Windfalls, wind and rolling seas.

Another week has raced by, with the usual ups and downs and tribulations! Heavy rain over last weekend morphed into wind and rain this weekend, with a lot of deep red showing on the wind forecast! The turbine has been spinning away on the hill, and the numbers on the generation meter tumbling up to nearly 27,000 last time I looked. It cannot nearly be Christmas? We received our first card this week, and I have not even thought of cards to send.. another pre-Christmas panic coming up. We have one or two bookings for Christmas and several for New Year, plus a few short breaks in between now and then!

On Tuesday I went to Oban in order to go to a Renewable Heat Incentive talk, which was interesting. It took place in an atmospheric village hall in Benderloch, called the Victory Hall. The original building had a large modern hall on the side, but we were in the older room and its tongue and groove walls looked as if they could tell a tale or two - of dances and ceilidhs and Christmas plays. The Renewable Heat Incentive will be a good scheme for anyone thinking of using wood to heat their homes, and may help us further reduce the carbon footprint of the Haunn cottages - I have my eye on a pellet stove/boiler for Toechtamhor one day...

Off to East Cottage to light the stove for new guests coming in this afternoon from Edinburgh. It was lovely sitting there with the sun pouring in the window, as the stove warmed up. Peaceful and quiet. All part of the days work. (How lucky am I.) The pretty painted stone and cork boat are little momentos left by guests.

Before going out to Benderloch I went up to the market to retrieve our sheep and goat 'movement book' which was under the counter in Caledonian Marts office. We had a batch of lambs, our last ones, going through the ring too - Charlie this years pet lamb was one of them. Daughter and her friends at school had written him a good bye card, and I was instructed to give it to Charlie before he went 'away'. Our animals had already been sold by the time I got there, as I was on a later ferry, and so I brought the card home with me. I don't quite know what I would have done with the card had I found Charlie, as it actually gave me a lump in my throat to read the card - thinking of Daughter's 'humanised' lamb going off in to the 'real' world, having been petted by friends and guests all its young life so far. Once your animals are sold, you can go to the office and pick up your money then and there. In an old fashioned way you are offered cash or a cheque. I opted for the cheque! There is always a buzz when a sale is on. Lots of people catching up on the news, exchanging information, doing deals, coming and going. It reminds me of trips to Forfar Mart with my father when I was a child, that same echoey sound of the auctioneer's voice and farmers talking in the background, stock gates opening and closing, the smells, the temperature even, slightly chilled. Outside in the car park, pickups, 4X4s, landrovers, trailers and lorries fill the car parks to overflowing.

Last post I mentioned the poorly hoggs. Jamie helped Farmer vaccinate them the other day, as well as giving them a mineral and vitamin boost. They are in the cattle shed still, on a diet of hay and nuts. I went to get some logs the other morning, and there was a real calm in the building - sun streaming in through the spaced boarding, and very little sound. The general feeling now is that they are recovering which is a big relief, as they look a bit better now. Thank goodness.

The next task was to paint the tups. Jamie was doing the heavy work and Farmer did the painting. Separated groups of ewes and gimmers are put with different tups, to avoid fathers onto daughters. The colour combinations the tups are painted helps identify them at a distance! This is the time of year when the in-bye fields really get their clean up, in terms of the longer grassy tufts being eaten down - preparation for next summers wild flower crop! This is the end of the first year of our SRDP management regime, and we are not sure it has been as effective as previously, but we will know more by the end of the winter, in how well we can get rid, through grazing, of any matted grasses. Part of the agreement is that we will monitor it, and we are doing that.

I had to go down to the school on Friday morning. Sitting in the office with the Head Teacher, looking out at Ben More with its first dusting of snow this winter, a pair of sea eagles soaring around and around. The flying barn doors. This stormy weather has not been a total washout. Changes in light are stunning, as tempests of hail scud across the sky one minute followed by intense sunlight the next and a double rainbow. The sea takes on a deep greeny blue, as the sky darkens with the next downpour and the whites of the waves, huge waves, roll over and over, and afterwards again - there is Coll, having been hidden by the wall of low fast moving shower. Watching a kestrel hang on the wind, quartering the ground below it. Watching rock doves flutter past, and fieldfare disappear over the stone wall in the Haunn field.

