A glimpse of the past

While digging out a new duck pond yesterday, Innes found an old horse shoe in the old ‘iodhlann’ behind the house. That’s 2 or 3 I’ve found over the last couple of years, a reminder that it was a different kind of horsepower that was used on the croft.

The duck pond

I’ve also got an old set of what I think are horse-drawn hoe, that my grandfather used to use. They’ve been lying outside for a while so Innes is going to clean them up and paint them while he’s home.

Interesting wee pieces for my new Air An Lot venture!

Big bales

I had a busy few hours after coming home from work earlyish on Monday. I had ordered 6 big bales from Ironside & Son a couple of weeks ago, and they arrived yesterday. He was supposed to be here at 9/10am, but was delayed until the afternoon due to ferry problems.

Unloading the hay is quite straightforward!

I ordered 6 (for £49 each), while My neighbour, Chops had 4 delivered here and another 2 at his house. I used my tractor to move all the bales onto both our crofts.

The sheep are tucking into their first bales now, while I have the remainder stored in an old garage on one of the crofts. Ready for use in the next few weeks.

Implementation Adventure

I do love a mini adventure on the croft, and that’s exactly what I had on Thursday. I had the day off work so I put some plans into action. I turn 30 today (Saturday) so my parents had been asking me what I’d like for my birthday; having received my croft for my 21st, I thought I’d carry on along the same vein, so managed to get them to agree to buy some implements! I have some plans up my sleeve, which will be revealed in a month or two, and this fits in nicely.

Anyway, myself and my pal Martin jumped in the pickup and headed up to Bragar, to visit the legendary Denis Autos. I’d been up on Wednesday night, on my way home from work, and agreed a price for 3 implements, so it was just a case of picking them up.

First up were a set of harrows. These were far too heavy to lift, so the forklift came in handy.

It didn’t take long getting everything else in; the Buck Rake can be lifted by 2 people, and the chain harrows come apart and are easy to handle. Off we went home with our Deadliest Catch

As a twitter follower pointed out, there is a great potential of some impressive injuries with these implements!

Bragar is about 20 minutes away, so it was no problem taking the stuff home. It was more of a problem getting it out of the trailer, though. My tractor couldn’t hook up the harrows, so we had to give another pal, Stumpy, a call, so he could come to the rescue with his big tractor.

Boys and their toys, I really enjoyed my day. The harrows are behind my parents barn just now.

I plan on using the Buck Rake to move some big bales, so that’s gone straight onto the tractor. Is it sad that this excites me? Heck no!

Quite a lot of the croft needs reseeding soon, so I’ll now be able to get a lot of it done myself!