One word? When seven would do…

Monday – a quiet morning of packing and generally preparing for going off. Ady was over doing some wood cutting with Big Dave and they both came over for lunch, then we headed down to the ferry. The crossing was a little bumpy, but I spent it on the middle deck sitting with Fliss and then being joined by Camille and Sheelagh from Eigg so lots of inter island gossiping 🙂 We gave Camille a lift part way along the road as far as Glenfinnan. It’s lovely to feel so very part of the Small Isles community like that.

Straight to the dentist where Scarlett got a bit of a lecture about breaking the brace again and after some debating it was decided that it would be best for her to have the fixed brace (it’s been sent off for mending) and the train tracks put on at the same time in 2 weeks. Nightmare as far as logistics, travel arrangements and cost are for the trip – I’ve still not actually sorted it but will think about that more tomorrow. We drove to McDonalds for dinner, popped into Morrisons and then headed to the Travelodge. The kids overdosed on wifi and trashy TV while I had a long bath with wine and chocolate. A travelodge bath so only one quarter of my body in the water at any one time and I did knock my first glass of wine into the water and the water did keep draining away because the overflow was so low down in the bath that it was constantly draining but a bath nonetheless.

I was the first asleep!

Tuesday – I was also the first awake… I watched the TV and drank tea while the other two slowly awoke. We got up, dressed and packed up and were out the room just after 10am. We dropped our stuff off at the car and then walked round the town, nipping back to the car to drop stuff off as we bought it. A quick charity shop trawl and then we collected the car and went back to the golden arches for lunch, Lidl, Morrisons, Argos (to collect a tent we’d paid for online) and Poundstretcher runs for various stuff and then we were headed out of Fort William. We went to the ‘secret charity shops’ – a little gathering of two shops in a tiny community shopping centre type square which also has a wool and material shop.

We were on the way back to Mallaig when we drove past Treasures of the Earth, a bright yellow painted building with ‘Gems! Fossils! Minerals!’ painted on the walls which we always chorus ‘Treasures of the Earthhhhhhh’ when we drive past (tens and tens of times over the years now). I said ‘we should go there some times. Actually we should just go there!’ so did a U turn and we did. It was pants 🙂 Just over a tenner to get in, one large room filled with back lit gem stones and loads and loads of very wordy interpretation boards, so I made the kids listen while I read then all out. We were not the only people there but it was very quiet so we got to mess about without disturbing anyone and it was fun 🙂

Back in the car, we drove to Mallaig and loaded most of our shopping into the container for Rum for the following day which makes life so much easier in the morning and is well worth the extra 50 mile drive and mileage charge on the hire car. Then to Alison’s.

The kids had a nice time, I had my usual slightly odd experience there and was glad to be away this morning.

With much prompting we did all manage to be in the car for 9am and were in Mallaig by 930am, I dropped the kids off at the Calmac office, took the car back and then went across to the CoOp for last minute bits. Faye was on the boat too so I saw chatting to her while the kids sat together at the next table. It was quite choppy but I was so busy talking to Faye I didn’t really notice.

We managed to get the car all the way up the croft which was amazing as we had a fair bit of stuff. We unpacked everything, let some ducks go, made some other ducks pen bigger and moved it a bit, put the new tent up ready for the kids, had some lunch and then spent some time looking at options for netting / penning / enclosing the raised bed area. We went over to have a cup of tea with Dave and Faye and then came back to feed the animals and sort out food first for the kids and then for us.

It’s so good to be home, as ever.

I’m really struggling to find accommodation in Fort William for the two nights in a couple of weeks for Scarlett’s brace – I am going to ring the dentist tomorrow and see whether a couple of weeks delay would make much difference as the Scottish schools will be back then. There is literally nowhere in the FW area with space as it is the crossover week or two of both Scottish and English schools being on summer holidays. Bloody nightmare!

