Fencing, WWOOFERS and a Very Special Woodland

How is it that as you get older, you blink and time seems to have vanished from existence??!! I was sure only last week it was just New Years…..but it seems Valentines has been and gone, and we’re steaming on towards March showers and April Flowers! I think Terry Pratchett’s portrayal of the ambiguous and relative nature of time in ‘Thief of Time’ sums it up beautifully – I am just one of those whereby time goes by much faster, and I haven’t yet mastered how to slow it down a bit! Lucky for us all that mother nature seems to be very fixed in her time schedule, and as the snow drops are flowering, the daffies are sticking their heads through, the sheep and cows are nearing lambing and calving, and the days are getting longer, it would appear that spring is sprunging!

Sooooooo. Keith has started fencing, and he has transformed the old argocat we got before Christmas into a fencing tool extraordinaire.

Work on our SRDP biodiversity scheme has started, with the mounding and fencing of the new woodland area at the entrance to Orbost Estate. The Rowan and Birch trees are ordered, and will be planted in early March. The area has to be deer fenced to prevent the local deer and cattle population from eating the trees once they have been planted! We are going to be naming this woodland the Clan MacLeod woodland, and in co-operation with Clan MacLeod Members worldwide, we hope that the woodland area will become a relevant and accessible feature on Skye for modern day MacLeods. Within the woodland boundary, we plan to build a Clan wall incorporating stones from all over the world where MacLeods now live. It’s a project important to me, as my heritage stems from MacLeods on Skye, and was infact the reason I first came to Skye many years ago!

Fencing wise, it is the first 1.5km of a 20km fencing scheme to be completed over the next 2 years……hmmmm! It’s quite overwhelming at present, but as we get each part completed, it will become less scary….hopefully! We have registered as WWOOF hosts (willing workers on organic farms) and although we are not a certified organic farm, as we are farming for biodiversity and ecology, we fit into the WWOOF ethos. We are hoping over the next wee whiley that we will have WWOOFERS  come and stay and experience life on Skye, eat cracking fresh local food, and help out with the fencing and biodiversity projects. It’s quite an exciting time really – so good to be able to ‘do’ and make meaningful changes to the landscape and farming operation at Orbost that will benefit the amazing wildlife that we live alongside.

Projects, Projects and more Projects!

Hello all, and a Happy 2011 to everyone! This year is one for projects……..PROJECT SECRET GARDEN……..PROJECT FENCE THAT HILL……..PROJECT PLANT THOSE TREES…….and probably project keep your sanity!!!

First and foremost though, we have inadvertently become involved in a competition to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Movie Highlander, the prize being having a stunning gorge named after you, on Orbost Farm, which will be published in the next edition of Collins atlas – http://www.blinkbox.com/immortal .

PROJECT SECRET GARDEN

There is a beautiful gnarly old walled garden on Orbost Estate, which we plan to transform and reclaim over the next few years. Stage one of the project is to get the weeds and brambles cleared – and what better way to do that than with pigs! They are amazing clearing machines, and have done a cracking job of clearing 1/4 of the overgrowth in the garden towards the end of last year. In the spring, once the ground has dried up a bit, we will put them back in to continue the job, and also get work started on repairing the walls. This garden is magical, and for years was used as the kitchen and market garden for the big house on the Estate. We’re absolutely passionate about getting the garden back to its former glory, and making it a destination for visitors to Orbost…..watch this space!

PROJECT FENCE THAT HILL

In 2010 we worked very hard on putting together an application for the Scottish Rural Development Fund to transform the farm into a more ecologically sustainable unit. The key element is to fence the 18km boundary around the farm, in order to allow us to develop sustainable grazing regimes with the soay sheep and highland cows to maximise biodiversity on the estate. YAY!! We got accepted, which means over the next two years we will be fencing, planting a native woodland (more on this soon) re-seeding inbye fields for corncrakes and planting hedges. It is a mammoth project, but will transform the unit. It’s really exciting to have the opportunity through this scheme to be able to make a difference to the long term sustainability of both the wildlife and the farm here. It is project with a capital P!

