Thursday – Ady was ghillying for SNH. The original plan had been for them to be out all day but he was actually home by lunchtime. I had some email conversations with Calmac about whether or not they were sending our animal feed delivery and once they had confirmed they were I headed down to the pier to collect it. I was in a bad mood – Croft 1 sheep had arrived on our croft again the day before so Ady had managed to pen them in our sheep catching pen but they had butted their way out of there and we’re just hanging around our sheep on the croft.
There was loads of rat shit in the car so I swept that out and headed to the pier. Dave had as usual commandeered the parking space right next to the Calmac van even though there was not actually anything coming off for him so I parked next to it and opened all the boot and back doors on our car but was seething. 13 bags of animal feed for us that I’d rather not carry any further than I have to. I started loading it and once the rest of the Rum deliveries were off the van Derek and the Calmac man started helping me. Dave then loaded three sacks onto a sack truck – the balancing act required took longer than actually just carrying three sacks individually would have done and inevitably one of the sacks split. I know he was only trying to help but I’d really rather he just didn’t help at all or helped like a normal person rather than trying to always over engineer and be clever. I drove back past Fliss’ and popped in to feed her cats and fish, then to the shop to grab some bacon for dinner and some more milk. Jinty pissed me off in there so by the time I had marched back up to the croft knowing that I could either spend the whole afternoon wheelbarrowing 13 bags of feed up to the croft 2 sacks at a time or leave it in the car to be rat feed I was already a woman on the edge.
When I’d gone down I’d noticed one of the ducks in the fruit cage and assumed Ady had put it in there for a reason. I could hear it quacking from the foot bridge so decided there was nothing wrong with it after all, it must have flown in there by mistake at feeding time. So I shooed Neil’s sheep away as one of them was trying to mate with our sheep and then went into the fruit cage to free the duck. Which I spent about ten minutes chasing around the fruit cage with it passing the wide open gate at least 20 times and running past it rather that through it. It kept getting into the really muddy corner where I was not prepared to do the necessary dash to grab it and catch it knowing I was guaranteed to fall over in the mud so eventually I decided it could just stay in there.
One of the sheep had indeed buggered off but the other one was very determined so I decided to herd our girls into the pen and shut them away. I got them in no problem but I then realised that the catching pen had been trashed by them when Ady had shut them in the day before and it would be really mean to trap all three of ours in there. Neil’s sheep kept coming back and coming back and I just lost it and starting yelling at it to fuck off. At which  point I burst into tears. I don’t remember the last time I properly cried but I was feeling incredibly sorry for myself, hormonal and utterly fed up. So I sat in the sheep pen next to the sheep house and had a good old cry. I decided to sit it out for a bit before going back in to the kids, also to stay and ensure our sheep stayed in and Neil’s sheep stayed out.
In theory Neil’s sheep (two boys) have been castrated by him however I am fairly certain it was not done properly and everything I have been reading about sheep breeding suggests this to be the case. Our girls would only come into season if the males are giving off hormones and the boys would only be interested if they were intact. And they are very interested. In all likelihood they have already mated with them and our girls may be pregnant. This is not the end of the world however, we very specifically were not planning to lamb next year, I would have waited until they were a year older, I knew they were in good condition and able to cope with a Rum winter, I would definitely not have chosen Soay tups to breed with them either. I’m just so fed up that we are doing everything we can to make things work with careful planning and it may all go wrong because of someone else’s crapness. I think of all the lessons I have found so hard to learn and live with here on Rum it is that I cannot control everything…
I had also spent the day before reading up online about the avian flu stuff and in consultation with the other chicken keepers on the island we have initially decided to not pen any of the birds but to be extra vigilant and adhere to the bio security measures. Even if a case were found here on Rum the cull zone would only be our island. This time of year there are no visiting tourists, livestock transfers, no vehicles etc so the risk is so low that the welfare impact on the birds by housing them would by far outweigh the other risks. All of this is in line with the advice from Scottish government and DEFRA. It’s still crap and seeing the fallings out online on facebook poultry and smallholding groups has been shite.
So there I was sobbing away saw on the floor next to the sheep pen when suddenly Ady appeared back early and looking very concerned!
I told him all of the small things that had totted up into one big thing and tipped me over the edge, he chased the lurking sheep away and then spent the afternoon getting all the animal feed up the hill while I recovered myself drinking tea and doing the Christmas puzzle and making bagels.
Today – Loads of wind power all day so more of the same really. Ady feels the need to be busy and outdoors regardless of the weather. I like the indoors time at this time of year. The kids are with me – particularly if there is power for the internet and tablets!
We watched The Apprentice with lunch.
I’ve been reading back over the two blogs to compose a round up of the year. It’s been a very unsettling one which I suspect is contributing to my state of mind. Re-reading about Ady’s op, Tom dying the stress of Bob and Blackie arriving, looking at the bad, good and learnt stuff we talked about at the end of last year and realising that the bad stuff is all still bad, along with various emails floating around to do with community stuff (nothing personal – stuff like what the fish farm would like to do and whether we get a mobile phone mast put up in the village) are all really unsettling.