.

And a bowl of salad leaves from the garden with edible flowers to accompany a sunny Sunday lunch out of doors when we get home!

We love the Salen Show

Thursday the 12th, and it is Salen Show day. It was a perfect day, bright, slightly breezy and not too hot for the animals. As usual alot of work had gone in to getting everything organised. It is such a picturesque location near Aros Bridge, where the river comes into a sandy bay, overlooked by the ruined Aros Castle on its cliff.

Hands handled.

Preened, dyed, brushed, judged and awarded.

The Mull and Iona Pipe Band piped. Ewen and Allan Stewart (Comrie) lent their lorry as a stage for the sound system for the Show Dance.

The Produce Tent produced.

Vegetables transformed.

The Young handler handled. In the end Alice did not go to the Show. We chose Brownie (the Zwartble) instead as he is easier to handle. Pet lambs are always noisy, and the journey from the farm to the show ground was hilariously loud. Farmer doesn't have a 4x4 or the usual farmer's pickup, so Brownie travelled with us in the van, well within earshot. Daughter (the Young Handler) had ensured a thick bed of paper and straw in a large pet crate made him comfortable, but he baa-ed at the top of his voice ALL the way and ALL the way home (having come second last in his class).

Jan settles in

It doesn't take long for a bond to form between Farmer and Dog. Jan has a sweet willing nature and in the fortnight she has been with us, she has learned the importance of close contact. And Cap has learned to share.

The Black Park is one of our species rich fields. It is closed off from grazing from April until end of August, to allow the wonderful variety of flowers to set seed. The yellow rattle seed heads have changed colour now and rattle loudly as you walk through them. When we started farming organically we had a little yellow rattle in the silage fields, and it spread very successfully over the years. depleting the grass as it went along. At one time we were quite worried about yields and so I started researching into organic methods of controlling yellow rattle, but the only references to it that I could find were about how to encourage it as it was so beneficial to enhancing wild flower meadows! At that point, we gave in to the notion of letting nature take its course. And the result all these years later is this incredibly colourful grassland, abundant with many many different wild flowers.

Jan.

Black Park August colour. The Black Park is one of the fields you drive through to get to the 4 Haunn Cottages, site of one of the nesting pairs of corn crake that we have enjoyed here this summer. For details of what they are doing just now look at TreshnishBirdlog.

One man and his new dog, walking obediently behind him.

Rolling fleeces picking blackcurrants

A huge fleece held up by Farmer in the doorway to the cattle shed.

The shearers finished off the last few ewes on Friday, so that is a big part of the summer sheep work done. The lambs were given a treatment against fly strike and they are all now reunited and back to the hill. Some years the shearers have come with someone prepared to roll the fleeces as they are dropped from the shearing trailer by the shearers. This year, at short notice, they were left in a heap, on a tarpaulin (to keep them clean) to be rolled at a later date. A job to add to Farmer's list.

The rolling trailer.

But this morning Farmer decided he needed to get it over and done with - so he reversed the tractor and trailer into the cattle shed, and used the trailer as a rolling table. With the wind up radio blaring and sheep dogs at his feet, he began to roll. Some time later he was joined by a willing young assistant who picked up the loose fleeces off the floor and handed them over to Farmer to roll, until the pile was gone. Each bundle was then stuffed into a huge wool bag, and sewn up with a huge needle.

Fleece number 301 - the last one of the day.

The shorn sheep are let back into the field where their lambs are noisely bleating and mothering up commences. Several hours later, when the field quietens down, you know the mothering up is mostly done and that it is safe to open the hill park gate and left the hill sheep drift slowly out on the hill again. Open that gate too soon, and they will mis-mother which you don't want.

Meanwhile a race is on in the garden to pick the heavily laden blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes before the cheeky blackbirds and sparrows get them all. The berries are perfectly ripe and very sweet. And for the first time in our life with this garden we have a rabbit or two - I think they are living under the old caravan, which incidentally is very good for starting seeds off in, in a cold spring - no slugs or snails, and lots of gathered sun warmth.

