Post office for me and hostel cleaning for Ady this morning. The ferry was cancelled due to the winds, which have been gusting to tie-up-the-wind-turbine levels all day and are pretty wild just now. We both managed to get down to the village in the dry despite some fierce hail storms and rain downpours this morning. I thought it would be a quiet morning for me but it was actually pretty brisk. Neil was around for pretty much the whole morning but I also made drinks for Ross, Doug, Fliss and Jed who all stopped for chats. Claire and Steve both called in too, as did David. Jed paid in huge amounts of cash from the bunkhouse into the post office so I was counting that up to pay it in and then counting it up again to cash up which took a while. Ady and Neil were back by then so we all had another cup of tea and then we gathered the materials and went to Croft 1. Neil & Lesley have ponies and sheep who are trashing their fence and getting into Ali & Sean’s garden and generally rampaging. Gav had given them the electric fence he bought when he and Laura were going to take some of our pigs so we went and set that up to try and stop them. Not sure it will work and it was a cold and muddy hour or so setting it up but it’s at least a two person job which Lesley can’t help with just now and Neil was not confident about doing anyway so it was good to help.
I’ve been posting a fair bit on a couple of off grid facebook groups and it’s like the early days of Home Ed where you suddenly feel you have ‘found your people’ – you know that to begin with it might be all you have in common but bonds start to form and it’s so good to have shared challenges and victories that only other people doing that will understand. Just like Home Ed there is a fair share of crazies and a lot of trolls and haters too which is always hard to take but in posting there and talking about our lives I have been feeling really positive about what we’ve achieved here in 4 years. When Neil came up to the croft yesterday we felt proud too, knowing that despite all the other challenges of living in the caravan and setting *everything* up we have also made a bloody good go of the crofting side of stuff too with the livestock, crops and selling stuff. It cemented again for Ady and I today helping Neil how much we have learnt and feel confident in doing.
I had a comment on the other blog this week about being too judgey about other peoples lives and bigging up our lifestyle to justify it and how the mainland is not as bad as I made it out to be. I re-read what I’d written and thought it was a bit harsh really, I had said that we’d eaten junk food and watched crap TV, not that other people were and I said that Christmas was full on and people in the shops seemed stressed which was all true – compared to Rum where no one is really thinking about Christmas much yet and there is only one shop anyway! It reminded me of Home Ed when you celebrate a HE victory only to have people slate you for being anti school. As ever I don’t judge other people but I do think our lives are better for us than their lives would be for us…Maybe I just felt a bit kicked when down too and it’s been nice to have the boost from other likeminded folk celebrating what we’re doing.
We got back home at 3pm, just as the rain really set in and we were really hungry. We put away washing, shopping and stuff, had some food and then Scarlett and I watched a wildlife doc and she painted while I crocheted, Ady fed the pigs and got some wood in and Davies did some stuff on his tablet. He has done a fantastic canvas art for Sean the rat who is leaving on Tuesday, I think he will treasure it, will get a photo tomorrow. He applied for an illustrating job a few weeks ago and has not heard anything, not sure whether to chase it up or not…
Doctor Who tonight, for some reason we’re doing three nights running… we were supposed to be going to Sean’s leaving do at Jed’s house but had already said we may not make it if the weather remained crap, which it has. Steak and chips for dinner and some special off mainland gin meant we had no intention of heading back outside again.