Friday – in the morning Scarlett and I walked along to see Ali and meet her new kitten, Buttons. He’s very cute and so tiny. I love cats very much and kittens are adorable but I’ve never hankered after one that much and prefer already grown cats really. We did have a pair of kittens when we first bought our house back in the mid nineties but their cute factor was massively outweighed by their giddiness, clambering up curtains and constantly getting into scrapes. I think I prefer toddlers really. Nice to go and coo over Buttons every so often though and then come home and breath a sigh of relief at the zen-ness which is Kira curled up on the bed 🙂

Scarlett went off to hang out with Poppy and Evie and I came home for lunch with Davies and Ady. Ady and I went along to the ferry – we were hoping for petrol and animal feed, neither of which arrived but we did get all our monthly amazon supplies of flour, tinned tuna, bulk loo rolls, boxes of crisps and packets of teabags, 12 bottles of wine etc. So we were glad to have had gone.

Back home we unloaded all that and then went to start making some cloches to go over a couple of raised beds we are planting up with strawberries. It was a bit midgey and we were sort of making it up as we went along but we came up with some good ideas and laid out pipe and wood ready for next time we get to it. I made pizza dough and bread dough, we fed the animals and went down to the shop for a Friday beer. Lesley came down too and then Doug & David appeared so it was a good hour or so. We had started off sitting at the table in the sun but it got midgey so we retired under the cover. We stayed for a couple of beers and then came home for 8pm.

Pizza and Lost and a phone call for Ady from his brother.

Saturday – I had a phone call with Julie which gave a rather different slant to some of what Chris had been saying. It’s very odd both being the confidantes for a couple splitting up, particularly when there are such close relationships. We also learnt that Ady’s mother died, at some undisclosed period in the last few years since any of us last had contact with her – we last saw her at Chris & Julie’s wedding reception (14 years ago)  and before that at Deborah’s funeral (over 15 years ago), although I never actually spoke to her and neither did Ady at either of those events. Chris had seen her much more recently, but still probably 8 or 9 years ago.

I cleared the coat rail in the hall and sorted some coats to get rid of, put some away in other places and cleaned some mold off the way with bleach spray. Ady had been at work and came home with laundry so I folded that up and we had lunch. Big Dave came over for a cup of tea and chat. I was feeling a bit rough with either a cold relapse or a brand new cold hot on the heels of the one I had been congratulating myself on getting over so quickly, so did crocheting in the afternoon, which was fine as it was quite rainy anyway.

Ady and I went to the evening boat to collect Muscovy ducks and gave Bad Neil a lift along as he was putting fuel in his run out of fuel car at the pier. The ducks came off fine and we brought them back. It is five adult ducks and 11 ducklings belonging to two of the adults so we worked out who belonged to who, reunited ducklings with their mothers and put the three other adults all in a pen together. Ady had cooked a really lovely curry for dinner which helped a lot with my cold.

Sunday – up for the ferry as we had runner ducks coming – it was quite  a busy boat with various people coming and going. The ducks were just in a small cardboard box so we were able to just carry that up the hill. Ady had made the frames for a pen so I stapled the chicken wire on and we did some moving things about with the birds, putting one duck pen on fresh ground, releasing Crispy duck and all her ducklings, releasing one of the mother chickens, ringing some more chicks, bringing the three adult muscovies over and putting them in a pen with a cluster of muscovies so they can all see each other, giving all the ducks little ponds for swimming in and generally settling everyone in. They are all eating, drinking, swimming and looking happy and settled. Mike & Deb came along and chatted for about an hour, meeting all the new arrivals and hatchlings which was nice. We had a late lunch, Ady did some electrical work fixing a little cool box / fridge we have bought which runs on either 12v or mains and we have to plug into our 12v solar system as a dump load for when we have too much power on sunny days. It made sense to dump it into something which will actually be useful on sunny days such as a fan or fridge and this came up and seems to work well. We may have chilled wine and beer on sunny days yet!

