It's snow time!

Well it's hit us at last.  It doesn't look that impressive but it was enough for the school to close.  This meant I had to go sledging with Ailsa.  Well worth giving up work for.

And while we're at it

Here is a piccy of a stolen tree and a piccy of our kitchen.  

We're hording straw - sometime in the next few weeks we have to completely muck out and clean down the stables in preparation for kidding - and then lay a good depth of clean straw.

We pay a premium for small bales - but it's a lot easier to handle.  We buy large round bales when we can use them straight away or when we have the space to unbale and store them - but we can't store round bales. 

Romantic visions

After Lulu's comment about wanting more piccies - we've had an email from a certain gentleman requesting pictures of the lean-to construction.  So here are some piccies - Lulu of course meant more piccies of goats and we're a bit nervous of responding to the certain gentleman because we fear he'll point out all the errors were making.  But hey.

Positioning piccies amongst text is far from easy in the blog programme (and for some reason I've lost the ability to change font - so that's the corporate house style blown!).  But here is:

A positioning shot - 

looking up our new fence towards our new gates.  The lean-to will be on the right.

An ariel shot of the work so far and a somewhat seasickness inducing closer view.  

All we've done is make 

three holes for the front of the lean-to and half filled them with cement.  These will be were we'll eventually place the timber posts that will support most of the structure.  

We didn't build forms - other than packing with good sized stones.  Once these have set we'll build proper forms along the foundation trench.  Most of this trench runs directly onto bedrock, where it's not bedrock it's on what in my archaeological days I called 'natural' - and it's compacted glacial sands with large erratic inclusions.*

Block work.  

When the foundation trench is cured, we intend to build it up with block work - to - oooh I dunno - yay high - and then the wooden structure will be built onto that (and securely fastened to it).  There are lots of blocks kicking about, but one source will be the gable end of the nissen hut that collapsed in the autumn.  

On dry days I entertain myself with lump hammer, bolster and wrecking bar breaking up the sections of wall and trying to clean off complete blocks to be re-used.  Part blocks might be beaten to a pulp to provide a foundation for the flooring of the lean-to - or they might border some of the smaller raised beds or I might make a 1:50 model of the Taj Mahal.  You never know.

*Does that sound impressive?  I don't know what I'm talking about really.

Big Gob

It's...erm... just started to snow.

No snow

We don't want snow - I mean we need the weather to stay reasonably warm for the concrete.  But apart from that a bit of snow might be quite nice.  I mean what's the point of coming all the way up here and not getting snow?

No doubt our time will come.

Meanwhile there's lots of pretty piccies of snow on the blogs I look in on - and the news coverage of the weather has me in stitches every night - the most entertaining thing that's been on telly for many a year.

I mean live coverage from Council gritty lorry depots and empty hospital car parks - it doesn't get any better than that.

Goatlings in Training

Four of my goats in kid are first kidders. They're going to have a bit of a shock when it comes to milking. I've asked around and apparently you can help them along quite a bit if you practice before the event. So I've started their training.
The first thing is to get them used to the milking stand. With Simon's help I managed to separate one at a time from the rest of the herd and coaxed her onto the stand with wee tastes of treats with a bucket of treats waiting to be eaten on the stand. The main problem was keeping the rest of them happy when they could clearly hear some eating being done. Simon sang to them which seemed to keep them occupied. And they all did beautifully. I'm so proud of them!
Hopefully, after a few more sessions like this, they'll be happy with the stand and I can start locking them into it. Once they've learnt not to mind being locked in, I'll start stroking their back legs so they get used to me rummaging around there. The plan is that they will learn not to kick when I milk them. Here's hoping!

Cuddling aggregate

Never ever ever lay concrete when it's cold.  By cold we mean temperature averaging below 5C over a three day period, and with no half day period being over 10C over a 7 day period.

But if you must then do things like cuddle your aggregate, use hot water and wrap it in a nice warm electric blanket.

But never lay concrete when it's freezing.

Anyway - whatever - we've laid the first part of the concrete foundations for a lean-to.  The forecast is it'll not freeze - and we've got it all wrapped up in slightly rotting hay so hopefully we'll be OK.  It's not as if the foundations need to carry lots of weight anyway.  And we're in a hurry.

