The day started well with Bonnie not pooing in her crate overnight 🙂
After breakfast and several cups of tea Ady and I headed down to the croft to continue with chicken and duck house making. We finished the roof of the chicken house and managed to improve the design a bit too. I still don’t like the way the black sheeting looks and have plans to cover it with some sort of wattled panels at some point but at least it is watertight and should keep them safe, warm and dry.
The duck house was another matter. We went on another scouting mission and discovered a big orange feeder on our own croft but found nothing suitable for a duck house floor. So we resorted to our original plan for using a wheelie bin on it’s side. Several ways of securing it and disguising it were tried and tested, to rather hilarious results. At one point I was rendered totally helpless with laughter. I love working with Ady and our Chuckle Brothers style efforts in all things never fail to make us laugh :). I was heard to declare I’ve changed my mind and would rather be Margo than Barbara but Ady came up trumps with a plan to bed the wheelie bin in, Teletubbies stylee by covering it with clumps of earth with reeds and grass. Fingers crossed it will take and continue to grow thus being a sort of underground, of the field type dwelling. Or something! It looks good though 🙂 I tried to disguise the door by tying some twine to it and weaving twigs onto it, still a work in progress but it looks better than a blue wheelie bin lid!
We broke for lunch inbetween and caught up with the kids. Scarlett is creating a cafe from a shoebox (her walking boots arrived yesterday) complete with little tables and chairs made from sticks, pictures on the walls and plates of food made from cardboard. It’s fab to see her being so creative, just the sort of thing I used to love doing at her age. She was telling us her plans for it all and using phrases like ‘long term I want to…’ and even ‘long, long term my plan is….’ which she has obviously heard me using when talking about our croft and house build. Love that 🙂 Along with her fishing, learning from Mike and Bonnie training she is having a ball here. Davies has been plotting his story and got his new story writing book yesterday. Next week I want to spend some more time with them on various stuff to consolidate a little, but for now they are being fabulously self sufficient, exploring, making friends, playing with the dog and getting used to their new lives.
At 5pm ish we headed down into the village – Clare had had some of her stuff delivered today and we’d offered to give her a hand moving it down to her yurt. Davies and I did some online stuff in the tearoom while Ady took Clare and her stuff down to the yurt. She was so grateful and bought us a beer and then put a tenner behind the counter in the shop for us to buy more drink. I gave her a kiss and told her it really wasn’t necessary and next time we do her a favour, it is just that – a favour, but we accepted this time and topped up our beer and wine reserves at home :).
We caught up with Rachel and Georgie at the shop – Rachel had been on Richard (SNH Reserve Manager)’s case about some rubbish he was burning which was actually perfectly decent fence posts and other stuff we could use. He’d rebuffed her and then Ady and I went to speak to him about some old landrover roofs that are kicking about and would be perfect pig arks. He turned us down but we stayed for a little chat. A while later he called Ady back over and said actually we could have one and that he’d put aside some fence posts for us too. The politics with SNH are huge here, because they used to do everything but have given over control to the IRCT and no longer want to be doing it all Richard seems to turn every request down by default. I totally understand that stance but I think being obviously helpful to others, respectfully asking for things rather than taking them plus ensuring we introduced ourselves to Richard, his wife and daughter and chatting in a friendly manner whenever we see them has hopefully marked us out as happy to help rather than just take.
We then bumped into Fliss & Sandy who said they have some stuff for us too – not sure what yet but we’ll go and pick it up tomorrow and they offered use of any tools we might need to borrow too. Again, helping Sandy move loads of stuff on our second day here seems to be paying off. Give and take…
Then to the ferry! Not only were our ducks (five white girls), hens (ten rhode island reds) and a cockerel (speckeldy, not sure what he is) there but our fencing supplies were too – 20 posts, a reel of stock fencing wire and a tub of staples. Hurrah! We loaded everything on to our trailer and went back to the shop via filling up water containers to finish our beers. We bought the kids a coke each and met the latest people to arrive on the ferry – two builders over to renovate the old farmhouse and staying with Georgie and Mike on a B&B basis as the castle is full, and Ian and Kate, the islands newest residents. They have spent lots of time here before but have moved over properly full time from today. They have bought the Tattie House and are renovating it as a B&B. Ian is the internet whizz so we’re hoping to chat to him about getting broadband sorted to the croft.
We collected the posts from Richard and learnt we can also take an old chicken house that is no longer needed by anyone. It will either do as the goose house or if the wheelie bin proves too small for the ducks then they can have that and the geese can have the wheelie bin. Hurrah for cast off rubbish 🙂
We took the birds up to the croft and clipped the chickens wings (the ducks had already been done) – we’ll sort out fencing around them in the next few days but to begin with they can totally free range, we just don’t want the ducks flying off to the river! The kids were delighted to be having birds again, they have so missed their chooks this last year or so. They all went in to their respective new homes with food and water and we’ll see how they are doing in the morning. Aside from being a bit people-shy they all seem nice and healthy so hopefully this is the start of our beginner livestock :).
We rang my parents and the kids had a quick chat each with Granny and Grandad – we lost signal before I managed to talk to them so I’ll ring back again tomorrow but it was nice for the kids to talk to them. They said they both sounded like they were crying 🙁 It must be hard for them having us so far away and pretty much uncontact-able aside for in an emergency. I suspect all their friends are asking how we’re doing and they are having to say they don’t actually know.
Back home 😉 for dinner, another Goddard o’clock eating unfortunately, we will get better at that – probably! We’re loving the genny for the ability to watch a dvd and charge stuff up while eating dinner AND we discovered today that the sockets all round the static work on 12v stuff which means our tablelamps will work with a 12v bulb in them. Now need to research what other 12v stuff we can buy! It will all drain the battery (which is currently being trickle charged with a solar panel but can be topped up with the genny if required) but means stuff can work without having to fire everything up.