KEEPING ONE’S SANITY

I suppose it is our passion and enthusiasm for what we are doing that keeps us sane! We are so privileged to be working the land, feeding ourselves and our family, and endeavoring to preserve and protect the wildife and ecology that surrounds us. Don’t get me wrong, it is hard graft, and Keith has to battle against snow and ice, wind and rain to feed everything during the winter……..but then we get days like this one in the pic, and well it just all makes sense!

Cake Man, Cow whisperer and is it half way through the year already?!!!*

I cannot believe it is half way through the year already! The only saving grace is that everything else seems to be behind on its shedule as well, so I don’t feel quite so bad! The grass has been slow in growing, the peahen hasn’t hatched her chicks yet, the carrots are through….but only just!

Since getting back from Australia, it has been hectic – like one of those anxiety dreams where you are on stage and forget the lines (am I the only one who has those??!) Today I’ve decided to stop, take stock, and update the blog.

Our chickens have been laying wonderfully well, and this has had the knock on effect that Keith has developed an alter ego – cake man! He’ll come in at 11pm and start a baking frenzy….the result being we’ve been extremely well fed with treats and delights for the last few months.

So it was Jess’s Birthday this last weekend, and Keith baked his traditional birthday cake for Jess, but the first one was a bit of a disaster….so we came up with a plan to play a prank…….we had the prank birthday cake ( a kind of strawberry shaped cake which looked pretty ropey) and a star studded proper cake with all the trimmings! Here’s what happened….

All the calves have been born now, and the cows, calves and the new bull are out the hill enjoying their summer grazing on heather and hill grass. Because the farm isn’t yet fenced, we’ve had to herd the cows a lot! But they’re starting to understand where they are meant to be!

As well as being cake man, Keith is amazing with the cows……He just has to look at them, and they seem to know what it is he wants them to do! I can run around like an idiot, beg them, try to reason with them…..but I just ain’t no cow whisperer! We’ve been busy this last month planting all the veg out too – 300kg of seed potatoes and 250,000 carrot seeds……they’re all doing well, and I can’t wait until harvest time! It’s our first producers market in Portree this week on Thursday – we’ll be selling venison and pork. We’ve highland beef to process next week, and I’ll be posting our highland beef boxes back online on the Skye Food Company website towards the end of next week.

Well, after a brief pause, I’d better get back to it! Happy midsummer all

Stuck, ash ‘holes’ and a political jab

At the end of March we decided that it was important that I travel to Australia for two weeks to see my Nanna, who is 93 and not very well. Keith graciously recognised that I needed to spend some time with her, and kindly agreed to hold the fort, look after the kids and manage the farm by himself for two weeks so that I would have the opportunity to do just that………………It would appear, for the time being, that I am now stuck. I don’t use the word stranded, as there are millions of people who are actually stranded with no family, money, means of transport, and I truly appreciate my fortune in being ‘stuck’ with my own family in Australia. Doesn’t make it much easier to deal with when I really need to be back with Keith and the kids (it’s Tristan’s birthday on Wednesday) and Keith is about to start lambing. However that is just how it is, and I will have to deal.

This whole saga has really made me think long and hard about the implications of our food and commodity supply system in the UK. It is something we as food producers have been painfully aware of over the past few years, but it is not something we have shouted very loud about. Perhaps it is time to start shouting. Those of you who are going to the supermarket and seeing emptying shelves will be starting to see how the current policy of import as much as possible just does not work – the system is too fragile – and when it comes down to it, whether it be a natural disaster, or the case that there are food shortages elsewhere in the world (which is going to happen in the future) where does Britain stand as a nation to be able to sustain itself? I think the last week has shown it does not stand in a very good place. There has to be a fundamental shift in both policy and consumer choice to ensure that in the future Britain is food secure. We are currently seeing a situation whereby farmers are going out of production at an alarming rate – the national flock size of sheep, cows and pigs is declining at an alarming rate (look up the census numbers to show the true scale of reduction). We are not in the business of large scale vegetable or feed production, but I am aware that the situation is similar in these sectors.

