Another glorious day. People on Rum are starting to doubt our own memories of wind, rain and miserable weather.
Ady was at the castle – a tour and some hostel cleaning. I was as Post Office. A fun couple of hours with Jed, Trudi, David and Doug – we laughed lots, I like that coffee shop feel to Post Office in the mornings, so different to the pub feel of the shop in the evening. On the walk down to PO I stopped to take photos, it was such a beautiful morning with dew drop spider webs draped over all the trees, mist clinging in the low areas and a cloudless deep blue sky above. So gorgeous.
I picked brambles as I walked along to meet Ady, I reckon we’re on the last week of brambling really, although I have ordered a final 60 jars from amazon. If I fill all of those it will be 240 jars of jam made this autumn! Some has already sold but it would be great to have such a good stash to start the new shop off with. Ady has his first postcards here already, Scarlett has plans for candle making and Davies is thinking on designs for more of his postcards / greetings cards too. Scarlett has also been making little clay models with the croft 3 clay to paint and sell, so far she’s made a couple of pigs. I think they would be winning. I have my scarves, my midge in resin stuff, my pot pourri and hopefully by the spring some baskets too. As soon as the daily bramble forage comes to an end I’ll be on a daily basketry materials forage instead.
Home for lunch and as the bacon from Monday’s pig was ready and only a fairly small amount we cut that up and fried it for bacon sandwiches. Delicious. I think I finally have the salt ratio right, now we need to work on the cut of meat as this had bones still in and it would definitely be easier to de-bone before curing. Tomorrow I’ll be taking out the hams I have had in brine all week, one I will boil, then glaze and bake for dinner tomorrow, the largest is for a Christmas ham and we have two smaller ones either for midweek meals or to cook and eat as cold ham for sandwiches.
After lunch Ady and I took the rangerover down the hill and across the river and collected the shed and the kids bikes from the fork. It was very loaded up and creatively tied on the roof and hanging off the tailgate with string but we got it all back across the river and to the bottom of the croft. Now all unloaded and ready to go. The floor of the shed is very flimsy so we’re going to work on reinforcing that a bit before we put the shed together. I researched sheds loads, reading all the customer reviews on all the various sheds available from this budget one at £230 right up to ones closer to £1000 (too much £1000, I guess that’s what sheds cost these days!) and all the reviews state they are flimsy, arrive damaged, need work so we decided to buy the cheapest shed we could find and then spend time and a bit more money on making it better.
We fed the pigs and planned the next pig kill, pleased to see Tom had been mating Barbara which means she is hopefully not pregnant from when he mated her before. She would have been due a litter in November if she had been which would have been all but impossible to deal with. If she is in season now that would be an early March litter which would be perfect.
We had a last cup of tea sat on the sporran just as the sun dropped below the hills and it got cold. I swapped over our duvet for our sleeping bag, I’ve been too cold the last couple of nights and woken with a damp duvet and ceiling dripping with condensation so it was time. I vacuum bagged the duvet and extra pillows from Mum & Dad being here and we’ve stashed them in the horse box for now. Ady made a lovely curry with loads of ginger, garlic and chilli to help see the last of my cold off and assist with his which is just coming out. Everyone else went off to bed early, still tired from their mini break or coming down with colds.