Saturday – Ady did the first ferry, was there as the sun was coming up. He took some photos and it was beautiful. He got invited on board the Orion which is doing some of the ferry runs. Pete the skipper is full of business ideas so Ady gave him our email address and we’ll have some further chats with him about some of his ideas for bringing people to Rum over the winter.
He came home and we had a fairly relaxed morning until it was time for the next ferry at midday. I went down too and we met the various people coming off including Dave Chain, Neil and a trailer full of sheep – five gorgeous ewes and a ram. Very cute and now there are sheep on Rum 🙂 I do like sheep lots and am tempted but happy to wait for goats. I spent some time chatting to Linda and Castle Dave who were going off as Dave has an interview – they’ll not be long for Rum now I suspect which is a shame but not a shock.
We then had said we’d help Claire put up her new shed so I nipped home to tell the kids what we were doing and then back to join Ady. First we carried all the component parts down from the village to the yurt – about half a mile, which felt further with shed pieces on your back! We did it in three trips. Claire had made a really nice packed lunch for us all so we sat and ate that and then got most of the shed up. We’d said we could stay til 5pm but then needed to be away to feed animals and kids, plus we had Vikki coming up for dinner too. By 5pm all of the wall panels were up, the doors were hung, the glazing in. All that remained was the roof going on. Steve, James and Claire reckoned they’d get it finished in the hour ot so before dark but I wonder if they did… We came to a natural break at the rechargable drill ran out of charge so we had a beer with them and then Ady and I headed off, via Fliss’ to collect something for dinner today from their freezer. They have said we can put a freezer in the workshop which means we can have as much space as we want and access to it whenever rather than going in and out of theirs all the time. They have also said we can plumb a washing machine in the workshop too which will be amazing – they are the two things I miss most and would find life so much easier with – ideally up here on the croft but down in the village will make a massive difference. We’ll wait til the spring for the washing machine, we’d still need to use the castle tumble drier til then as we have no indoor drying space yet but we’ll get a chest freezer on order asap as being able to fill that with various things will be amazing – we can have foraged and fished and hunted food kept, stash things like milk, butter, cheese and stock up on meat and even things like ice cream and frozen veg. It will make a massive difference to our food budget and our ability to store stuff. Really pleased :).
Back at home Ady fed the animals and I came up to get the kids dinner sorted. Vikki arrived and the kids went off to watch a film in our room while we had dinner and chatted. It was a nice evening and although I think Vikki is another one who is probably not long for Rum it was a positive and happy evening which felt fitting for our six month anniversary of having moved here.
Sunday – we did have a list of things to get done today but seem to have not really done much. It’s been a really productive week though so that’s okay, we can afford to slack off today :). I finished an article for the next WWOOFing newsletter that I’d been asked to write; an update on our first six months here and some stuff about how the finances are working for us including our crowdfunding and other such ideas. I just need to email across some pictures of our first six months now, which should help inspire me for a blog post I need to write on the same subject.
We had lunch and then decided to tick off one of our planned achievements for the week – exploring somewhere new on Rum. We only had an hour or so of decent light left before the sun dipped down and it got cold so we headed off across the croft, past our planned house site and down to the river bank. The river is very meandering, snaking round on itself lots of times so we walked, sometimes wading along the actual river which is really low at the moment, sometimes along the banks. It was lovely 🙂 and we could see the static the whole time. I love that our house is visible from all these amazing places.
Can you spot it?
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A really nice hour or so wandering around exploring and then it was time to head back to feed animals. Ady did that while I got our dinner on and then he and I took our final cup of tea / coffee of the day out onto the sporran to drink it and enjoy the view as the sun went down. We’ve been debating going off island before Christmas to get Bonnie spayed and do some Christmas shopping but have decided not to and to wait until after Christmas to get Bonnie done. We think we’re better off spared the pre Christmas stress of mainland life and will probably spend less and get more in January instead.
We had a wee fire to burn off some rubbish and make the most of the gorgeously starry night as it got dark then came in for dinner. We watched Holes while we ate on Lovefilm instant which was actually pretty good and we all enjoyed.
Ferries change from this week to winter timetable so we go to 6 instead of 8 ferries per week, although still on four days (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday). We’re predicted nice dry weather til at least Thursday so we’re carrying on with winter-readying this week, stocktaking our animal feed and people feed in the horsebox, getting four full gas bottles up here to see us through til spring and coming up with ways to create a foot path through the boggy track down the hill. I’ve also agreed to be a director of Rum Enterprise, a trading subsiduary for the trust for any income generating projects. It seemed like a good start for getting involved in what’s going on here. given I don’t really want to be a trust director just yet. The first meeting to get up to speed on all that’s going on with that is tomorrow, plus Fliss and I are organising a Christmas Fayre, a grant application for an artist in residence event as part of Year of Natural Scotland and we’re planning a big bonfire night event too. Always busy!