The storm this weekend peaked last night between midnight and 3am. We live in a house with solid stone walls and slate rooves, but you can still feel vulnerable when the blasts of wind echo round the gables of the house, and blast noisely across the chimneys. Even though you know you are safe, the din can be terrifying, and the feeling of insignificance in the presence of the power of the wind.

Comforting spell in the kitchen making chilli jelly, escaping relentless rain on Saturday, using windfall apples given to us by friends in Angus. Very satisfying task for a very wet rainy afternoon. But today, the sun is strong between the showers. The wind died down almost instantly, and the sea is back to its more usual winter state.

Hoggs, whelks, nuts and nights out.

Another busy week passes, as the days get shorter. We had a brush publicity - the RSPB Award still attracting attention. The builder has departed from the farmhouse renovation having done a fantastic job, and we are in the novel position of having wood-chip heating whenever we want it, and even when we don't - but we are waiting for the plumber to come and finish off, and install a final thermostat so that we can control it all better! The boiler has been making us scratch our heads recently, with one or two minor faults - on pumps and valves on the plumbing side, rather than the boiler itself - and thankfully for those times we have been able to switch over to the fossil fuel so the our guests have been warm. I am as stingy as before on how much heating we have on in the house, as when you see that trailer full of wood-chip arriving, it is plain to see how much we consume in keeping our house, the office/laundry and the four Treshnish Cottages warm. A frightening amount!

We have had clear skies under a huge bright moon for several days, and good tides and kind weather for whelk picking. Several folk from around and about have been out picking the shoreline whelks. A back breaking job - and they earn every penny. Access to the shore is on foot in most places, so not only do they bend down for each and every one they pick, but they know in order to get them to their market, they have to carry each orange string bag full of them back up to wherever they left their car. A few seasons ago, Farmer was surprised to see a pile of whelk bags, representing all that work (and hard earned cash) left lying. Every time he went past he expected them to have gone, but they were left and ended up rotting. Sometimes the whelk pickers come in by boat. Last year a tent with food and sleeping bags was abandoned along the shoreline by Port Haunn, and we surmised this was from a mobile pair of 'whelkers'.

In November the hoggs (weaned ewe lambs kept for breeding) come in to the cattle shed to learn about 'nuts'. This especially formulated mix of flaked grains, peas and molasses is an important supplementary food for sheep, but unfortunately seeing it in a trough is not an automatic signal for the hoggs to know that they can or should eat it.

During our first lambing back in 1995, some of the older ewes contracted twin lamb disease (where they need extra food to regain condition, and quickly) but as they did not know how to 'feed' we could not get them to put on the extra bodily condition they needed. As a result we decided that from then on we would 'teach' our hoggs to 'feed'. In animal welfare terms this is a godsend, as it means you can nurse an animal more successfully back to health by bringing them in and knowing that they can 'feed' whilst you administer to them.

The 2011 hoggs have been causing us concern this week - we lost 2 to unknown causes. As in previous years, they were taken off their mothers when the main crop of lambs were sold, vaccinated, and set to graze the in-bye ground. Every day they have been checked and occasionally one has been cut out of the brambles, but other wise no problems - or so we thought.

Recently some of them seemed to have lost their usual 'bloom', their coats were 'stairy' - suffering from something but we were not sure what. The locum vet came to the rescue - she came over one evening and took blood samples so that we can find out what was wrong - as they are indoors just now learning how to feed this was quite straightforward. They had been given a combined fluke and worm medicine as soon as we realised something was wrong, and thankfully, they are now beginning to look better. And the sweet smelling 'nuts' are disappearing fast from the troughs. We will keep them in so that we can re-test or treat them as necessary and then they will go back out to the fields. As far as we can, we try to run a clean grazing system but with the extra flock on the in-bye now (the cheviots) it is more difficult to juggle within our new grazing management plan. This is obviously something we need to monitor more carefully, as we don't want the balance between animal welfare/good health and grazing regime/Conservation to get out of kilter.

The hill ewes have been gathered, and are in the fields waiting for the tups to go out with them. Farmer is still off work, though he is recovering well! The Contractors and Jamie did the gather, and picked up 2 'roughies' (unshorn ewes) and left another along the shore (on a particularly difficult part of the coast, where it is safer to leave the ewe than try risking getting a dog too close, in case she goes over the edge). Being a 'roughie' means that you have avoided coming in at shearing time and at spaining time (when the lambs are taken off). Bracken cover makes it easy for them to hide, as well as there being tricky hidden bits along our 4 miles of coastline.

