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!

Wednesday

I am very much enjoying my time off. I’m only in the house to eat and sleep, just the way life should be!

I was ploughing today, just a wee section to use as a vegetable plot.

After ploughing, I threw some chicken feed on there, to allow the chickens to fertilise it in their own special way!

Sheep-wise, lambs are slow. Although I did take this picture of my favourite sheep. She lost her ears, eye lids and horns as a lamb, after suffering from ‘the yellows’. Think it’s called Yellowsis, they eat some plant and become sensitive to light and the extremities fall off.

I have another sheep that is a bit flat.

She is scanned for twins and I’m a wee but worried. Gave her 40ml of calcium to see if that would help.

I noticed her eye had a wee bit of discharge too, so she’s now on a course of penicillin.

That’s it for the day, more of the same tomorrow.

Firing up the 135

I’m taking the tractor out to do some ploughing

Nice night for a walk

I got home around half 5 this evening and it’s been busy!  Firstly myself and my brother Innes took a 3-piece suite to the community charity shop from a house at the other end of Ness, before I moved some sheep and did some of my last bits of ploughing.  I wasn’t going to bother ploughing anything else, as it’s a bit late, but nothing has been growing until now, so I thought I might as well do it!  Anyway, I went for a walk in the croft with Bud (the puppy) afterwards and I took my camera with me!

This is half-way in the croft, looking west towards the sea.

Bud was with me on the walk

He was totally freaked out by this dead hedgehog!

The sun thinking about setting at around 9.20 (still very light here after 11pm)

Heading back home, my mother’s croft is the one I’m walking on, mine is on the right. I use both.

Some lambs.  These are 5-6 weeks old

This is some of my ploughing

The workhorse – I must point out that the headlamp was an incident my father had – not me!

And I thought I’d end with a picture taken from my back door at 11.05, just to show how light it is!

Veg plot take 2

With the weather forecast to improve over the weekend, I took the opportunity to get some of my vegetables planted.  It’s been very cold here and nothing has grown in the past few weeks.  This is how I had left the veg plot:

I got busy on my hands and knees for an hour or so, first into the ground were 20 Brussell Sprout plants.  It’s been recommended to me not to bother with seeds for some plants, because they won’t develop as they should.

Next into the ground were the Leeks, and then the Lettucs (below).  I’ve had neck problems for the last week or two and it was starting to play up so I left it at this for the evening.

I still have broccoli and cauliflower plants to get planted, probably at some point on Saturday, or Monday evening.  I’ll then get more of the seed into the ground.  The final thing I did was cover the plants with a fleece.  Hopefully this will protect them from the cold over the next week or so – as well as preventing pests from getting to them too.  And yes, I had to anchor the fleece down – it’s rather breezy here just now!

 

The vegetable plot

Last year was my first attempt to plant some vegetables.  I didn’t really know what I was doing and just bunged it all into the ground without much though or care.  This year, I decided to take things a little more seriously.  First of all, I ploughed the land, with my beloved Massey Ferguson 135

I had a new companion with me for the ploughing, my new puppy Bud – who seemed quite at home next to me in the cab!

Once the ploughing was done, it was time to get some shelter erected.  The Western Isles are well known for the strong winds here, and Ness is regularly top of the charts when it comes to wind-speeds, so a shelter is important if any veg are going to survive.  This is my brother Innes and Uisdean, a boy that comes to help me on the croft, sheltering from the snow and wind while erecting the first of the sides of the shelter.

 

 

Next up was getting the land rotovated.  Fortunately there is a guy in Ness that has a nice, big, tractor-mounted rotovator, and he did the vegetable plot and the potatoes for the pricely sum of £7.  The earth was like sand once he’d finished

 

I’ll use this as an excuse to post another picture of Bud, who travels in style, every time he comes in the croft with me

 

Myself and my father finished off the shelter this week, and the first of the vegetables have been planted.  I am holding off from planting many just now, though, as the weather has been quite cold.  It’s due to change this weekend, so I’ll hopefully get some done early next week.  I think the plot is looking pretty darn good now though!

Seaweed Collection

This year, I decided to try and use seaweed on my potatoes & vegetables, after talking to one of my mates about it.  The seaweed washes up on Traigh Dhail (Dell beach), about a mile away from my house.  We both went down with our tractors and I took home two loads of seaweed.  I filmed it on my phone and you can see a wee video of how it was done here:  Collecting Seaweed

His tractor has a grab, which allows the seaweed to be gathered in a matter of minutes.  It would take probably an hour to fill it by hand

The seaweed has been sitting on the croft for nearly two months, allowing it to rot a bit.  Over the past 10 days, we have planted the potatoes, using the seaweed as fertiliser.  I will use some on my vegetable plot as well.