The title of this post was political jab, not lecture, so I won’t harp on too much – I just think it is very important that people support British producers, and local production AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Failure to do so will mean that in the future, the capacity to feed the nation just won’t be there. And the government needs to rise to the challenge too – feeding their citizens with a secure supply of British produce should be a NUMBER 1 priority – what’s the point in having a successful city trading sector if half the country cannot access food? Food security – any political party not addressing this issue is failing to prepare for the future viability of the country.

So……….whilst stuck in Oz, I have been able to spend some valuable time with my Nanna, and also my family – which has been such a blessing. My brother is a self confessed geek, and spends many hours on his geek forums discussing relevant topics of the day – the topic last night was the new terminolgy developed during this volcanic disruption – ‘ash hole’ – clear areas of sky where planes might be able to travel through. Try as I might (as I found the ash hole terminology slightly crude) I could not come up with a viable alternative………’periodic clearances in atmospheric ash plumes’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it – so ash holes it is!

I believe, for those Monty Halls fans out there, that the new series of Monty Halls Hebridean Escape starts this Wednesday on BBC2. Keith appears in the first episode helping with some fencing, and I am sick that I am not going to get to see it! Martin, the producer, had told us that it was perhaps the funniest fencing sequence ever filmed. I also believe Monty has started filming series 3 in Ireland already. Big love to you Monty, hope it all goes well!

Well, I am off to spend some more time with Nanna. In many ways it is a blessing I am able to spend some more time with her…….until the ash holes unite………I miss Keith and my babies so much, but I’ll be back soon

Busy, Babies, Bulls and an awful lot of juggling!

We seem to have plunged head first into this larger scale farming thing! Soon after taking on the farm, we bought some new pedigree Highland Cows – who are all doing well and having calves as we speak.

We had a huge amount of snow and ice over Dec, Jan and Feb – which in some ways was great as there was not the usual mud, rain and winds that one comes to expect during a winter on Skye – but also meant alot more feeding. Back to rain and mud now though…….but the grass is starting to grow, and the daffies are nearly out, which means spring is just around the corner!

We had a very sad week last week – and it just one of those things that happens when you farm animals – if you remember, we had bought a new beef shorthorn bull in November to put over the cows next time around. We still had two other highland bulls that needed to be sold, so we took them to the rare breeds sale in Dingwall on the Saturday and sold them on -  it was hard to see Calin go, but he would have been coming over on his own stock, so he had to go. The next day, we went to check the cows, and the new bull had sore feet and had taken himself off, over a fence, into a forestry block. To cut a long story short, and after a week of vet visits and having to lift the bull in a sling with the tractor onto his feet every 3 hours, sadly he had to be put down on Sunday. We are still no wiser as to why he went off his feet in the first place, but bulls are such big animals that any time off their feet starts their muscles wasting, and the longer they are down, the less likely they are to recover. So we went from 3 bulls to no bulls in the space of a week, and are now in a bit of a pickle as to what we are going to do when the cows come back into season……..it’s a few months down the line as they are all calving just now, so we will have to do some juggling and try to get a new bull in that time.

Our pigs have all had piglets over the past month, and we are now the proud owners of 35 gorgeous piglets! I took some great pics of the Tamworth having hers – piglets are so independent when they are born – they come out rearing to go and sometimes fighting! They are little comics too – as soon as they can, they go out rampaging – they are just like a little possy of teenagers checking everything out and finding mischief!

Five down, eleven to go!

new born piglet number six

in less than a minute the piglet has found its way to milk!

Exhausted mum feeds the newborns

Two of our sows are Sandy Blackspot crossed with Wild Boar, and they are sisters we have had since they were weaned. They always have their piglets within hours of each other, and raise them together.