Middle Cottage in November sunshine, with the 2010 corncrake nesting ground in the foreground. I have decided I would like to be on holiday here at the moment. The weather has been good for the last week or so. The island is quiet. The light at this time of year changes all the time - providing great opportunities for photographers. Lots of wildlife around. We have had visitors staying in 4 of the cottages this week, enjoying short breaks, winter weeks and special offers. A friend of ours is staying in East Cottage. She is an artist and has been out every day with her huge bundle of materials, ready for all weathers, working in the elements, and coming back to the cottage when she is too cold or light falls. We spent the evening there on Saturday, delicious meal, glasses of wine by the fireside, so warm and toasty. Coming out to fresh air and the short walk to the car, in the dimly starlit stillness of the sky, quite magical, and it was so very quiet.

Daughter's school at Ulva Ferry held a Bring and Buy Sale for Children In Need on Friday. They raised a whopping £271 in an hour and a half. The community was so generous bringing lovely items to sell, we think we will have to hold another sale at a weekend so that we can sell it all! One mum does fantastic face painting, and Farmer came home sporting a very colourful dolphin on his face. By the time he got home he had forgotten about it and went off to show in the guests who arrived to stay in the Studio!

We had a nerve-wracking day on Tuesday. Mark Stephens from Radio Scotland Out of Doors came to interview us. We stuttered our way through his questions and hopefully didn't make too much of a fool of ourselves. Dread hearing it on the radio though! Once that was over, we met up with Leianna from RSPB Scotland who had come across to make a short film (thankfully only minutes long) for the Oxford Farming Conference in January. Dave Sexton came over to be interviewed by Mark too. Dave is our local RSPB officer, and once Mark left, Dave used a flip camera, for some 'informal' filming, whilst Leianna did the more official interviewing and filming. There was an air of unreality to the whole thing particularly with 2 of them pointing cameras at us! But it was lovely to have an excuse to show them round the farm again, not that there were many flowers to look at (it is November) but the weather was fantastic and Treshnish was looking very beautiful - full sunshine and clear views.

There are still lots of European blackbirds around, with their black beaks. There are 2 of them in this brave sycamore in the farmhouse garden.

Screen Machine has been on Mull for a few days, so we had another night out this weekend - going to see Jane Eyre in Tobermory. We ate at Cafe Fish who have won the Good Food Guide Fish Restaurant of the Year 2012 - it feels very 'seaside', sitting above the ticket office on the Calmac pier, looking out on twinkling lights across the Bay through the rain streaked window panes, eating freshly caught seafood. I still do a double take when the lights come up at the end of a film and you are not in a large multiplex cinema but in the back of a lorry in Tobermory car park.

On Tuesday the last of the 2011 lambs go to Oban Market. The end of another sheep year. The Contractors, whose help has been invaluable over the last few years, are off to pastures anew in the New Year. We are extremely grateful to them for their help and we wish them well. We are lucky to have found Jamie to help us in the future.

Thank you to everyone who has been asking how the Farmer's recovery is going. He is well on the mend now. Still a long way off being able to work but happily walking a few miles again - and not in pain.

Pest control and blue eggs.

These larches defy the wind in the small copse fenced off from the sheep, for regeneration, near the cattle building.

These 2 handsome tups have come to Treshnish from Knock Farm in the shadow of Ben More. In 10 days time they will be out in the parks with the hill ewes. Next week the fank, so often still and empty, will be a busy focus for sorting out the hill ewes and the cheviots, checking over all the stock before they go out for tupping. This is when we use the higher numbers of ewes to mob graze the fields, bring down the heights of the tufts. All good for next year's pollen plants! The hoggs will need to learn how to 'feed' soon - and so Jamie has been getting the cattle shed ready - bringing the troughs in from beyond Haunn, and making sure the water troughs work.

The wind turbine field is a useful holding field for the 'odds and sods'. These are lambs and cast ewes who should have gone to market last month when we were in Shieldaig. We couldn't find a space for them on a lorry or trailer for the last sale so they are still here - probably luckily, as the return ferries from Oban that day were cancelled because of the wind and alot of farmers got stuck in Oban overnight. We have had a dry week, with only a very few showers, and most of them at night (perfect). It hasn't felt that windy either but the turbine is heading up to 26,000 units now which shows it has been windier than this time last year.