Time does not stand still on a farm, and living on an island means you have to think ahead, so even though it is only days since Fly died, we had to start looking for a replacement, as being the only sheepdog on the farm was too unfair a responsibility for Cap. At the end of the gathering for shearing he was totally whacked. Adverts in the Scottish Farmer have never been successful for us, as it arrives here late on a Friday, and by the time you have rung up about a dog, it has just been driven out of their yard.

So the obvious place to look is the internet, and that is what we did. In fact, we went back to the person we bought Fly from in the first place. A very long day trip took us there and back, it was one of those totally clear sunny bright days when the landscape shines in the strong positive light of sun, blue sky and white puffy clouds. Scotland looking absolutely Sunday best. Even waiting for the ferry at 6.15am was a joy. We had several bitches to choose from, and came home on the last boat with a lovely natured one called Jan. So a new chapter begins.

And here are the pet lambs, rushing in for their evening handful of nuts.

We have been seeing good numbers of basking sharks in the bay, sightings we never tire of.

Shearing time again

It has been a while since the last blog. Farmer and family took a holiday. Calmac excelled themselves on our journey to Barra. The usual boat was in dock being repaired, and the replacement boat was not very big and did not ride a stormy Minch at all well. The crossing which usually arrives about 8.30pm finally arrived at half past midnight and an estimated 90% of the passengers were sick. So it was not a pleasant trip in any way - to say the least.

This photo is of the sea the next day, when it was slightly calmer. A Barra lady who had been on the ferry with us, commented when we met in Castlebay a few days later that it was like childbirth - you soon forget, and certainly it was great to be on Barra again! The weather this time was not that good but we managed to dodge the rain and find a beach out of the wind everyday. Farmer donned wetsuit and jumped off Eoligarry jetty as often as he could into those sandy turquoise waters.

Interestingly and not surprisingly, given the ferry situation, the island seemed a lot quieter this year than last. But also, last year there were alot of touring campervans, with pitches ringing the machair on the airport beach Traigh Mhor. The machair has been fenced off this year here, because it is obviously a delicate eco system and was being damaged.

Round the island we saw several crofts where, over the winter, crofters have created a simple camp area for campers and caravanners, and it would be great if caravanners/campervanners could embrace the idea of still coming to the island despite the machair being fenced off. In using these on-croft facilities instead of seeking the free camping dream site, they will contribute to the local economy and enjoy more contact with their friendly hosts!

We heard tales of campervanners allegedly boasting how little money they had spent whilst in the Outer Isles, and if true, this is a great shame. Any visitors to the islands, whether on bicycles (plenty of those hardy folk cycling up the island chain in the wind and rain), staying in holiday cottages or in campervans, can benefit the island in more ways than one, by supporting the great facilities on offer and the friendly local shops, craft shops, pubs and cafes.

Okay gentle rant over now and back to the matters at hand. Shearing time. We get home and check the phone...Messages from the shearers saying can they come tomorrow..... What? *!*.....talk about short notice, and the holiday bags not even unpacked. But totally our fault for taking the holiday notion so seriously we didn't leave him a mobile number. So there ensued lots of phone calls to see if we could get organised in time. We couldn't and so alternative day would be arranged. Weather mixed and showery. Happily though as I write, sheep are in the cattle shed, keeping dry and waiting for the shearers to arrive at lunchtime - a result of neighbourly help for which we are very grateful, exhausted sheepdogs and good weather at the right time.

On a sad note, we lost Fly this week. She had to be put to sleep. She came to Treshnish in 2002, so she leaves a big gap. Here she is, last summer, pictured second from the right with her head down looking as shy as she often did. She was a loyal 'colleague'.

Farmer got a ride in a helicopter this week as he showed the pilot which areas of bracken needed treatment. This is the south side of the headland looking towards Rum in the cloud. And the second one of Calgary beach as he flew over from Bennan, peaty brown water coming into the turquoise bay.