All very excited about Kirsty & co coming. It seems like such a long time ago we set the date for their visit and now it’s tomorrow they arrive 🙂
Yesterday was a productive day – the area we had fenced off for the birds was a quagmire, mud is definitely going to be our biggest issue here. All of the birds now free range anyway so the only thing being kept in by the fencing was us when we go to feed them and collect eggs. Davies and Scarlett have both slipped over in there so after some debate yesterday we decided to remove all the fencing. It looks better, we now have a spare heap of fence posts and stock fencing to reuse somewhere else and hopefully the muddy area can start to recover a bit – we’re planning to use some stones to create a bit of a pathway to walk on.
Ady did some strimming and I spent some time writing a response to a consultation currently being undertaken by SNH regarding the access onto the reserve by vehicles. I’ve been quite irate about both the consultation and the format it has taken so it was good to actually form a coherant response and feel I have at least done my bit and can sit back from it now. Grrr government bodies…
I then decided to finish off the bookcase project I had started earlier in the week. I cut down some more shelves and tried to fix it together but my rather sloppy cutting had led to a very ramshackle effect so Ady helped me and we screwed it together in the end. It looks pretty good and has taken all the books that were piled up – looks more like a lounge :). Progress can often feel slow here with so many of the projects I talk about wanting to do remaining just that – things I have talked about, but I have to remind myself this is now our whole life and while I don’t want to find us in five years still with nothing achieved there is no great rush either.
That did take longer than expected as these things so often do, so it was much later than we planned when we got down to the village. A joint celebration of Claire’s belated birthday and Izzy’s leaving on Monday was being held with a barbecue, some shared food and a good turn out of people in the hall. It was a bit of an atmosphere-less event but Davies and Scarlett enjoyed playing something on the computer in the hall with Ian, I chatted to Vikki, Rachel, Lesley and the ghillies (Doug and Mark) and Ady and I had a couple of games of pool. We left at about 11pm. Highlighted again the need to get decent torches for roaming around in the winter as it gets properly dark here and it will happen ever earlier in the coming months.
Today has been a real Sundayish feeling day. This morning we looked at the CCAGS form and read the latest edition of Crofter magazine which we get from SCF. It’s tough being somewhere where there are only us and one other croft which is not actually being worked anyway, there is talk in the magazine about crofting communities and we realise how removed we are from being part of a crofting community here. I’m looking forward to getting neighbors and hoping they are serious about doing something with their croft. We’ve concluded that we’re applying for funds for the first wave of things including polytunnel, shed for animal feed, access track on the croft and a quadbike and trailer. That will get us properly set up for growing next year and we can look at the next wave of grants when we know quite what we are building as a house. From what I hear getting funding approved and sorted can be a very drawn out process so it will be good to feel we have set the wheels in motion and have something happening.
The funding for the compost loo is ticking over – thanks for the shares on facebook and twitter 🙂 If everyone who reads the blog / follows us just sent a tenner we’d reach the amount we need – that’s a heartening thought, particularly as we’ve already had some very generous donations.
It’s our anniversary today – 13 years married. Our first was spent with my pregnant to pop with Davies, our twelth we went out for a meal with our penultimate WWOOF hosts in Tarbet. I wonder where we’ll be on our fourteenth. It would be lovely to think we might actually be in a house rather than a static.
This afternoon we took Fliss’ girls to the school boat and have come into the house to all have baths. We’ll head back to the croft for roast dinner in a bit and have decided to open the bottle of fizz that Jill & Johnny gave us when we left Glastonbury. We were going to open it when we got the static but it took so long getting where it was meant to it never felt right. The day we actually got it up the hill was our anniversary but we were so exhausted by the whole thing that opening it that night felt like a waste. So we decided tonight is the night – 13 years married, living in our dream location if not yet our dream home, excited about friends arriving tomorrow and feeling like we’re part of the community we looked for for so long. Celebratory reasons enough I think to pop the cork!
Happy Anniversary, wishing you a great year ahead x
Comment by Mumb — 09 September 2012 @ 7:04 pm