This Escallonia is outside Toechtamhor garden, it is a remnant of the garden planted when the cottage was built in the 1940's. In the spring there are rows of daffodils leading from the gate beside the escallonia to the road too. It suffered very badly during last winter, and its splayed desperate shape is perhaps not pretty, but we are loathe to remove it. Look at it flowering in spite of its falling splat in the wind. And those bright shoots on the trunk. A kindly chop and trim are needed to allow it to recover as it deserves. The further away one has completely died (bottom photo).

These handsome hens are Araconas - our new additions to the poultry flock. At the moment they are doing a great job, living in the Keder tunnel, scratching up and eating any grubs and bugs as they go. We are looking forward to having their blue eggs to give to our guests next summer.

The barn owl box in the sunshine this morning whilst walking the dogs. It is such a bonus having the brightness of the sun as the days get shorter.

Moments from the last 7 days

A quick catch up on the news.

Sorry, it has been a few weeks since my last posting. We had a week's holiday (a very wet one), up in Wester Ross at Shieldaig. We stayed in a cottage overlooking the loch and its Caledonian pine covered island with resident sea eagles. The cottage was bright and had lovely views - when you could see them through the sheets of rain being flung at the large picture windows! It was very well equipped with every appliance you could possibly wish for, and more than we knew how to use, but we were shocked when it dawned on us that we had chosen a cottage which didn't seem to have thought in any way whatsoever about the environment despite being right on the sea - it had the largest range of chemical cleaning products I have seen outside a supermarket - things I had never encountered before and had not known existed! Not a bottle of Ecover or Bio-D to be seen, no compost bin, no recycling encouragements...

I have to take full responsibility for our non green cottage choice. I was blinded by the need for south facing light and big windows - for the convalescent farmer to look out of whilst Daughter and I went off exploring. I did not take eco credentials, or lack of them, into account. I had looked on Green Traveller, Organic Holidays and GTBS websites but there wasn't an eco/green self catering cottage in Shieldaig that I could see, and this was where we wanted to be. I will be more careful next time as to where I choose!

Access to the Shieldaig cottage was along a path from where you could leave the car, and the cottage came complete with its own wheelbarrow for carrying your luggage (very sensible). Daughter and I quite enjoyed the unloading the car process (it was dry luckily at that point!) - navigating a plank bridge with a wheelbarrow precariously loaded with our bags! We had a really good holiday despite the rain and wind, did lots of resting and reading, and managed a few short walks with Farmer who was enjoying the novelty of walking without pain for the first time in 6 months.

One day we re-visited the decaying salmon fishing station at Redpoint, walking through the biggest puddles to get there, and through a lovely herd of cows already enjoying some winter feed on the edge of the pinky sand beach. (I will put some photos on the tinsheds blog over the next few days). Another day, we went over the high road to Applecross - the temperature gauge on the car went 7 degrees at sea level to 1.5 degrees at the top and we experienced our first snow of the winter. (gulp)

Farmer is making progress. Every now and then he does too much and has to retreat back to sick bay for a rest, but all in all, he is pleased with the lack of pain and can walk a couple of miles now which is a huge improvement on how he was, and a great relief. Thank you to everyone who has been asking after him!

I would be lying if I said we were having a perfectly normal autumn. A neighbour reckons there has not been one day without rain in the last 6 weeks - fairly grim at times, but when the sun comes out you forget the wet days.

It has been a quiet time on the farm. With the lambs and calves sold, and only a few stragglers still to sell, the silage is made, (some still in the field as it has been too wet to take a tractor in to collect it), new tups settling in with the others, and holiday cottages not fully occupied this week for the first time since March. We have a few short breaks coming over the next few weeks - enjoying the quiet of the island as it turns inward for winter.

Some colour in the field beyond the cattle building.

I do not tire of the view of Shian and Duill - standing out so white with Calgary and Caliach headlands behind them.