I stapled on plastic to the cloche we had made so far but the staple gun which has been ailing for ages finally gave up the ghost and broke. Fortunately we already have a replacement on the way as we had anticipated it’s imminent demise so it shouldn’t hold up progress as hopefully the new one will be here when I get back on Wednesday. We might need some more plastic to make covers though, will have a look for some while I’m off. We did a fix on the bell tent of a ripped seam which I had tried to sew with waxed thread and sail canvas needles but had split more so we bought some Gorilla tape having looked on line for suggestions. It seems like it might do the job, really need to fabseal spray the tent though as it has a few leaks in heavy rain which we get rather a lot of here on Rum!

The kids went to the village to buy some potatoes, Scarlett had a shower and I brushed her hair and then I went down to Mike & Debs to meet with Fliss to do some singing. Inevitably we got distracted by chatting so only spent an hour singing rather than the two hours we’d planned but it was fun. Back home for dinner and Lost.

Tomorrow the kids and I are heading off island for a brace fixing appointment for Scarlett – car to FW, late dentist, McDonalds for dinner, bath! Tuesday will be charity shop shopping and supermarket run and then back to Alison’s for the evening before bringing Jenna and Iona back here for a few days. Hoping for decent weather as the plan is for all the kids to be sleeping in the tent.

Tuesday –  A madly sunny day. I had half a plan to head down to the village to visit Ali and meet her new kitten Buttons but got stuck into outdoors stuff and then Poppy & Evie came to call for Scarlett who was planning to come down to Ali’s with me so I never got there. Instead I made a pen while Ady made a house, using the circular saw and the drill and the staple gun. I LOVE the new cordless power tools 🙂 We have had a cordless drill for quite a while but it’s quite heavy and I’ve been a little nervous of it so preferred to use a screwdriver instead (we rarely use it for actual drilling, almost always just for putting in and taking out screws). Obviously cordless is the only practical tool for us with our power constraints. We’d been talking about a smaller drill or a cordless screwdriver for a while and keeping an eye out online for something suitable. We also do a lot of sawing wood, mainly pallets and had bought a cordless jigsaw a while ago but taken that back as it didn’t really work for what we wanted. A trio pack had come up on Aldi where we buy quite a bit of stuff online as it’s free delivery which had two batteries, a small drill, torch and reciprocating saw so we’d bought that. We were really pleased with the drill and the torch but the saw was not really suitable for what we wanted either – great for cutting through things like nails but no good for the pallets or chunks of wood, so we invested in a cordless circular saw. A lot of money on power tools but they really do change our lives and save us sufficient time to justify the cost. The circular saw is amazing and the smaller drill is ideal for me and I’ve lost my fear (though not my respect!) for the power tools which is great. So while I was doing one task Ady was getting on with another which also makes us work so much quicker than waiting to take turns with tools.

We made a further three houses so we currently have two empty pens and four empty houses, which is good as we have ducks galore arriving (muscovy ducks and their ducklings being rehomed from Muck and runner ducks coming to us as soon as they are grown from a poultry dealer) and another two broody hens still to hatch their eggs. We had the big speaker outside (another cordless rechargeable Lidl find) in the sunshine and it was a lovely day. Ady had The Eagles on his playlist and we were most amused to see both a golden eagle and a sea eagle at various points while they were playing 🙂 I utterly failed at the sun cream task though and had sore back of the neck and upper arms as a result. Just as I was sorting out our dinner Fliss messaged me to ask if she could pop up for a bit and bring refreshments. I had a quick shower and she arrived while Ady was on the phone to Chris so Scarlett sorted her out a G&T and sat chatting to her on the sporran. I LOVE that girl 🙂 Unfortunately it set the scene of the evening and while Ady took over dinner and fed the kids he and I didn’t eat and between Fliss and I we sunk the whole bottle of gin. I have never been drunk on gin before, it’s usually a start of the evening tipple and I just have one or two glasses, not half a bottle. There was a truly spectacular lightening storm which was amazing to watch and then torrential rain which Fliss left to walk home in. I had a cup of tea and was then very poorly. Curse that gin!

