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.
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