My thoughts coming into a new year

As the year draws to an end, I have been thinking about it a lot in the past few weeks.

2014 didn’t get off to a good start for me at all, as I felt some backlash, both locally and nationally, for arranging the world Guga eating championship. Afterwards, I made a conscious decision to move away from community-involvement and focus on my own plans. I had been involved in numerous community groups over the past 10 years; Ness FC, Social Club, Comunn Eachdraidh, village Grazing Clerk, Ness Golf Club & the Community Council, but decided to focus on my own plans after this.

And focus on them I did. As soon as lambing was over, I ordered 320 hens. The thinking was to provide some kind of sustainable income from the croft. The sheep and everything else washes its own face, but I needed something that would make a decent profit. Having done the sums and spoken to shops, I decided that hens were the answer.

Another big step was at the end of June, when I reduced my hours at work. I now work 3.5 days a week, having every Monday off, as well as every 2nd Friday. This has been invaluable during the winter, as I’d have no time to get anything done otherwise.

There are plenty folk who were trying to convince me to work full time or who thought I was crazy in doing it, but I have always been of the opinion that work is there to fund life, life isn’t there to sit in an office. Work to live, not live to work. I know what I want to do and 18 months of hard work will get me where I want to be.

The hens arrived at the end of July and things have gone well since then. They started laying semi-regularly by mid-September. Things have been ticking over since then and I hope to hit the ground running by the end of January.

There are loads of things going on behind the scenes too, but I can’t share all of those quite yet, as things are at a sensitive stage. I cannot wait for 2015 though, I know it is going to be my most successful, profitable and happiest year as a crofter.

Monster Saturday

I’m lying in bed on Sunday morning, feeling like a broken man. Not because of a hangover, but because of how much I did yesterday!

Last week was one of these rare Saturdays when I actually managed to do everything I’d set out to do. Funnily enough, I repeated that feat again yesterday.

I didn’t do anything until after 10am, as we had strong/gale force winds overnight and they didn’t ease off until mid-morning. I had arranged to help my neighbour Donnie take his ram from the ewes, and then he’d help me do the same with mine. We got them all in the trailer and moved them, with me travelling with them in style 🙂

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We put the rams together on another croft that I have started using – more on that in a few weeks. They’ll be happy there for a while & are easily accessible to keep an eye on and feed, right out on the main road!

After this I caught up on tagging this year’s lambs. Lambs need to be tagged within 9 months of birth, so I tagged the last 5 today, as well as upgrading the slaughter tags in 5 I had bought. You can put a single slaughter tag in a lamb, which apparently markets & buyers prefer, but it means they have to be slaughtered within a year. The ones I bought will be 18 months before they’re slaughtered, so I need to upgrade. I just have 2 ram lambs to tag and that’s it all done. Hopefully I’ll do that on Tuesday.

The 24 lambs I have we’re drenched for fluke and then I moved them to Cross, the next village, where they’re on good grazing for the next month or so.

By this time, it’s getting dark. Back home and to the hen house to collect the day’s eggs and sort them. I now have 95 boxes of eggs ready to go. Anyone fancy some???

In an unusual act for me, I am going to work tomorrow. I haven’t worked a Monday for a while, but the weather is rubbish and Tuesday looks a lot better. I think tomorrow will be my last day of the day-job this year. No rest for the wicked though, plenty to be getting on with over the next fortnight!

The storm

Well, what a couple of days. It’s not over yet, but I hope that’s the end of the drama anyway.

I suppose the storm build up started on Monday. The forecast was for strong winds, so I had to prepare for it.

My father and I secured the hen house by anchoring it down with wheelie bins and barrels full of water, around 900kg in total. After that I tidied up as much of the stuff lying about as I could, to make sure it didn’t blow away and cause any more damage.

All good, I thought.

Tuesday was a rough morning & started with a wee interview on Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland news programme, talking about the weather, before I went to work. While at work, the forecast for Wednesday was upgraded to an Amber alert by the Met Office and most public services were closed to the public. I work for the council and we were all told to use our own judgement to decide whether it was safe to travel to work or not.

I got home around 5.30 on Tuesday and decided to make sure everything was secure before the wind blew up again. This was the forecast on Tuesday:

First stop was the hen house. Everything was ok and then my dad happened to phone while I was up there. While on the phone, lightning struck nearby, with the thunder less than half a second later. Now, my hen house is on the highest point of my croft so I decided to get out of there asap! I hung up the phone without saying anything and hurdled the fence beside me and got into the house before my dad phoned back to see if I’d been fried!

So we got through the night ok. I woke up around 2 and put my ear plugs in, as the noise was keeping me awake. I woke up at 6 & noticed my alarm clock flashing, indicating a power cut, before it went off again around 7. We ended up not having any power until after midday, although there was plenty to keep me busy before that.

I went in to check the sheep just before dawn (around 8, which sounds less impressive!) and came back via the hen house. I can see it from my house & looked ok, but, on closer inspection, some of the roof was missing, with several other sections flapping in the wind. I checked the birds inside; one dead and the whole place soaked. I had cleaned it all out on Monday, but that didn’t last long!

That’s the only photo I have of it, as pictures weren’t really a priority! Fortunately the wind died down a little, gusting probably 40-50mph, so with the help of my neighbours James and Donnie, we managed to replace the missing sheet and secure the rest of the roof.

Another power cut and 3 hours without internet but we can live without that! Credit to the Hydro boys who got us all back up and running, and also the BT guys who fixed the fault. Shame I can’t say the same about Vodafone, as I haven’t had any signal since 8.15am.

After the hectic morning, I went to the Butt & Port to take some photos & video. You can see more of them on the facebook page but here is my favourite

Video of the storm

Some footage from the Butt and Port today