WHY FARMERS SHOULD TRAVEL
There’s a simple joy in looking at landscape that is not your responsibility. A calf on the road as the bus speeds by? Alarming, but you can hardly stop the bus to put it back. Impressive-looking grass-fattened lambs on lush green pastures? To be admired (and envied just a little); inspiration maybe…. but not work. Interesting machinery, an unusual model of wind turbine, silage being made – it’s all food for thought. Scanning your own fields always means work. You notice things – fences, livestock, machinery, an uneven track. Farming is like housework – only on a massive scale. Your chores are NEVER done; and you never really stop […]
HOME FROM HOME
It’s a long time since I last stayed at the Harbour View Guest House in Oban. It used to be a regular haunt – at £15 the cheapest B&B in Oban with a friendly proprietor and easy access to the ferry for lazy 20-somethings. Mrs Mac had known Alex and his brothers for years and years…. and always showed genuine interest in their welfare. A genuinely warm welcome awaited, which really made you feel you were almost home. Archie accompanied me here once or twice when he was really little but, with small children, an old-fashioned B&B becomes tricky: shared bathrooms, disjointed sleeping arrangements, steep stairs and close proximity with […]
SILAGE
Cutting silage is a bit of a chore. It takes quite a bit of machinery and a whole lot of time. And the dates you can cut silage are restricted by environmental subsidies, so cutting can’t take place until late August. Feeding silage to livestock is vastly better than importing dried feed from the mainland. It’s healthier for the fields (and animals) to make use of local grass: the nutrients lost to the cut grass are pumped back into the soil through animal dung. Dry feed is energy-demanding in its production as well as in its transport, which does not sit well with an environmental conscience. But, most importantly […]
GUESTS AND FISH
My parents are leaving after a full week of visiting. While popular legend has it that “….guests are like fish – they go bad after three days…’ the truth is that children need time to acclimatise to long-lost relatives (like animals, they kind of sniff around and readjust, with building confidence, to the pecking order and the subtle vagaries of interaction.) A full week allows everybody to settle into a bit of a routine and, instead of dropping everything to Have Fun For A Day (in a forced and deliberate way) life continues, shared for a while. These days, living on a tiny island is not as remote as it […]
COOKING, TURBINES AND CALVES
It’s proving to be a bumper-crop day for our wind turbines. They are operating beyond their official maximum (16kw/h for 15kw/h machines….). This is optimum turbine weather – not so windy they shut down completely but not too gusty either; a steady big blow. While this is all very lovely for turbines, the wind-chill factor is considerable and that means the Great Outdoors is effectively off-limits for humans and all but the most vital of tasks. Unfortunately, farming must continue stoically through inclement weather and there are numerous vital tasks at this time of year. It’s when things are at their most harsh that we must be most […]
COOKING AND FRETTING
Extremely windy and freezing cold. Brilliant skies till the afternoon, but icy…. Hypothermia is sure to be an issue for lambs born in this. But the silver lining is that I am able to use the great outdoors as an industrial chiller for my newly-cooked meals…. Meals for the day: Lamb Tagine and Tuscan lamb casserole with cannellini beans.
A GLUM START AND A SPOT OF COOKING
First twin lambs born today: premature and feeble. (Lambing starts properly next week.) Alex took the mother and the one surviving lamb indoors and fed the babe colostrum. Sadly, to no avail – it died a few hours later. The mother is thriving on extra rations and indoor pampering – outside is freezing cold and blowing a gale. Nature is harsh and there’s nothing like lambing to write that out in bold. Meals for the day: South Indian Mild curry (I LOVE this one!), Boeuf Bourguignon and FIERY Thai beef curry.
QUALITY OF LIFE
Today was a day of cooking great batches of meals for Easter visitors to Coll and Tiree. My parents are visiting from abroad and they helped with all sorts of things – looking after children, chopping onions, recipe advice… In the void left by so much assistance, I got to thinking… About why on earth we spend so much time on fairly low-earning projects. Chatting to a fellow farmer’s wife yesterday, we contempated what makes a farm diversification worth pursuing. If you factor in the value of your time and the huge costs of freight – on and off the island – which affects everything from food production and butchery […]
PREPARING FOR LAMBING
England may be under swathes of snow, but the Hebrides has enjoyed a lengthy spell of glorious bright, calm weather. How frustrating our reputation is for terrible weather! Today, however, the wind and overcast chill has returned. While that does make for a happy turbine-owner, it’s not great for visiting family or small children. The farm is ready for lambing – the ewes have been appropriately dosed against liver-fluke and additional supplies of glucose, calcium, antibiotics, lubricant and gloves are on stand-by for difficult births and disasters. Last year was easy, with very few assisted births or deaths. Let’s hope the same is true for this year. Weather is the […]
Recent Comments