The windy aspect of the bad weather in recent weeks has been great for the turbine. It has passed 25,000 units now and is heading for 26,000! We had to phone Turbine Services last week as the box housing the generation meter was making a serious din. We wondered if it was over-worked and with the new owners of Proven not taking responsibility for the warranties on previous turbines we were a little worried we would be in for something expensive. Thankfully all it needed was to be shut down for 10 minutes, and then turned on again!

The knock on effect of winning the RSPB Nature of Farming Awards 2011, and the huge amount of publicity that brought, has been that we are getting booked up for next year much earlier than usual. This is wonderful for us, but not so great for those regulars who want to book and find that we are already booked for the time they want to come. We are even taking bookings for 2013!

24,000kWH and rising

The promise of an Indian summer would perhaps have more aptly described as a monsoon. This is the burn next to the farmhouse. It has been running full blast for days. Luckily a little trench digging recently has meant we have not flooded the house again.

This is where you realise what a very sad individual I am. I wouldn't say I am academic enough in my approach to merit the term 'geek', but I do enjoy watching how our turbine performs. Our Proven 6kW wind turbine was installed around the 18th of October 2009. As part of the application for SRDP funding we had to submit a budget/business plan. This needed to show that the turbine installation was viable. We based our plan on producing 10,000kWH per annum and so we were very pleased at the end of year 1 to have generated just over 12,000kWH.

Earlier this summer when we discovered that a set of springs needed replacing (found one of the springs embedded in the ground near the turbine base, having blown off in a late May gale), we had to put the turbine brake - and wait. It took 2 months for our installers to get the okay from Proven to come and replace the springs under warranty, and as a consequence, we didn't produce any electricity for those 2 months. During that same 2 month period the year before we had generated 1,700 units. So for the second 12 months, date to date, we were bound to be down on production.

It was mid August when the turbine was repaired and spinning again. And I have been watching the generation meter and wondering whether or not we would catch up and amazingly - this week 10 days ahead of its second birthday - we have passed the 24,000 unit mark - short of the mid October anniversary - and in only 10 months of full working mode. Suffice to say, we are delighted!

The weather has been very unsettled and varies from one day to the next - in extremes! Yesterday we woke up in Glasgow to brilliant sunshine and had the most beautiful drive up to Oban with Farmer laid out in the back of the car. Autumn colours and brilliant blue skies. This morning woke up to low mist, dull sky, warm still air. Cobwebs dripping with misty droplets. Everything still and slightly dank. Now the wind has picked up again and it is raining hard. The rain does interesting things to the colour of the bracken.

Farmer's operation was a success, and now the challenge for him will be to do what the doctors order, and rest accordingly - for the next 6 - 8 weeks. So the focus in the farmhouse is definitely on convalescence and recovery. School holidays started yesterday so it could not be better timed.

On the farm, life must go on though and thankfully we have good help and support. On Monday the Dervaig Contractors brought the cows and calves in to the cattle shed in order to separate them, as the calves were going to market the next day. Cattle have extremely strong maternal instincts and taking the calves away is heart-breaking to watch. They take several days to calm down once the calves have gone. Lots of calling and mooing and searching. From past experience of post-weaning calves (and several destroyed fences) Farmer now leaves all the gates open from Haunn to the farm which allows them to rove.

This year somehow, a gate was closed by mistake and one cow was accidently left in the Haunn field whilst all the others were up at the cattle shed - Jamie managed to get her back to the others and brought the bull and No 63 up from 'the bottom' so the whole herd was back together. And another - just as I was leaving to go and catch the ferry in order to go and visit Farmer in hospital - got caught between a fence and a wall. Luckily both Dervaig Contractors and Jamie were able to sort that out for me.

The Dervaig Contractors took them to Oban Mart for us, and they were 2nd or 3rd through the ring. Prices were better than last year, but still down on the year before (the last year of our organic status). It is not a great feeling to know that your quality animals have not reached the price they deserve, and there are many possible reasons for this. Whilst not being pedigree Aberdeen Angus, they are nearly all pure Angus, where most of the west coast cattle are continental, and perhaps this is what the buyers who come to Oban expect, or to that particular sale, expect. It has sharpened our resolve to try and forge a relationship selling direct to the same farmer each year. We did this in the last years of our organic status, and it meant the animals went directly to a farm, missing out on potential trauma in the market, and that we knew what price to expect before the animals left the farm.

