A couple of Sundays ago we had to give the lambs their Heptavac injections and tick and lice repellent stuff. This involved chasing the lambs up and down the croft for over an hour until we'd managed to pen them in. We had friends to help, but it was a devil of a job and so frustrating. Three lambs evaded capture even after bringing in a dog to assist.
We did manage to catch the lambs a couple of days later, but as the opened Heptavac loses potency after 10 hours you do wonder if they will be protected.
The weather has been overcast, raining & very midgey, making it almost impossible to bear being outside. There seems much to do & it is so frustrating I feel like banging my head off the caravan wall.
There are new proposals to the Crofting Act that are rather frightening, so as it went out to consultation and we attended each stage of the public meetings we felt we had to add our comments before the dead-line - which we did and ended up talking for hours about the depressing implications. It would appear that Crofting will be finished if the proposals go through the Scottish Parliament. The meetimgs were 'vocal', but when chaired by suited Edinburgh civil servants you feel you would be as well talking to a tree, or a a call centre, or the Loch - probably the Loch would understand better, knows these things.
When a breeze has picked up enough to blow the midges away I've been snipping out bracken that is everywhere. The croft hadn't been used for at least 50 years and I try and rescue it from encroaching nature. Somedays it feels a lot like pissing into the wind to use a cliche. I wish I had some machinery - big boys toys: a digger, a tractor, a quad bike....I did have a quad bike else where, but it died a premature death when someone borrowed it and forgot to put oil in. I will always remember the noise, the way it screamed, the run down the fields as I tried to stop them, but they didn't see my frenzied waving, they couldn't hear me as the engine started to seize.....
The byre is tumbling down and I have to do something soon or else it will melt into the field. Because of the midges I have been imprisoned in the caravan. The walls seem to be closing in and I have been fretting about the never ending list of things that NEED doing.
We wanted to go see Eric Bogle when he was playing in Ullapool on Saturday, but all the tickets were sold out, but we managed to get some for The Eden Court Theatre in Inverness on the Sunday. When I sat down I glanced downwards and felt a slight unease. We were on the third tier, right at the front. Jim came behind me and had a full blown panic attack and walked out after a few seconds. He really suffers from vertigo. I sat until the end of the first song, felt it was better to leave Jim to calm a little. He gets embarrassed and wouldn't want me fussing - people turning around to see what was happening. A woman who works there came and told me she'd managed to find us other seats. We ended up in a box on the ground floor facing the centre of the stage, the best seats in the house.
It's the last tour Eric Bogle will be doing, so I'm glad we went, glad we got good seats in the end up. He sings sad songs about injustice, racism, and a lot of anti-war stuff. He writes well, and he does funny stuff too. The craic between songs was easy, flowed so well you couldn't see the seams.
My old striped hen has just come out of moult and has gone broody I think. She sits on about three eggs in the 'egg house' - the house that the hens go in to lay. It's not occupied, well wasn't until Old Stripey decided to sit. She isn't a Scot's Grey, but looks like a bigger version of one. The other hens squeeze in around her to lay and she's snaffled their eggs, tucked them under her. It's been an odd year for the poultry, quite disastrous in some ways. I doubt she'll sit full term, she has never gone broody before. I think she's about 10. I don't know for sure, she was a rescue hen. I must mark it on the calendar else I forget the date. It's a strange one when they sit and the others are using the nest as you have eggs that are older than the others. When they start to hatch after 21 days of being incubated there is a risk that the hen will keep sitting for days until the others have hatched. I wonder if the other hens will stop laying in the egg house, start hiding their eggs again. I hate buying eggs, they're never the same.
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
Sunday, 2 August 2009
The Long Road.
My Mother isn't good I was told. She has Alzheimer's disease and is now in residential care. Jim and I headed down to Fife on Wednesday - up at 4am to feed animals who seemed perplexed at the early call.
My Mother perked up and I took her for a short walk. She didn't want to put her shoes on but keep on her slippers, so we shuffled along the road to where she used to do voluntary work, help out at a lunch club. She couldn't remember it - going there for twenty odd years, but surprisingly there was a flicker of recognition when I mentioned a woman who worked beside her, but when I spoke about this woman's daughter the shutters came down, she was back in the confusion of the damnable disease. She is hardly grey, still has a fantastic figure and looks much younger than her 76 years, but she's gone - is no longer present for the majority of the time.