Wednesday – I was rather on the delicate side so not up to much, although it was another rainy day so not much opportunity for outsidey stuff anyway. We met the ferry as we had shopping coming off and then walked round the village a bit waiting for the post to be sorted. We picked some raspberries from a couple of wild patches around the village, chatted to Neil and then came home for lunch. Scarlett went off to hang out with Poppy & Evie, Davies, Ady and I watched the end of the film we had abandoned when Bob pig got out. An early night all round. I managed a bit of crocheting but that was about my capacity. I also did some online stuff but was not entirely productive.

Today – This morning I sorted out my wool stash as it had been gathering down the side of the bed in our room and was really annoying, all now packed in vacuum bags and stashed away again in colour organised fashion. I packed a picnic and we headed down to the Sheerwater. Only saw seabirds today but Debs came on the boat and so I had a good chat with her which was nice.

Ady saw the GP on the way back as he was over, took some more blood samples to try and ascertain what is happening with his swollen foot and I made him tell the doc about his indigestion which I think is symptoms of a hiatus hernia. Doc agreed.

Home for a cup of tea, some faffing with animal pens, released another two ringed chicks. Scarlett and I marked 20 odd eggs under a broody hen who we suspect of nicking more eggs off other hens each day and watered the polytunnel and checked on the strawberries which are definitely the next job to get sorted – we have loads of runners on this years and some new plants to go out, must get that sorted.

Davies helped me make dinner and we watched the season finale double parter of Lost season 3, halfway through now!

Another week nearly passed…

Estelle managed to get on the ferry despite nearly missing it on Wednesday. She was lovely but her timekeeping made even Rum time look punctual! She left a really touching comment in the visitor book, bless her.

Davies and Scarlett were up early to come to the ferry with us on Wednesday as their friend Katriona was visiting for a few days with her parents. Always a really easy friend for Davies and Scarlett they were utterly delighted to see her, she was as charming as ever and it was so nice to have her around.

Thursday was the only decent day of weather and we went out on the Sheerwater, Katriona and her Mum coming along too. We saw a pod of bottlenose dolphins which was just fabulous, always forget how big they are compared to the more usual common short beaked dolphins we generally see in the waters around Rum. I love dolphins, they always seem to bring such joy, with everyone exclaiming and smiling like loons whenever they frolick around the boat.

I really nursed my cold and have seen it off with no lasting effects. Vicks on feet then socks to bed each night is my secret weapon, along with plenty to eat, plenty to drink and plenty of rest. The rain helped as I didn’t feel remotely obliged to do anything…

Orville the brown duck (second generation Rum) hatched her clutch of eggs. She was sitting on 10 and had hatched 8 which we decided was enough to move her with. We did move the other two eggs but she abandoned them – you never know if they may have been on the verge of hatching or not but we’d rather lose two potential ducklings than 8 already hatched ones. We could crack open the eggs to see what was happening inside and have done so before – interesting but rather macabre and often stinky! We caught her and the ducklings and moved her to a pen, ringed some more chicks and released another mother.

Friday was From The Sea theme community bring and share meal and was a real success. Sean and Ali came bringing loads of great food contributions including sea trout, potatoes, meringues and baklava, there were three risottos / stir fries with fish, two types of bread from me (one shaped like a turtle) and a splendid and delicious fish pie from Ady. I’d made a silly playlist and we had a really good turn out – another £100 raised for the hall too. Just as the evening was looking like it might start to wind up – Davies and Scarlett had seen Katriona back to the campsite and headed for home, some folk came ashore wanting to know if anyone was up for joining in with music if they brought their instruments along. We said yes so they rowed back to their yacht and came back with guitars and bagpipes. So midnight saw me sitting on the floor outside the shop dueting with some random bloke and his guitar to Ed Sheeran songs, then listening to bagpipes while we all swigged from a giant bottle of prosecco. Fun! An excellent night, got home just before 3am!