Anyway they have gone now and usually the cows would be enjoying the aftermath of the silage ground. But we still haven't finished silage making yet! I think we may have to abandon it though. Walking across the fields with splashing underfoot. The mess of taking a tractor into the fields just now would be unthinkable.

Good to see smoke coming from the Heating Station again. We have had a few issues with a pump recently and are grateful yet again for the oil back up boiler so that at least the guests can be warm - we really hate having to resort to it but we don't feel that we can expect our guests to give up their warmth whilst we sort out the tiny occasional niggle in the system. (There are vague but exciting plans afoot to lessen our dependence on wood-chip..... more of that later in the year....) The nearest panels to the Heating Station are the solar PV (Photo voltaics) and the ones on the farmhouse roof are the solar hot water ones.

Patterns in bi-annual foxgloves. Loved how these leaves almost spiral out of the ground. When so much vegetation is going into its dormant and dying off stages, it is lovely to see the beginnings of next summer's flowering plants already.

A screw-driver, a book and a bearing - life this week at Treshnish.

This fencepost is at the top of the track which leads down to Treshnish from the public road. Lovely view of the woodland and the sea beyond from there. I took the time and walked through the natural regen. woodland area with the dogs, noticing the autumn colours creeping in slowly, to collect Daughter from the school car.

We have had a week of minor irritations, little hassles and problems but mainly the usual ingenuity has got us through - skin of teeth, fingers crossed and all that.

Nearly flooded but not. Yesterday was wet - rain of monsoon proportions. The farm track was reminiscent of foreign rain storms, brown rivulets running in fast and sharp zigzag lines down slopes of any gradient, and at one point heading straight for the back door of the farmhouse.

By evening, the brave guests had all arrived safely and finally before nightfall, the faintest pink sky above Coll to lift the spirit. Thank Goodness.

And today - dry and sunshine again, but underfoot very soggy.

September Silage..leading into October. We have had some beautiful days interspersed with the wet ones. Warm. Sunny. Windy. Another attempt to make the winter food for the cows. It used to be that we made silage in August. Our new Rural Priorities agreement stipulates that we wait until September.

This year has been an exception - what with Farmer being supposedly off work with sciatic pain and waiting for his operation, then Jamie who helps on the farm going off island for the best of family reasons (a beautiful baby daughter called Vhairi!) mid month and on top of that - the unsettled weather. Grabbing a chance and a break in the weather they managed to make a good lot on Wednesday - but it was nearly October!! Daughter and I took them ice creams we had bought in Dougie's shop - though they were pretty soft by the time we got them there!

The new (to us) baler doing so well ... or not? Having made and moved a good number of bales, finished the field as light began to fall, ice creams a distant memory...Just as it was getting dark, heading back to the farm, a bearing went on the baler and for a moment, the track to Haunn was blocked, and it looked as if it might remain that way for some time! Thankfully, they managed to get the limp baler off the road and out of the way of the guests. We ordered a replacement bearing the next day from Glenside Tractors in Campbeltown, and it arrived the next day. Thank you Royal Mail. (Not like the new pump for the wood chip boiler which is sitting in a carrier depot in Inverness - 10 working days it has taken so far, whereas if it had been popped in the post it would be here by now).

Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.... for a while. There is something ironic about all the rain we have had, and running out of water! At Haunn, a capacitor (sharp learning curve - what in my past life taught me about capacitors?) burnt out on the pump that sends the filtered water up into its storage tank on the hill. Why? Because inside a locked 'shed' a pipe suddenly became dislodged and started sending water into the Haunn garden instead...How? Goodness knows. But anyway, some sharp thinking and knacky plumbing meant that our guests never knew anything was amiss and Farmer does a trick with a screw-driver, a book (Bill Bryson) and his reading glasses until the new capacitor arrives.

Meanwhile it is now October. The ground has not really had a chance to dry up, even though it has been a beautiful afternoon but silage making had to resume. Make the most of the day whilst it is good. Farmer's on the Zetor as I write. Turning the silage grass. It is beginning to brown, from all the wet over the last couple of days, so they have to bale it now or it will be useless. Jamie is catching up on the orange tractor with the baler. Stopping every so often to clear the blockages from the wet grass. It won't be the best quality silage we have made but this has been one of 'those years'.

Last image in this post is tonight's sunset. Minutes ago. Makes up for all those tense moments in the week. Good night.