I was lucky - visited her on an up day. We laughed at a builder leaning out of a half constructed roof, a dog taking itself for a walk that was too busy to stop and chat. I picked lavender from some municipal planting and she kept rubbing it and sniffing it. The sense of smell is strong. She grew lavender hedging and would make beautiful bags that she filled with the flower heads. When we went to leave she tried to sneak out with us a couple of times. She was as agile as the cat who has its own chair in the lounge ( where thankfully the TV isn't permanently switched on).
The matron came and distracted her, lead her back to the dining room where lunch smelt imminent. I felt guilty, felt like a bad daughter, but also fear - is this my fate? Will I end up in a home wearing clothes I did not pick, surrounded by people who are paid to care for me with only a snatch of my past scattered around a tiny bedroom?
We briefly called in on a couple of friends then headed back up the long road. We got back after 11pm.
On Thursday we had to take Weemon back to the vet so he could see how his eye is doing. Again dye was put in his eye and we could see the hole that has caused the problem. The vet is pleased the way it's healing fast and said he thought he would have had to remove it. In a fortnight, if the eye is still clouded we will get steroid drops, which he would rather not give, but he trusts us to see if there is that need and he will post the drops out. They are so good like that in the Highlands - understand the distances that have to be travelled.
Last year I had an awful outbreak of cocidious {sp?} in newly hatched chicks. I phoned the vet, he diagnosed over the phone and left medicine and syringes behind a litter bin in the vet's surgery car park as the vet's was about to close.
We still have mad weather - all the seasons in one day, but we eat the fruits of our labours. Salads are compulsory.
Today I must tackle the pea, mange tout and bean surpluses and dig more tatties and build a house and weed acres and acres and acres of ground, but first lunch and a read of yesterday's newspaper.
My Mother perked up and I took her for a short walk. She didn't want to put her shoes on but keep on her slippers, so we shuffled along the road to where she used to do voluntary work, help out at a lunch club. She couldn't remember it - going there for twenty odd years, but surprisingly there was a flicker of recognition when I mentioned a woman who worked beside her, but when I spoke about this woman's daughter the shutters came down, she was back in the confusion of the damnable disease. She is hardly grey, still has a fantastic figure and looks much younger than her 76 years, but she's gone - is no longer present for the majority of the time.
I was lucky - visited her on an up day. We laughed at a builder leaning out of a half constructed roof, a dog taking itself for a walk that was too busy to stop and chat. I picked lavender from some municipal planting and she kept rubbing it and sniffing it. The sense of smell is strong. She grew lavender hedging and would make beautiful bags that she filled with the flower heads. When we went to leave she tried to sneak out with us a couple of times. She was as agile as the cat who has its own chair in the lounge ( where thankfully the TV isn't permanently switched on).
The matron came and distracted her, lead her back to the dining room where lunch smelt imminent. I felt guilty, felt like a bad daughter, but also fear - is this my fate? Will I end up in a home wearing clothes I did not pick, surrounded by people who are paid to care for me with only a snatch of my past scattered around a tiny bedroom?
We briefly called in on a couple of friends then headed back up the long road. We got back after 11pm.
On Thursday we had to take Weemon back to the vet so he could see how his eye is doing. Again dye was put in his eye and we could see the hole that has caused the problem. The vet is pleased the way it's healing fast and said he thought he would have had to remove it. In a fortnight, if the eye is still clouded we will get steroid drops, which he would rather not give, but he trusts us to see if there is that need and he will post the drops out. They are so good like that in the Highlands - understand the distances that have to be travelled.
Last year I had an awful outbreak of cocidious {sp?} in newly hatched chicks. I phoned the vet, he diagnosed over the phone and left medicine and syringes behind a litter bin in the vet's surgery car park as the vet's was about to close.
We still have mad weather - all the seasons in one day, but we eat the fruits of our labours. Salads are compulsory.
Today I must tackle the pea, mange tout and bean surpluses and dig more tatties and build a house and weed acres and acres and acres of ground, but first lunch and a read of yesterday's newspaper.
Friday, 24 July 2009
Cat's eyes and asthetically displeasing knees.
