Wednesday – I have no inkling of what I did in the morning. I know Ady finished the path. It now reaches all the way up to the caravan!
In the afternoon I went down to Fliss’ for Crafternoon. I arrived at hers as she was heading off to collect the girls from school so I walked along with her, marching at Fliss pace is tough, particularly while talking too. I was a bit ranty having felt pissed off at the AGM the day before. It’s a funny old balance just now of wanting to remain present until we actually know what we’re doing next while not feeling as invested in Rum as we were before.
Debs and Ali came along too when we got back and it was a nice afternoon if a bit generally ranty about Rum folk.
When I got home we decided that we would do Blackie the following day as looking at the forecast for the week ahead it was the best day for a while. We emailed David who was to be our back up gun man just incase anything went wrong and arranged for him to come up at 930 the next morning.
Thursday – I had not slept at all well. A combination of various things including Blackie on my mind. We went over and our planned getting Blackie out of the pen she shared with Bob went way smoother than expected. Ady then ran out of the bucket of food he had lured her over with and after a bit of hurried chatting we decided to go ahead and try. So he did. Bolt gun didn’t quite take her down and had her staggering but very much in the style of a headless chicken in as much as she was not conscious as such. She then dropped and rolled into the muddiest ditch on the croft. Ady did a second bolt which killed her and then slit her throat. It was fast, respectful and calm. Just as we always insist on it being.
We decided that with David’s help (and we could hear him coming) we would be able to get her out of the ditch so Ady went to get some rope. She was actually far, far heavier than we had assumed and we could not get her out of the ditch at all. We were resigned to making the best of a muddy butchering job but David suggested the winch on the argocat which he had come up to the croft in so he went to get it and it worked. Amazing bit of kit!
We stopped for a cup of tea and fully expected David to head away but he offered to stay and help so while he and Ady skinned and began quartering I whizzed off to the pier to meet the ferry as we were expecting animal feed and diesel to come off, which it did. Back to the croft and three hours later we finally had a butchered pig in various labelled bags. David very kindly ran me and the meat down to the village to put it all in  the freezer while Ady cleared up. Later I did a bit more processing indoors, chopping up steaks and diced meat and packing and labelling that up to take down the following day. So, so much meat! Having tried both a loin and a roasting joint it is very flavourful meat but clearly from a much older animal than we have previously been used to (all of our previous pigs have been well under a year old when we’ve killed them). It is much tougher and is going to need longer cooking times but has a nice flavour. It won’t be suitable for pork chops or stir fries though I don’t think. Lots of slow roasting joints and loads and loads of sausages though! I’ve ordered metres and metres of skins and rusk mix so when that arrives next week we will have a day of mincing and sausage making.
I was utterly knackered by the evening. A day of standing outside in the cold bent over the table cutting had taken its toll along with the bad nights sleep from the night before. I slept very well that night!
Friday – We wheelbarrowed the animal feed up from the day before, pumped the tyre up on the Jeep and I made bread and pizza dough. Then Ady and I went down with the rest of the meat and the laundry to the village. We put the washing on and spent some time sorting out the freezers. We are borrowing a second freezer for the extra pork just now so swapped stuff between the two and organised them a bit better. We put the washing into the dryer and then headed around to the shop as we’d arranged to meet a few folk for Friday night beers. A nice couple of hours chatting to friends and then home for pizza.
Saturday – Ady went to meet the boat as we had petrol coming off and he collected the laundry. Then we went back down in the afternoon to watch the rugby. We had originally planned to meet in the hall but the heating is broken and Jed had said we could use the bunkhouse instead as long as we took pictures as he is wanting to compile an album of all of the bunkhouse in action shots. It was Lesley, Neil, David, volunteer Ben and us although a few others had hijacked the invite the night before none of them ended up coming after all. Davies and Scarlett had thought about coming down too but in the end there was wind turbine power and it was raining so they stayed home instead. I confess to not remotely understanding rugby but was happy to eat pizza, drink cider and hang out with friends anyway!
Home for curry.
Sunday – this morning it was sunny and so I finally got outside and finished planting the last 30 odd trees. There is other stuff I could start to do outside – some weeding, some planting and some sowing but it is so, so muddy and the ground is so cold that it is not a rush to get anything done just yet. Good to be out in the sunshine for an hour or so though. This afternoon Davies and I looked at youtube tutorials for guitar and ukelele and he got out the guitar Mike lent / gave him and learned a few chords. Scarlett has managed to get herself into a nocturnal sleep pattern from staying up all night listening to an audio book then falling asleep on the sofa all afternoon, repeating it the following day and then struggling to sleep last night. So she got up early-ish this morning and spent a couple of hours outside walking briskly around the croft to get fresh air and exercise in an effort to wear herself out and sleep tonight. So far I don’t think she’s managed to fall asleep but I admire her efforts!
Roast pork for dinner and downloaded Let It Shine on iplayer. Which brings me more or less up to date.