Saturday was a quiet one! Lesley, Baby Dougal, Lesley’s Mum Carol, brother Gordon and his son Cameron all came up in the afternoon to see all the ducklings and chicks and Katriona came up to hang out with Davies and Scarlett but it was all very chilled and low key in deference to our late night.

Yesterday was more of the same. Davies has the cold so didn’t really get up til about 4pm, Ady and I took advantage of a short break in the solid rain to walk down to the village and collect the post, I picked some raspberries for dessert and Ady cooked a delicious roast beef dinner.

Today I went with Fliss over to Harris to collect her car which had broken down. She drove one of her cars back and I drove the other. It was a really eerie drive through the very low mist on the narrow track with waterfalls and burns rushing past. Beautiful but strange to see so little when it is usually such a panoramic view driving from there. I stopped for a cup of tea and she gave me a lift to the ferry. She was collecting guests so I started to walk back with Neil who was also walking, his car having run out of fuel. Claire gave us a lift part way and we were chatting outside the hostel when Steve and Jed came along so we all chatted for a while before I collected some stuff from the freezer and came home.

We watched most of Martian this afternoon, while I crocheted but then Bob the pig got out so Ady went to sort that out, I got dinner sorted and then went back to the village for a meeting and stopped for a beer as the sun was now shining.

Not sure how that happened.

Erm. Well. Estelle the volunteer has been lovely, she leaves tomorrow. She has worked hard ; planted seeds, dug in about 200 potatoes, weeded several raised beds, dug out some misplaced comfrey and moved it, sewn the remainder of the netting on the fruit cage, picked currants. She’s had some really crappy weather but has remained cheery and smiley throughout. We’ve had some truly dreadful nights of high winds and torrential rain but she has a really good sleeping bag  and liner, a good camping mat above the campbeds, earplugs to drown out the noise and is a seasoned camper. She didn’t bring wellies and her coat got soaked through fairly early in the week so she’s been wearing one of mine but she has gotten on with it and made the absolute most of being here. She’s had a castle tour, come down for a gig on Saturday and had a few drinks, been out walking and got to Harris and Kilmory. She’s taken loads of photos and copied out the recipe for my WWOOFers cookies which so far every single volunteer has asked to take with them. I hope she has had a good experience overall despite the weather and the trickiness of camping here.

In other news the kids have been mostly hanging out with Poppy and Evie although Davies gets a bit fed up with too much time with them and today ended up coming home early on his own. I ranted a bit at Scarlett about it as she nags him to come down with her when he is not really bothered about hanging out with them and then he gets grief from them. D&S have a friend coming tomorrow for a few days so I’m hoping they’ll have  a bit of a break from P&E which might mean week three of them here next week goes smoother. We’ll see. Such a small pool to cast one’s net in…

Scarlett has a cold caught from Poppy & Evie, which Ady and I now have too. Feeling not dreadful but not right either. Planning on taking it easy this week to see it off.  I have a few smallish tasks to do around the croft but will be just as happy sitting on the sofa crocheting.

We’ve been busy making more animal pens and houses, hatching continues to go well. We moved the pigs, I’ve made jam, I had a big order of baking for yesterday which I did on Sunday and delivered to the village yesterday. More good sales in the shed the last week or so, a real run on paracord bracelets which seems to happen whenever there is a big student group over.

A 15 year old lad from Norway visiting with his parents and aunt went missing on Sunday night so we’ve had helicopters, coastguard and mountain rescue all over the island. He was found safe yesterday morning thankfully. He’d managed to get a long way around the coast with no sensible footwear, layers of clothing, supplies or shelter. The family and he were quite blase about it which has angered people a fair bit. We rely heavily on these expensive, largely voluntary services for our day to day lives and emergency care so to have them used with so little gratitude or actual regard for the time, cost and inconvenience is pretty annoying. Obviously we are all hugely relieved he was found safe and well but to have so little feeling of responsibility for your own health, safety and welfare is just bloody stupid when it impacts so much on others.

