Not sure if we’re getting carbon monoxide poisoning from the log burner (I am sure really, we have a proper alarm for it to ensure we are not, before everyone worries!) or whether living so much closer to nature is putting us into a semi hibernative state but Ady and I are both shattered this week.
Today has been a busy one – we walked down to collect the car from the castle, swapped over laundry (having carried more laundry and our rubbish and recycling down) and went to meet the ferry. Rachel who has been over visiting was leaving so we gave her cuddles and waves goodbye, collected our petrol which had arrived back and then went back to the castle to swap laundry over again – two loads, both needed tumble drying), got some stuff out of the freezer for dinner, bagged up 12 sacks of firewood, collected some strawberry runners from Vikki’s polytunnel and then came back for lunch.
Bonnie developed a limp on her back leg during the course of the morning and we’re a bit worried as she is not putting it down at all. She seems fine in herself and not in any constant pain but won’t put weight on it and has been happy to rest all day rather than wanting to be outside with us. Fingers crossed she improves over the next few days or it will be a mainland vets trip I guess. We’ll see how she is doing tomorrow.
We emptied the logs out of the car and I planted the runners in the polytunnel then we planned to go and collect the laundry, get some more firewood, check the coal bund which serves as the islands old appliances awaiting recycling / landfill collection from the council to see if there are any old fridges or other suitable things for us to re-paint and turn into a new honesty cupboard for our egg (and other produce) at the croft gate as the old bedside cabinet we were gifted from the castle is falling apart from exposure to the weather. Except the car failed to start. At all. It is slowly dying and we have to put the batteries (it has two) on charge at least once a week to keep it going, the plan was to do that after we had used it for all the various stuff we wanted to do today.
That left us with a couple of options as we knew there is no one who would be prepared to drive across the river and up the croft to jump start us. One was to take the batteries off and bring them up to the static to be charged by the wind / solar / genny set up but this would probably take all our power and mean no internet etc for us tonight. The other was to take them down to the village to charge up – heavy things to carry a long way 🙁 We decided to take them to the village so set off to collect the wagon which was at the bridge and found Gav’s car at the bridge. This seemed like a better idea so we went to see Gav and Laura and asked if we could dump the batteries in their car for them to take down to the village for us instead. Which they agreed to.
So back to the croft, batteries disconnected and bunged in Gav’s car, then I chopped wood and stacked it while Ady brought it up the hill. I got through about half, so that is tomorrow’s task. The weather has been very heavy showers, lots of wind and some sunshine and the evening looked bright so Ady and I walked back to the village again to collect the washing as I was out of clean pants.
A late dinner (Ady cooking, he is always very busy but not always good at ensuring the longest things to do get done first), the kids watched Star Wars while I made a start on putting together the Rum newsletter and we watched the Grand Tours of Scottish Islands on Muck, Eigg and Rum which was good.
Hello 🙂 I’ve read. Xxx
Comment by Merry — 12 October 2013 @ 11:09 pm