On Tuesday Senga one of my Scot's Grey hens appeared back, abandoning her hidden eggs which were due to hatch in a few days.
Wednesday was such torrential rain Jim had to anchor down the little bridge in case it swept away down the waterfall. We've never seen the burn in such spate, even after the Winter's thaw. The bridge is a good, simple construction and enables me to get across to the veggie patch without sliding on the slimy rocks across the burn. We call it In-Laws leap.
Maybe Senga knew the weather was to turn and decided to give up the nest.....They aren't as daft as they look you know.
On Thursday we had to travel 80 miles to the vet with Wee Mon our tabby cat who has aquired an eye injury. Possibly Spider our black monster cat had scratched him, or he'd been pricked by a jaggy bush?
Wee Mon appeared 13 years ago in a bad way. We later found out he'd been dumped in a skip by the son of someone who sits in the House Of Lords. He's still scared of men, but a wonderful creature - very intelligent and likes going for walks down to the shore.
The vet was great, examined it thoroughly, reassured me it was probably salvageable and gave us drops. We have to go back next week - go through it all again. He's scratched his cornea, not ruptured it as we feared. Wee Mon was brave, dignified and sat on my knee on the journey home.
I'd picked up a copy of the Daily Mail while we were over on the East coast, a paper I dislike, but get it once or so a year to see if it or I have changed. There was an article about the knees of models and actresses over the age of 40. There were numerous photos pointing out 'the flaws.' I have never thought about knees aesthetically before. Mine crack and creak now and again, but serve their purpose. The writer was pleading with women over the age of 40 to wear longer hem-lines. Maybe we should all start wearing a burka I thought sarcastically, but on the letter page there was someone wanting burkas out-lawed. You could almost forgive the writer of the 'flawed knees' article if it had been a man, a young, silly air-head, but it was written by a woman.
I don't wear short skirts, but I might start to so as to offend the sensibilities of Daily Mail readers.
This morning I rolled up my trouser legs, asked Jim if my knees look old. No, he said, but they're all scratched.
And so they are - must have been Wee Mon clinging on on the journey home.
Today we lifted wood, tons of stacked wood that had been delivered to the roadside. We loaded it into a van, took it down to the house site, unloaded it and stacked it.
We ache, didn't eat until 9pm, but it kinda feels good. Feels like we've squeezed every last drop out of the day - are quenched.
Wednesday was such torrential rain Jim had to anchor down the little bridge in case it swept away down the waterfall. We've never seen the burn in such spate, even after the Winter's thaw. The bridge is a good, simple construction and enables me to get across to the veggie patch without sliding on the slimy rocks across the burn. We call it In-Laws leap.
Maybe Senga knew the weather was to turn and decided to give up the nest.....They aren't as daft as they look you know.
On Thursday we had to travel 80 miles to the vet with Wee Mon our tabby cat who has aquired an eye injury. Possibly Spider our black monster cat had scratched him, or he'd been pricked by a jaggy bush?
Wee Mon appeared 13 years ago in a bad way. We later found out he'd been dumped in a skip by the son of someone who sits in the House Of Lords. He's still scared of men, but a wonderful creature - very intelligent and likes going for walks down to the shore.
The vet was great, examined it thoroughly, reassured me it was probably salvageable and gave us drops. We have to go back next week - go through it all again. He's scratched his cornea, not ruptured it as we feared. Wee Mon was brave, dignified and sat on my knee on the journey home.
I'd picked up a copy of the Daily Mail while we were over on the East coast, a paper I dislike, but get it once or so a year to see if it or I have changed. There was an article about the knees of models and actresses over the age of 40. There were numerous photos pointing out 'the flaws.' I have never thought about knees aesthetically before. Mine crack and creak now and again, but serve their purpose. The writer was pleading with women over the age of 40 to wear longer hem-lines. Maybe we should all start wearing a burka I thought sarcastically, but on the letter page there was someone wanting burkas out-lawed. You could almost forgive the writer of the 'flawed knees' article if it had been a man, a young, silly air-head, but it was written by a woman.
I don't wear short skirts, but I might start to so as to offend the sensibilities of Daily Mail readers.
This morning I rolled up my trouser legs, asked Jim if my knees look old. No, he said, but they're all scratched.