Elsa Jean McTaggart, one of our favourite regular visiting musicians was here for a few nights Friday and Saturday, doing a gig on Saturday night. We did food and ran the door and we made a decent amount of cash for Elsa and for the hall fund. which was great. The evening was a good one and I ended up on stage singing for quite a while after hours with Dave and Gary (Elsa’s husband) which I always really enjoy. Delicate heads all round on Sunday though.

I think that’s me caught up. I’m taking my sore throat and snotty nose to bed early and planning on changing the rather disturbing kindle book I had been reading which had been creeping into my dreams and giving me horrid nights sleep the last few nights for something more cheery and frothy instead.

There were supposed to be about 10 on this event. Two French girls who had already been quite hard work by email and negotiated a later arrival time and asked tons of questions pulled out last week at short notice, three Americans cancelled this morning! Two French guys just didn’t turn up on the ferry at all. Jen, who is lovely and was here last year and croft sat for us in February had already cancelled a while back as she injured herself a while ago and knew she was probably not up to the work after a sea kayaking break in Arisaig this week. So we have one lonely volunteer which frankly is more hassle than she’ll be worth. None of the big work party team jobs are worth starting with just one extra pair of hands and the notion of sending her off for hours each day to work alone is a bit mean. Gah! And one of the volunteers for the August event who seems very nice but has been very hard work by email with countless questions all of which I had already covered in my information sheet has just emailed to say she has booked her train tickets and given me the times. She will arrive in Mallaig after the Monday boat she is supposed to be coming here on and needs to be back in Mallaig to catch a train before she would even have left Rum on the following Wednesday… so either she finds somewhere to stay in Mallaig for two nights and comes on Wednesday, then leaves the following Monday and finds somewhere to stay til the Wednesday or she needs to rebook her train, which I bet she can’t easily do. And I send all the links to the Calmac timetable and explain it is just one boat and not every day… Argh. I try really hard to ensure I send out stacks of info because there is so much to be communicated in advance but I am sure the amount of stuff to read means people just don’t bother.

I’m even more pissed off because I had an airbnb enquiry about 2 nights this week for the bell tent which would have been worth nearly £60 but I turned down as I was expecting a bell tent full of volunteers…

Davies and Scarlett have been off all day playing with Evie and Poppy who arrived yesterday for 3 weeks. They hung out in the village and then came up here for the afternoon to bounce on the trampoline, cuddle the duckling and hang out. They are not getting together tomorrow and I think they are planning on a one day on, one day off arrangement to allow the girls to spend some time with their Dad – Dan, Claire’s boyfriend.

Ady and I finished off the base camp area. It looks really good now, very pleased with it. We need to better partition off the compost loo but have some ideas for that which we’ll sort out next week once Estelle the current volunteer has gone. For now though we have set up a camping stove with double rings and grill, the sink, a table, loads of undercover seating and space for storing food and hanging wet clothes. It will be great for up to about 8 people to use , will be a good space for the bell tent campers if we get any and will mean that next year we can do actual proper WWOOFing and just provide food for people to cook for themselves without feeling we should have them in the caravan for meals. I will try and view the prospect of all the volunteers arriving being what finally galvanised us into sorting it out even if said volunteers never arrived.

I walked Estelle back from the ferry while Ady drove back to finish things off. I gave her a village tour and introduced her to people, showed her the shop and the hall etc. I finally remembered to take the shears with me and clear all the grown grass around the wellies on the welly trail while we walked so that was productive. This afternoon I stitched up a huge rip in the trampoline net where Evie managed to fall through, poor kid :(, I watered the polytunnel and then did some baking – ginger and chocolate oat cookies and a vat of soup for lunch tomorrow, bread, lasagne for dinner – I think every pan was used with cheese sauce, melting sugar and syrup, cooking soup and the bolognaise for lasagne. I had a shower too. A new crochet book arrived in the post for me which I have had a quick flick through but not properly looked at yet, I am really keen to sit down with a hook and a cup of tea and play with that but suspect I won’t get a chance until the weekend.

