Sunday afternoon walk.

another fine day here, so I went for a walk in the croft with Bud, the pup.  I usually walk in my own croft, but went in number 18 instead, to check the new piglets, who arrived on Friday night.  I let them out of their wee enclosure for a while – and they seemed to enjoy it.

#Bud is intrigued but also a little freaked out by them!

Further on down the croft and I was greeted by a sea of daisies!

I can’t remember what the English is for this plant that’s growing on the crofts, it’s a kind of wild rhubarb.  We call them ‘gallan’ in Gaelic.        This is is growing on a patch of no-mans land and creeping onto the croft.

It usually grows quite thickly on my croft too but it’s been quite heavily grazed up until now, so it looks like this just now.

I carried on down to Traigh Chrois, one of my favourite places in the world!

While the rest of the of the country has been suffering from heavy rainfall, we have been suffering from the opposite!  The driest spring/summer in a while.  This is Cross River, which usually covers most of these stones.  This dry spell isn’t totally unheard of, we had a similar spell in 2008.

Slightly further upstream, this is where myself and my brothers Murdo and Innes used to mess about when we went on our Sunday walks.  I remember making a raft here one afternoon, as well as trying to catch tiny fish in jars!

It wasn’t just myself and Bud that were on the walk, one of my cats came too.  Here she is chilling in the shade.  She vanished on the way home, probably off hunting rabbits.

We walked back up through the gallan on the way home.  Bud was loving it.  Rather than walk through it, he was leaping! This is him mid-jump.

I sat down for a wee while and took a couple of pictures of Bud.

As I was sitting down, he jumped up on my back and started barking.  I think he spotted another dog on Cross machair, about a mile away.

Arrival of the new piglets

I have had pigs twice before, once in 2009 and again in 2011.  This year, my neighbour has got 4, one of which is mine.  Pigs are social animals, so you have to keep them in groups of 2 or more.  It makes sense to keep all 4 together – especially since these are all siblings!

I went up to Calanais to get them this evening.  Calanais is famous for it’s standing stones but that’s not why I was there!  Here are the piglets, sound asleep in a barn

I was playing football for Ness tonight (yes, I am playing despite my dislocated finger) so I couldn’t leave until after 9.  Calanais is 30 miles away, so it was a late one, not arriving back home until 11.30pm.  I prefer getting it out of the way now, so I don’t have to use up some of my Saturday – which is going to be busy!

Anyway, here are the piglets feeding, once they’d woken up.

These piglets are Gloucester Old Spots and I’ve been getting them off the same guy since I started with pigs.  This is Cudaig Macleod (Cudaig is Gaelic for cuddy, a small fish).  He is a crofter and has also just been elected as a councillor to Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council).  Here is Cudaig carrying one of the pigs out to the trailer.  I know it looks a little cruel but this is the best way to hold them – the pigs are totally calm.  They tend to scream their heads off if you hold them upright but they don’t even struggle this way.  Less stress for all involved.

Here are the piglets in the trailer, with a very very excited Bud looking on.

This is back in Ness at 11.30.  The piglets new home.

My brother Innes came to help me once I got back and the pigs are now settled down for the night.  Perky (my neighbour who’s taking responsibility for them) is back home in the next few days, so I’ll keep an eye and feed them until them.  Fingers crossed they don’t escape!!

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!

Bud up to 4 months of age

Bud arrived in mid-March, in place of my old dog, Jim (who I may write about at some point)

He settled in quite quickly, here he is dozing in a basket of clean clothes!

On his first walk in the croft.  In this photo, I think he looks like one of these toy dogs that does flips!

Training him early to get used to the tractor!

And the 4×4!

But all this work makes Bud a sleepy boy!

At least this time it was dirty clothes!

He gets hungry too – this is him eating his first rabbit!

My very own meerkat

This was his first time on the beach

Just Hangin’

He disappeared on me one Sunday afternoon – found him sound asleep on my bed!

Big Yawn

Full of energy

Close-up

Trying to chew a whale bone in the front garden!

For the time being, I will leave you with this picture of him feeling sorry for himself, after hurting his paw running around the kitchen!  There will be many more Bud pictures – I guarantee that!