And so they are - must have been Wee Mon clinging on on the journey home.
Today we lifted wood, tons of stacked wood that had been delivered to the roadside. We loaded it into a van, took it down to the house site, unloaded it and stacked it.
We ache, didn't eat until 9pm, but it kinda feels good. Feels like we've squeezed every last drop out of the day - are quenched.
Monday, 20 July 2009
Hectic, hot week past.
Last week was hectic - hot and hectic. I have an allergy to clegg bites and I managed to get a few. My leg and hand swelled up during shearing. I wasn't shearing - thankfully. The wonderful Robert came with his electrickery ones and it was all done and dusted in a couple of hours and beers.
It's great for the sheeps to get their jackets off during this heat. You always worry about fly strike, and dread finding maggots - which I never have - yet, at least not in the sheeps......
Last Monday the borage brew was ready - it's an organic feed that I water onto the veggies. It does stink like a corpse, but it's grand stuff & free - I like free things. I chop the plants off near their base, stuff them in a mesh sack, place it weighted down in a water-filled dustbin, then leave it for three weeks to fester. You dilute it 1:25 and use it like tomato feed. I put the slimy leaves out of the sack onto the tattie patch. The tattie patch is near where Mrs Hopperty was sitting on eggs under the scrubby tree. I feed the ophans their bottles just over the fence from there.
Tuesday morning was hot again. Harriet and Gem were waiting at the fence for their bottles.
( Don't read on if you are at all squeamish. Cruel scenes of nature content warning.)
I could smell a nasty smell - that unmistakable sweet scent of something putrid. Harriet distracted me by leaping onto her bottle with such force her teeth caught my finger and dragged off a bit of flesh. It's remarkable how sharp their little teeth are.
I peeped in at Mrs Hopperty on the way back. She seemed fine, but there was quite a few bluebottles and greenbottles buzzing around.
When I told Jim, he blamed the borage leaves on the tattie patch, said they honked to high heaven.
I could hear the peeping of a chick. Kept checking and still heard just the one peeping. All day I checked and started to feel something was not right as the hot day wore on.
A shell appeared later on and then she moved off the nest with just two tiny chicks leaving a couple of half dead chicks that appeared swollen at the back-end. Fly strike. We, by that I mean Jim, had to dispatch them. The nest was filled with another couple of dead chicks and unhatched, unviable eggs. This is so spooky, as a few weeks back I wrote a flash fiction for the weekly challenge on writewords (which I won - brag,brag!) and had put Mrs Hopperty in it & had 'Mother' cleaning up dead chicks & putrid unviable eggs after the hatch. I'd best be careful what I write in future, don't want to tempt the fates. Make mental note to self to delete stories where I have written about a prostitute in the first person - which I haven't been and am probably too old & ugly to now - although there's probably a market for that too. There seems to be for most things if the price is right.
We have friends in a neighbouring township who rescue animals, birds - insects. You name it, it's crawled over their kitchen surfaces, slithered under their settee. They had a spate of hedgehogs - if that's the collective name, probably should be a prickle - in early Spring. They had one who had a spine rot thing. It lifted up it's front end and spat all the time - sort of hissed, then it sicked up and rubbed it into its spines. Bit how I imagine a cross between a punk and Hell's Angel would do as a party piece. But apparently it's normal in hedgehogs. That penultimate bit was prejudiced - apologies to anyone who I may have offended.
Anyhoo - Rescuer friends had a solitary chick hatch from an entire incubator filled with eggs. Poor wee thing had no peers. A neighbour had given them a few weeks old chick with a broken leg as company for it, but that needed dispatching as it wasn't in a good way. It wasn't healing & it was swinging it's other leg out of kilter and using its wing tips as steadying props and, and....well it was all a bit tragic. So I suggest they bring it over & pop it in with Mrs Hopperty and her two wee ones.
We tried it, and Mrs Hopperty was brilliant, putting food down to it, trying to foster it, but the orpan just cheeped constantly in a high-pitched distressed way.
It eventually went in the newly constructed house and settled down. Mrs Hopperty and her two chicks settled down out in the run.
Everything seemed calm, so I set about weeding the fruit bushes as they're in ear shot.