Wednesday – We met the boat as we had fence posts arriving on it. We spotted one of the Rum pony mares in the castle field had had her foal (there are two in there, both due to deliver) – a little boy, very cute.

As we got back to the croft we met Mathieu the wussy wwoofer on his way back up. They had indeed decided to pack up and head away. We had a chat, a hug, they filled in the volunteers book and we waved them goodbye.

Thursday – Ady worked in the morning. It was Sheerwater day but it was intermittent rainshowers with a heavy side order of winds so we decided against it and Ady came home instead. I crocheted a scarf, rather ironically called ‘spring’ full of greens and yellows. Seems like we had a better spring than summer again so far this year. I had promised Scarlett that if we didn’t go on the Sheerwater I would walk down with her to see the foal so we did that late afternoon. We more or less dodged the showers and just got drizzled on instead.

Friday – In the morning Ady was on loo emptying duties while I spent some time sorting out the peas. The WWOOFers had done a great job of cutting down the grass and weeds inbetween the raised beds but in doing so had moved netting covering the beds. A combination of that, the wind and the turkey realising that peas are quite nice to eat meant the two beds of peas were getting a bit decimated. So I weeding between them, fixed the netting, found some more stakes to keep them all upright and re staked them all. I picked a few and planted out the two or three from the polytunnel that had germinated late. We had lunch and headed down to the ferry.

We had CoOp shopping and a couple of deliveries so collected that and then went round to Fliss’ to collect a couple of old sacks of tatties which were rotten and she had given to us for the pigs (actually they are not as rotten as we thought and instead we’re planning to plant them out and see if they sprout and grow) and some leftover dog food from Tinker for Bonnie. We collected the post and decided we probably wouldn’t bother going back down to the shop for a Friday night beer after all as there are not many people around.

Back at the croft we arrived at the bottom as Ali arrived at the top, walking round with a bloke who used to live here and his two kids, come to visit the baby birds. We chatted to them for a while before unloading the shopping. I made pizza dough and then did some ruthless culling of tomato plants in the polytunnel and weeded the salad beds – the pigs did well out of that exercise!

Saturday – the last Graham Norton before the summer break. I settled down with my crochet to listen but there had been no takers for the tour so Ady was home by 11am. It was very showery weather so we darted out a few times but mostly stayed indoors making the most of power from the wind turbine. We did a bit of working stuff out on the camp kitchen area, worked out where the materials were around the croft but did not attempt to start moving 9 foot long galvanised metal sheets around when it was so windy. We made popcorn and watched Suffragette which we had from Lovefilm. Really powerful film.

Ady and I went out to feed the animals and Mike & Deb appeared walking round the nature trail. They came in for a cup of tea and a bit of a moan. Curry for dinner.

Today – it was really rainy first thing so I stayed in bed reading my book. It decided to cheer up though so Ady and I finally got outside to look at the shelter. We have a shed which was originally built as a chicken house, then housed the feral cats, then became a tool shed and then we moved the compost loo up there as it is close to the bell tent. We wanted to create a camp kitchen / undercover shelter type area to sit, cook and eat in, maybe string up a washing line to dry wet clothes etc. It will be the space for WWOOFers to cook their meals and a nicer addition to the bell tent for campers. We messed about with it as we went and spent a lot of time gathering metal sheets from various places on the croft and walking them up the hill.  It’s looking good – still needs some work, some gravel brought up to create a better floor and some shelves and benches for stuff but we’ll spend some time up there in the morning doing a bit more and then leave it for the first lot of volunteers.

Lovely roast dinner, couple of episodes of Lost. Tomorrow we have either 1 or 3, 4 or 6 WWOOFers arriving.