Machair

There’s a word / thing I didn’t know before yesterday 🙂

I called out ‘meadow’ when we were shown a picture and everyone else in their Scottish accents called out ‘machair’, I got drowned out so it was okay 😆

The second day of the course was equally full on in terms of information tsunami, only this time I found myself holding forth with a barrage of questions from fellow course attendees in the tea breaks and lunch so I had to wolf down my tea or soup too.

First session was from a guy who looked like a greying Robbie Coltrane (and I’d have said that even if he didn’t have the Scottish accent to go with his looks!) from Highlands and Islands Enterprise who exist to ‘generate sustainable economic growth in every part of the Highlands and Islands’. His talk was on Community – what is community, how do individuals fit into it, what HIE does to support it financially and otherwise.

Next was a guy from Business Gateway, also a part time crofter, who came in to talk to us about Finance, Marketing and Business Management. He covered business plans, finance, marketing and promotion, cash flow and how the BG exists to offer support, advice, training etc.

The final talk of the morning was about wildlife habitats, the benefits and downsides of being in areas protected for wildlife, how you can manage your land for wildlife and the positives and constraints of doing so.

Then lunch 🙂 I got talking to a few people interested in Home Ed having met Davies and Scarlett the night before. One of them who has no children at the moment was particularly interested and loved the idea of how we do it, going so far as to say she would definitely feel inspired to have the confidence to Home Ed herself if she ever has kids 🙂 🙂

After lunch was the course leader talking about horticulture, crop rotation and growing on small and large scales. It was interesting but not particularly essential as it covered the sorts of things I am fairly clued up about already. Always good to be made to feel knowledgable though 🙂

Then came a talk on renewables from a guy who makes his living from consultancy work on different energy but has also renovated a very old, very run down old farmhouse to make it more efficient and installed various solar systems (solar panels for energy and thermal solar for hot water) and a wind turbine. He is feeding in to the grid rather than self sufficient (oh the debates I have listened to on those options this last year!) so there is a high element of financial rather than ecological motivation too but he was interesting and able to answer lots of questions. A bit anal with his graphs and spreadsheets though and very honest about his own rather OCD levels of measuring every little thing – he had daily, weekly, monthly, annual breakdowns of everything including how much he spent on lighting, entertainment and so on. Reminded me of someone else I know… 😉

Finally we were presented with our certificates and there was a round up about Scottish Crofting Federation with some last question and answers.

The course was excellent all round really, it was real bargain at £60 and covered LOADS – it was more an introductory route to all the various aspects but I have a whole list of places to contact for help, advice, training, possible grants and funding and a far clearer idea of what to do next, first and ongoing with regard to the admin side of crofting and running the business. Plenty of ideas for diversifying into different things in the future and most importantly far more contacts of people who can help and a load more potential friends who are up for coming and being part of our build at some point 🙂 And some more blog readers 🙂

The course leader who happens to be friends with Vikki on Rum is visiting in April so I’ll catch up with her again then, a couple on the course are coming to Rum in May for a geology course so I’ll see them then. Five of the attendees (two couples and a bloke who is off WWOOFing with his wife) have said they are up for coming and WWOOFing for us once we’re in that position and at least two more were interested in that idea too. We all agreed to swap contact details so an email is going round next week with everyone’s details on it so I can folllow that up 🙂

Finally it was so very reassuring to realise that going into Crofting is joining yet another community, one specific to the highlands and islands filled with people who are all living a similar style of life, driven by loving where they live and having a simpler existance. Community, working with others, living a lower impact lifestyle and being more self sufficient is simply a way of life there and the support network is huge. Mixed ages, backgrounds, even mixed nationalities with loads of crofters going back generations as crofters but loads more incommers like us, different ages, interests, methods and ways of doing things but so much in common with a real backbone behind it of support available officially in terms of funding and grants and training and unofficially in terms of always having someone with the answer to your question because they have done it themselves already.

It was great to be in a room of 20 other course attendees, the various speakers and course leaders all of whom didn’t think we were mad or stupid or crazy or taking on something beyond us because for them we are just doing something completely normal and usual. In the same way as it is good to feel cradled in the Home Ed community sometimes when the rest of the world all sends their kids to school and wants to demand how your kids will get GCSEs, live in the real world and make friends it was nice to feel at home and like everyone else for a few days with fellow crofters and prospective wannabe crofters :). I was being congratulated, told our story was exciting and meeting people who want to join in with our dreams, that means a lot 🙂

Then it was the nine hour drive south 🙁 I can’t summon much in the way of enthusiasm about that really. It was tedious, tiring, cold and felt like it went on forever. The kids did fall asleep about 1130pm, they are such good travelers 🙂 We got to Babs just before 2am which isn’t super late by my standards but having been in a classroom for 9 hours previously and the wrong end of a very full on week with early starts every day and hundreds of miles in the car it felt very late indeed. We got in, got pj’d and were all asleep within minutes. Never has a triple sleeper bunkbed looked so appealing 🙂