Jim set off to mow the top two fields with a brilliant Allen Sythe thing we've borrowed and covet - we must return it this week or a friendship may become strained.
After a couple of hours of quiet weeding, Jim appeared back talking to Harriet and Gem who followed him across the fields. The potential foster chick started cheeping, ran around the run barging into the tiny chicks. Mrs Hopperty's had had enough - in a good natured way she fanned out her wings, got her chicks protectively beneath her and glowered at the interloper. It wasn't going to work.
It had to go back.
Thinking about it now, I believe that hearing Jim's voice had excited it as Jeff the rescuer sat at night with the chick on his shoulder and its crippled pal on his lap. I think the chick thought Jeff was its Mum & hearing Jim's voice......thought its Mum had come back! Or am I being daft?
Talking of poultry - which I do too much of, Jock The Cock (photo enclosed), my magnificent Scot's Grey cockeral has started attacking Jim. He's become so aggressive he may have to go to that big soup pot in the sky. ( Jock - not Jim )
As an aside I just watched The Street on BBC 1 by Jimmy McGovern - It is brilliant writing, excellent acting. Best thing on the telly in years.
It's great for the sheeps to get their jackets off during this heat. You always worry about fly strike, and dread finding maggots - which I never have - yet, at least not in the sheeps......
Last Monday the borage brew was ready - it's an organic feed that I water onto the veggies. It does stink like a corpse, but it's grand stuff & free - I like free things. I chop the plants off near their base, stuff them in a mesh sack, place it weighted down in a water-filled dustbin, then leave it for three weeks to fester. You dilute it 1:25 and use it like tomato feed. I put the slimy leaves out of the sack onto the tattie patch. The tattie patch is near where Mrs Hopperty was sitting on eggs under the scrubby tree. I feed the ophans their bottles just over the fence from there.
Tuesday morning was hot again. Harriet and Gem were waiting at the fence for their bottles.
( Don't read on if you are at all squeamish. Cruel scenes of nature content warning.)
I could smell a nasty smell - that unmistakable sweet scent of something putrid. Harriet distracted me by leaping onto her bottle with such force her teeth caught my finger and dragged off a bit of flesh. It's remarkable how sharp their little teeth are.
I peeped in at Mrs Hopperty on the way back. She seemed fine, but there was quite a few bluebottles and greenbottles buzzing around.
When I told Jim, he blamed the borage leaves on the tattie patch, said they honked to high heaven.
I could hear the peeping of a chick. Kept checking and still heard just the one peeping. All day I checked and started to feel something was not right as the hot day wore on.
A shell appeared later on and then she moved off the nest with just two tiny chicks leaving a couple of half dead chicks that appeared swollen at the back-end. Fly strike. We, by that I mean Jim, had to dispatch them. The nest was filled with another couple of dead chicks and unhatched, unviable eggs. This is so spooky, as a few weeks back I wrote a flash fiction for the weekly challenge on writewords (which I won - brag,brag!) and had put Mrs Hopperty in it & had 'Mother' cleaning up dead chicks & putrid unviable eggs after the hatch. I'd best be careful what I write in future, don't want to tempt the fates. Make mental note to self to delete stories where I have written about a prostitute in the first person - which I haven't been and am probably too old & ugly to now - although there's probably a market for that too. There seems to be for most things if the price is right.
We have friends in a neighbouring township who rescue animals, birds - insects. You name it, it's crawled over their kitchen surfaces, slithered under their settee. They had a spate of hedgehogs - if that's the collective name, probably should be a prickle - in early Spring. They had one who had a spine rot thing. It lifted up it's front end and spat all the time - sort of hissed, then it sicked up and rubbed it into its spines. Bit how I imagine a cross between a punk and Hell's Angel would do as a party piece. But apparently it's normal in hedgehogs. That penultimate bit was prejudiced - apologies to anyone who I may have offended.
Anyhoo - Rescuer friends had a solitary chick hatch from an entire incubator filled with eggs. Poor wee thing had no peers. A neighbour had given them a few weeks old chick with a broken leg as company for it, but that needed dispatching as it wasn't in a good way. It wasn't healing & it was swinging it's other leg out of kilter and using its wing tips as steadying props and, and....well it was all a bit tragic. So I suggest they bring it over & pop it in with Mrs Hopperty and her two wee ones.