One sister will babysit whilst the other is out foraging and visa versa

within hours of being born, the piglets are running around and being quite independent!

So I mentioned the 17.5km of fencing needing done on the farm in my last post, and at present I am putting together an application to enter the farm into a moorland management and environmental scheme which will assist towards the fencing. Our aim in taking on the farm has always been to rebalance the ecosystem in this beautiful place using native breeds of animals – low impact, but great for encouraging biodiversity. It will all be a slow process, and one involving much juggling of resources, but it will be worth it in the long term! In the mean time, as you can see we’ve our hands full with all the new babies, and lambs are just about to start coming…..the cycle continues!

One last thing – Jess has always wanted a  pony, and to date we have resisted the temptation. Keith is totally Mr practical when it comes to animals, and they must have a purpose. So he cleverly concocted a plan that rather than buying her a pony, we could buy her a tame heiffer cow. He felt this would be much more useful as she would eventually produce calves. So Jess is delighted to be the proud owner of a beautiful dun heiffer called Princess.

Jess and Princess

I imagine one of these days we will eventually get the pony………but in the mean time, Jess and Princess are best friends and will grow up together!

A New Year, Snow and a New Adventure

I am so pleased I wrote my last post about Christmas in November, because true to form, December was absolutely flat out…….but we’re through the other side – YAY! December was full of processing, orders, markets, negotiating leases, signing leases, and finally a wonderfully quiet Christmas at home with the family – I say wonderfully quiet, when actually we were rudely awoken by Jess at 2am Christmas morning after she had discovered her Santa sack which contained pink velvet stilettos and a twirling baton – the strains of the can can up and down the hallway were just about too much to cope with! I had words with Jess about the importance of sleep, and then had stern words with Santa!

The snow and ice continues to pile up, and it is truly beautiful, but does pose some problems for feeding animals and sourcing running water for them! I keep reminding myself it is much better than driving wind and rain, which is what we normally experience at this time of year. I went out with the camera the other morning to capture some of the icicles…..

So today is the first day of 2010…..Happy New Year to all! I hope it brings you happiness and prosperity. We spent New Year’s eve sledging in the moonlight in the back fields with the kids – it was such a great way to welcome in the New Year! We set off some chinese lanterns before the bells to farewell last year, and some after the bells to welcome the adventures to come. And what adventures we are set to have this year!

After three years of persistance and hard work, we have finally secured a 15 year lease on Orbost Estate Farm. We are graduating from smallholders into farmers, and it is going to be an amazing challenge to take the business a step up, and endeavour to rebalance the hills at Orbost with our native breed animals and aspirations for traditional, low impact management of the ecosystem. Focusing on the job at hand though, the snow means increased feeding of the menagerie, and as we have experienced this week, vehicles and ice just don’t like each other very much! Keith moved the cows down into the inbye fields and is feeding silage daily.

The cows are all pregnant, and will be calving in the spring. We have a new bull, Xavier, who is a beef shorthorn bull. He is quite the gentleman, and looking after the girls very well. Cailin, our highland bull is off at a neighbouring farm, and will be going to sale at the Oban Highland Cattle Society sale in February.

Misty is enjoying the snow very much, and has exuberantly joined in sledging and snowman construction with Tristan and Jess.

The kids got a wii for Christmas, and we’ve all had a great time playing the sports games on it! How sore have my arms been for the last week! Although I can proudly say, at present, I am archery and bowling queen!! My golfing skills are somewhat lacking, but this is a true reflection on reality, as the one and only time I ever went golfing in the Hunter Valley I believe I managed to lose every single ball I hit! I’ve got to say, as computer games go, it is fantastic, AND there is only so much swinging about of your arms you can do before collapsing in exhaustion, so there is no risk of the children wasting hours motionless in front of the screen.