If we've got it all wrong, instead of something hard we'll have something crumbly and we'll have to start again.  We'll know in a week or so.  

Civil unrest

While the rest of the world riots over the economic crisis and the use of foreign labour, here in the highlands we can see the first signs of our special home grown riots.  Spring is getting closer.

Five pines and a ton of cement

On Saturday we went to get some hay from a man in New Zealand.  On the way we passed a plantation of Scots Pine and we stopped off to stretch our legs.  I guess the pines were twenty years or so old and we busied ourselves picking up fresh wind-fallen twigs and branches for the goats.  But then I noticed that some there were a few rooted seedlings.  Now this might be theft - but I reckoned these little trees had no value and really, were just getting in the way - so they are now transplanted onto our croft where hopefully, in years to come, they'll provide shelter from the wind and treats for the goats (they love 'em).

After getting a round bale into the van we headed off and got a ton of mixed gravel and sand, and five bags of cement, several old pallets and other 'useful' bits of wood.  All this makes for a heavy van - but it managed up and down the steep hills with absolutely no problem.

This week we'll get the footings set for the lean-to we're building for the goats.

Death of a friend

We've learnt, rather belatedly, of the death of one of the regulars featured in this blog.  He died on January 7th (Old New Years Day) after a short viral illness, according to his obituary in the local newspaper.

We liked him, he was encouraging towards us and what we are trying to achieve, and we will miss him greatly.

He features in this blog, sometimes obliquely, in Friday Night 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14.  (If you want to read them the quickest way is to search for Friday Night).

He was a good man.

Friday Night 17

Local conversations were dominated by news of yet another crofter being banned from driving due to being caught drunk behind the wheel.  This will make crofting virtually impossible for him, and life in general, for him and his family, extremely difficult - there's not much you can do up here without the ability to jump into a car.  There was little sympathy for him and it didn't stop customers having a few and then driving home.

Meanwhile we met some new characters - including a man hailing from 'Ull and a man who is not a freemason.  Not a Freemason was under the impression all managers are freemasons - and wasn't at all happy about it.  

It was clear that Not a Freemason is held in high esteem by all the assembled - we caught him at the end of a fairly long binge session - and he was clearly not at his best.  His drunkeness made him over-familiar and unaware of personal space, which is fine - you'd never enter a pub around here if you were sensitive to this - but it was a bit over-bearing (I mean hand on thigh, forehead presssed into cheek).  Especially when he moved onto the whisky - whilst merrily telling us that he never drinks whisky cos it makes him violent.  But he remained good humoured enough - and determined to show us his ballet moves - until his friends dragged him off home while the pub furniture was still intact. 

Polemic

Some English Govt health watchdog advisory thing  has come out with a direction that children up to the age of 15 should not have any exposure to alcohol.  This will apparently stops kids knocking back cider behind bus shelters and generally being a pest to a society that increasingly shows no tolerance to anything that steps out of line.

There was a Govt spokesgit on the box last night telling how alcohol at such a tender age induces brain damage, liver damage, disruption of growth and sex hormones.  This may be true - but it's all about risk management innit?  But I guess the bottom line is that I don't see how such directions will do anything other than encourage kids to drink cider behind bus shelters, confuse parents and generally garner parental anguish.  Surely a bit of alcohol under the guidance of parents is more likely to engender responsible drinking, and more likely to lessen the cool of the bus shelter bar?

But the impact of these directives and scare mongering is far greater and insidious.  Nearly all of us got pished in our teens - and we're fine thanks.  So the Govt undermines it's authority when it spouts this shite.  Why should we believe the safe sex message, the five a day message, the cut your speed message, the global warming message when such statements about the health impacts of underage drinking are so very distant from our daily experience?

And another thing - such pronouncements give moral authority to the snooty, to those who want to condemn errant behaviour too quickly and it just adds drive to the journey towards intolerance misery.

And anyway - how are you supposed to get a kid to sleep if you can't give 'em a dose of gin?

Business Opportunity

The soonest we can get appointments for an optician is May. 