We tried it, and Mrs Hopperty was brilliant, putting food down to it, trying to foster it, but the orpan just cheeped constantly in a high-pitched distressed way.
It eventually went in the newly constructed house and settled down. Mrs Hopperty and her two chicks settled down out in the run.
Everything seemed calm, so I set about weeding the fruit bushes as they're in ear shot.
Jim set off to mow the top two fields with a brilliant Allen Sythe thing we've borrowed and covet - we must return it this week or a friendship may become strained.
After a couple of hours of quiet weeding, Jim appeared back talking to Harriet and Gem who followed him across the fields. The potential foster chick started cheeping, ran around the run barging into the tiny chicks. Mrs Hopperty's had had enough - in a good natured way she fanned out her wings, got her chicks protectively beneath her and glowered at the interloper. It wasn't going to work.
It had to go back.
Thinking about it now, I believe that hearing Jim's voice had excited it as Jeff the rescuer sat at night with the chick on his shoulder and its crippled pal on his lap. I think the chick thought Jeff was its Mum & hearing Jim's voice......thought its Mum had come back! Or am I being daft?
Talking of poultry - which I do too much of, Jock The Cock (photo enclosed), my magnificent Scot's Grey cockeral has started attacking Jim. He's become so aggressive he may have to go to that big soup pot in the sky. ( Jock - not Jim )
As an aside I just watched The Street on BBC 1 by Jimmy McGovern - It is brilliant writing, excellent acting. Best thing on the telly in years.
Saturday, 11 July 2009
Blog Day.
I've been told I 'need' a blog by Peter Urpeth - the nice chap from Hi-Arts, so here goes.
It's all rather strange, being a private - some would say secretive person. It also seems fraudulent, as I live remote, in a caravan on a croft surrounded by wild things.
A blog is for someone urban, young, trendy with a sense of fashion, a minimilist apartment. Is not for someone who spends most days outdoors up to wellie tops in mud and shit and sometimes the hours of darkness hunched over a key board tapping in flash fiction.
As I say somewhere else, I write with the curtains closed, so know one sees. It's my dirty secret, or was until now.
It all seems a bit odd, a bit blabber-mouthed, but I will get used to it, just like the nail gun, the eccentric gas cooker, the device for ringing the male lambs. T'is only a tool after all.
One of this evening's tasks is to do link thingies. But first me and better half are to construct another hen house for Mrs Hopperty who is sitting on 13 eggs (mostly not her own) , under a scrubby tree.
She was run over years ago and has a strange gait, like a drunken sailor's. She rolls along, one leg bowed. I think she needs a disabled ramp really.
I got her for free as she stopped laying, so her previous owner said, was too ancient, but she lays fine tasty brown eggs every now and again. She raised a small brood last year of her own eggs.
Now she is sitting on mainly Scot's Grey eggs. They're very rare breed. The original crofter's hen.
I breed them - or rather the hens do.
Will be interesting to see what hatches out.
It's all rather strange, being a private - some would say secretive person. It also seems fraudulent, as I live remote, in a caravan on a croft surrounded by wild things.
A blog is for someone urban, young, trendy with a sense of fashion, a minimilist apartment. Is not for someone who spends most days outdoors up to wellie tops in mud and shit and sometimes the hours of darkness hunched over a key board tapping in flash fiction.
As I say somewhere else, I write with the curtains closed, so know one sees. It's my dirty secret, or was until now.
It all seems a bit odd, a bit blabber-mouthed, but I will get used to it, just like the nail gun, the eccentric gas cooker, the device for ringing the male lambs. T'is only a tool after all.
One of this evening's tasks is to do link thingies. But first me and better half are to construct another hen house for Mrs Hopperty who is sitting on 13 eggs (mostly not her own) , under a scrubby tree.
She was run over years ago and has a strange gait, like a drunken sailor's. She rolls along, one leg bowed. I think she needs a disabled ramp really.
I got her for free as she stopped laying, so her previous owner said, was too ancient, but she lays fine tasty brown eggs every now and again. She raised a small brood last year of her own eggs.
Now she is sitting on mainly Scot's Grey eggs. They're very rare breed. The original crofter's hen.
I breed them - or rather the hens do.
Will be interesting to see what hatches out.
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