Well, a very happy and peaceful New Year to all, and watch this space for new adventures unfolding as we speak! ( sneak preview – the whole farm is unfenced at present, and to be able to let the Soays to the hill we are going to have to fence approximately 17km in total……..anyone fancy a fencing working holiday??!!***)

Christmas already?!!!

Sadly, yes, it is approaching like a steam train, and November for us is the month where we process like mad to get everything organised and ready for sending out for Christmas. I have to admit that it does seem that Christmas markets, advertising etc all seems to be creeping earlier and earlier into the year – this does kind of grate the wrong way for me – it does cause an inner conflict at times – but then this is our busiest time of year with the meat processing, so we have to join in with the rest of them.

Having said all the above, we are very proud of what we produce for the Christmas markets, and there is a great sense of contentment knowing that something you have produced is being enjoyed by many families during the festive season. I shall share a sneak preview, and when you’re ready to start thinking about ordering your Christmas Fayre, perhaps you’ll go and have a proper look at the goodies we are creating at the Skye Food Company website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today we’ve been making sausages and bacon, tomorrow is mutton ham and mutton roasts, next week is highland beef, and thereafter venison, free range chickens and free range turkeys.  We’ve got markets to attend for the next three weekends – the one which we enjoy most is the Victorian Market at Brodie Castle, which this year is on the 28th and 29th November. We get all dressed up in Victorian garb and sell our wares in a stunning Victorian Kitchen in the castle. Jess and Tristan get in on the act too, selling their Christmas Cards, and spending quite a lot of time loitering next to the Chocolate Bothy stall!

 

In other news, my Dad survived the weather and living with the Jacksons for 3 weeks, and has now gone back to Australia, where the weather is quite a bit kinder than it is here just now! It was great having Dad to visit, and he helped hold the fort together with remarkable calm and demure! We all went over to Applecross last Sunday for a last day out before he left, and we caught up with Heather and Andy and the kids. It was a stunning day, and so good to catch up with our Applecross friends. We visited Monty’s bothy, which sadly is still looking a bit lost and neglected – I do wish someone could take it on and bring it back to life.

YES I KNOW – It’s the wrong way around……I promise it is my computer!!! When I look at it on my computer it is most definitely the right way round….somewhere in the ether between my computer and this page it has rotated itself……what can I say….heads to the left!! Misty is quite a lot bigger now….she’s just 11 months, and just seems to keep on growing!

Well, off to print labels now, sausages! We’ll emerge somewhere 6 weeks hence wondering where the time has gone….is it Christmas already??!!!

 

 

Holidays for some……

The last few weeks have been school holidays and the kids and I went to meet my dad in Paris and have a play in Disneyland……we took in some culture too! We saw the classics, impressionists, science museum, eifel tower, wax works and much more. Whilst we were holidaying, Keith was very busy taking the bull to the highland cattle show and sale, processing venison, going to markets and holding the fort. The bull did brilliantly at the show, taking the title of overall champion male.

What a gentle giant he is – and rather handsome! He’s back home and on hire for the time being, and we’ll probably sell him at the February sale next year. In other news our collaborative company, The Skye Food Company, was shortlisted as finalists in the Highlands Local Food Awards in the best new business and best use of local produce categories. The awards dinner was last Friday night, and although we didn’t win our categories, we were delighted and honoured to have been included in a prestigious list of finalists.

We’re at the point in the year where we start planning what produce we’re going to have available at Christmas – this year we’ll be making up boxes of Highland Beef, Iron Age Pork roasts, chipolata sausages and dry cured Hams, and Venison. We’ll be attending local markets, and also a bit futher afield at Brodie Castle towards the end of November.

And then to our holiday…….Disneyland was great fun and it was a fantastic time to play

Back to work now!

Uprising and into the unknown….oh and some veg too!

Ashamedly I see that it has indeed been WEEKS since I last posted……..this would not be for having a lack of things to say, however we have been extremely busy. I sometimes think we should have a PC and a non PC blog going……..perhaps I’ll tackle that one later on in the year!