Construction

We need to build a lean-to on the stables to give us a little extra room when it comes to kidding.  It's taken a long time to decide how to create the extra space but we've finally settled on this solution and work has started clearing the soil for the floor and walls.

The lean-to will be built on a slope and most of it will be directly onto bedrock - these pose their own problems not generally covered in the reference books, how to guides and web discussion fora we are turning to for advice.  We are also getting much needed help and moral support from Christian.

Of course it is the woman of the house who is in charge of all this - given that I'm useless when it comes to building things (I'm very good at destroying things though).  I know there is lots of hard work to do and I am waiting for instruction and direction but we're at a bit of a frustrating hiatus - not quite sure what needs to be done, and what order to do it in.  I want to get moving.

Meanwhile I'm looking at polytunnels.  There are lots of criteria to determine what polytunnel to get.  My original thinking was to get as big as I could possibly manage - if you're going to all that trouble may as well make it big trouble (and big rewards).  Having looked in detail at the excellent First Polytunnels website my ambition is shrinking - maybe it's better to start with a small one and learn what's involved before going for the drive-in model like.

But we've got ourselves into a situation where there's two construction jobs needing to be done at the same time and with similar urgency - although of course animal welfare has to take precedence.  Bad planning.  And there's a million other things to do as well of course.

Sunrise 08:32 Sunset 16:28

We've had a good spell of reasonable weather - and with the longer days it's almost feeling summery.  Albeit summer in thermals.  But it's good - the days are getting longer and we can really feel it.

Been to get straw today - from a man in New Zealand.  Fortunately his farm is in Caithness - which saved a bit on diesel and meant we could get back home before Ailsa.

Sixty willows

Lulu and Christian brought with them goat food.  Off-cuts of willow and pine.  Well willow is too valuable to feed straight to goats and I've spent the last two days cutting shoots and stuffing them in the ground in the hope that a few of them might take root - then we have everlasting goat food.

It'll be a miracle if they do root.  We planted some rooting willow twigs last autumn - they didn't survive - ravaged by wind and sheep.  The sheep we've now cleared off and the effect of the winds will be lessened by tying them to fence posts.  I have some reservations about the wisdom of encouraging trees to root next to fence posts - but we'll worry about that if any survive.

I've planted sixty 'trees'.  If one survives I'll be delighted.  If more survive I'll make a new log basket.

 

But can you plant pine in the same way?   I've just about exhausted planting spots, but I'll find space for a couple of pines if it looks like they might stand a chance.

Visitors

We had visitors at the weekend.  It was great.  They brought us chocolate, willows, pies, pines, wines and cheesey sticks, and laughs and criticism and helpful advice and promises to return. And they were very kind about my homebrew, my stew and my cabbage patch.  They were less kind about my wood pile and the aesthetic appeal of my raised beds but hey.

Good times.

Friday night 16

A quiet evening with all the usual characters absent.  There was life though so it was OK.  We learnt a new word - Golloch - seemingly a friendly term applied to people hailing from Caithness (which most locals tend to pronounce as Caitness).

I'm sure it's Tolkiens influence - but Golloch doesn't sound very savoury does it?

"And the pantry shelf came rattlin doon and he wis lying care-nae-mair,

Saft soap, paysmeal, coornflour 'n yearnin

Like a golloch amang treacle bit McGinty's wife wis girnin

At the sotter on her pantry flair and widnae let him be"

'Horny Golloch' is a Scot's name for an earwig - so perhaps Golloch isn't all that friendly a nickname.  Last night we spoke to a man who proudly proclaimed that his grandfather was known as Golloch because he came from Caithness.

Whatever - I think it's a great word.

Shock horror

I mean yer goes to the pub and gets home and sits in front of the telly to eat a late tea and SHEEEEET - that's me!  Roughly 2mins 12secs in - there I am  - a dashing digger in blue shirt.  Quite a fright.

Yay!

Another follower of the blog has responded to this.

Nice one Chris.  The thoughtfulness of this gift set amongst all the complaints of flat batteries  and push starting vehicles (I had to jump start the van on Wednesday in fact) is beyond measure.

Wonderful Chris - thank you very very much!!

I'm off to fit it in the van NOW!