So Keith finished making all the silage and got it all stacked, and now we are waging war with the little birds on the Estate that think it is good to peck holes in the black plastic – today we will be spraying big white eyes onto the plastic to try and deter them – it does seem to work. The problem being if the bales are punctured, the silage goes off and rots……..action required! There were 250 odd bales in the end, enough to feed the cows and sheep over the winter.

We’ve been harvesting and eating and selling our carrots and potatoes, and considering our lack of weeding, the field has again produced a bumper crop. There is definitely something deeply satisfying about harvesting and producing, it connects one back to the earth.

(sorry about having to tilt your head to see pics – haven’t figured out how to rotate in this program!)

For the last few years we have been trying to lease more ground on which to house our increasing menagerie, and expand our business. Now a neighbour wisely reminded me the other day of an old gaelic saying ‘slippery is the doorstep to the big house’, however, I feel we can pretty much safely say now that it looks like all the hard work and persistence is going to pay off, and we should be getting the lease on some more ground to farm in November. So this for us is a huge step into the unknown – rather than being smallholders, we will be taking the giant leap into becoming farmers – it is both exciting and terrifying at the same time! And it will be the first steps towards achieving our dream of farming native breeds sustainably on a large scale…..and making it work. As I mentioned it has been a very long road to this point, and the beaurocracy encountered has been, at times, thoroughly frustrating and beyond belief! Being a musically driven individual, I often adopt anthems to forge through problems, and the anthem of the moment is Muse’s Uprising….it has been inspiring!

Cailin, our highland bull, has wonderfully fulfilled his job as our stock bull for the last 3 years, and it is now time for him to be prepared for sale. He will be being sold at the Highland Cattle Sale in Oban in October, and is currently in the field next to the house getting some tlc before going off to sale. He is an amazing gentle giant (although slightly intimidating when standing on one’s front lawn!).

Our lawn mower is broke, so Keith thought Cailin might enjoy eating down the grass before the winter sets in! He’s been an amazingly productive and manageable bull, and it will be sad to see him go, but it is time for him to have some new girls to look after.

So the rest of this week Keith will be selling the Estate lambs, and I will be catching up on all that paper work building up on my office desk! It’s coming to the end of the farming cycle, and hopefully the next one will bring exciting changes and new adventures!

Rain and Harvest

Not for some time do I remember an August where it has rained quite so much…..but that is the way of it! Keith has been flat out this past week harvesting the grass crops and bailing it into silage (kind of like fermented wet hay, which the animals like quite alot during the winter). Despite the rain, the bailer breaking and the mower breaking (what is it about machines?!*), it is nearly all bailed and wrapped, and is ready for stacking.

Quite a crop really! The flowers are all out in the garden too and going mad with the rain and warmth…..

We’ve started to harvest the carrots and other veg too. I love this time of year when we can sit down to an entirely home produced meal…….it does give a great sense of satisfaction I think it is brilliant that more and more people are using small areas of ground to grow their own veg etc in more built up areas – we should all be doing it! Even if it means only one or two home grown meals, the satisfaction and sense of well being that comes with this is worth it!

I remember vividly as a child wanting to plant vegies in my mum’s garden, and never being allowed to…..I also wanted a menagerie of animals and frequently tried to turn up home with birds, ducks and anything that squawked, barked or meowed……they conceded on some fronts, but it wasn’t until I moved here and we started farming ourselves that the desire was satisfied! Those who know me know that I am the most rubbish gardener ever…….and weeding is my most least favorite thing to do…..but despite that fact, we have still managed to produce beautiful flowers and great food – rubbish gardeners everywhere be encouraged!

So September and October should provide many fruits of our labour, the jobs for this time also include getting things prepared for the winter, as it seems to land on us soon after the leaves start to turn! Tristan’s head is healing nicely, hopefully the scar won’t be too bad – but then it is one of those things with little boys isn’t it!